What is the end game honestly? Either the rich get eaten or we all die together on this dead planet. Or both.
I grew up around the rich. They are short sighted idiots just like the rest of us, but with a whole lot more entitlement, self confidence and belief that things will work out fine (this matches their lived experience). They are just as prone to magical thinking and superstitious beliefs as anyone else, but NO ONE CAN TELL THEM THEY’RE WRONG. They lose touch with reality, because the human brain needs honest feedback from it’s community in order to calibrate it’s sense of reality and hardly anyone is honest with the rich to their faces.
The point is, there is no endgame. It would be better if there was. A BUNCH of the rich believe the End Times are nigh, a bunch more believe that capitalism and innovation will solve whatever environmental disasters industrial society is creating. I know of one multi billionaire (the mom of someone I went to high school with) who pays a Buddhist “holy man” a very generous salary to follow her around and be her full time spiritual advisor. IIRC, she thinks the enlightened will ascend to some higher plane of existence before the environmental apocalypse consumes the rest of us (she still funds various environmentalist causes). Meanwhile, Zuck and the other tech bros seriously think they’re playing Fallout IRL and Musk thinks we’re doomed unless we build a Mars colony.
It would better if there WERE a plan, or an end game or big conspiracy. We could maybe hold some actual people accountable for deliberately driving the planet into the ditch. But there’s not. Just a bunch of self serving, delusional idiots with wealth and power.
Maybe this will stop Congress from abdicating their duty to the Executive Banch and start passing updates to laws. The way we had it was that every change of president allowed more cronyism to change the rules.
Doesn’t anyone remember that Trump gutted the EPA and made them change how they worked scientifically? How the DOE decided that Coal and Gas production was the future during Trump? Did everyone forget that Trump allowed the Department of the Interior to sell gas lease for the Arctic Wildlife Preserve.
All those changes used a Chevron defense.
Forestalling legislation is one of the most pernicious aspects of certain judicial rulings. Rather than concrete protections we get thin shells waiting for a new ruling to crack.
