Letter to George Will

(George Will gave some advice to Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker about the stupidity of science denial. Which prompted me to write this letter.)

Mr. Will,

I sympathize with your situation, having to advise a Republican frontrunner to acknowledge science and reality. It must be embarrassing.

John McCain corrected a woman in the crowd during his campaign who said Obama was a Muslim. Then it seemed the only rational thing to do.

The problem is the Republican Party has spent the years since then catering to this same ignorant prejudice. Actually they’ve been doing it longer, if you consider Lee Atwater's and Roger Ailes' and Pat Buchanan’s not so subtle dog whistle bigotry. This past week we also have Giuliani’s ugly, ignorant remarks.

Why cater to ignorance? Because it’s worked for you. It’s elected right wing Republicans, each one further right than the last, each one more out of touch with reality. Each one more cynical and dishonest and nutty.

And this has made your party the cynical dishonest nutty bigoted party. It wins elections for you.

Well (and I realize it’s totally wrong to use this analogy) this kind of nutty cynical dishonest bigotry also helped Hitler win elections.

If it works it becomes compulsory? That seems to be the rationale Republicans have imported from the business world. It’s wrong and dangerous in both places. It’s endangering the climate our food supply is based on, it’s endangering our democracy, it’s endangering our economy, it’s endangering our future.

You have a lot of work to do unwinding this.

Of course, if you think it’s more important to carry water for the Republicans in next year’s election… if that’s more important to you and the other commentators on the right, God help us.

The Insurance Industry Has Been Asleep

Scientific American is reporting on catastrophic flood projections in NY this century.

Wired magazine is describing similar catastrophic flooding in Miami.

Other coastal cities will experience similar catastrophe worldwide.

Two Questions:

Why hasn’t the insurance industry factored this enormous future cost into the premiums paid in coastal cities?

How and when will the insurance industry offload this enormous cost onto the public?

The insurance industry is supposed to inform its risk calculations with the best science. They didn’t.

Why?

Because the major insurers have for a few decades (at least since the merger mania during Reagan) considered themselves financial companies, not insurance companies. For this reason they’ve been more focused on the huge profits from fossil fuel investments during peak oil than on the huge costs that fossil fuel will precipitate through climate change as our major port facilities and coastal properties are flooded.

They’re all insured, by the way.

But major financial companies are too big to fail, so we will pay for their greed and the mistakes greed caused them to make. If, as purists say, capitalism and free markets are supposed to do our society’s thinking and planning, they’ve certainly failed us. They’ve all been asleep, selfish, self-centered, self-satisfied fools.