In the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams, an enormous super computer takes 7.5 million years to determine that the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything is forty-two. This is clever and funny, but answer is wrong. In fact, there are two answers, 2 and 75.
The question? What is driving the anti-science, anti-diversity, anti-abortion, anti-solar, anti-environmental, pro-gun, anti-abortion, xenophobic, racist, homophobic, anti-government agenda of the Trump Administration and the strange, cloying, complicity of Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and almost every other Republican? If you think it’s just insanity, you’re wrong. Every bit of it is choreographed and Trump is only its blustering front man. And the entirety of the Machiavellian clockworks that has become the GOP, every turn of every cog, derives from those two numbers. 2 and 75.
2. Or more specifically, two degrees. The models of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have suggested that we could survive a rise of two degrees in global temperatures relative to historical averages. The two degree rise will not be without its problems. At this point, the earth has risen one degree and the events of 2017, the year of fire and storms, suggest that even surviving a two degree increase could be daunting. But above two degrees, the ambiguity disappears. To paraphrase the data spewed out by the most sophisticated climate models, a rise of two degrees or less will mean a world of hurt. Above that, we’re screwed.
75. Make that 75%. That’s the proportion of the world’s fossil fuel reserves that will need to stay in the ground, unburned, if we want to keep the global temperature rise under 2. That means less drilling in environmentally sensitive areas, less fracking, less strip mining and far less air pollution. Not such a bad thing. To most of us. Maybe even a good thing, regardless of the effect on global temperature, …
Unless you happen to be in the business of extracting and selling fossil fuels.
Then a determination to cap carbon dioxide emissions becomes an existential threat. Especially if you own fossil fuels. If your primary assets are fossil fuels, a government pledge to leave 75% of them untouched sounds a lot like a promise to take away ¾ of everything you own. Even more so if you own coal, which is more polluting, more challenging to transport, and less versatile by far than either oil or natural gas. There’s a name for people who own substantial quantities of carbon-based energy. Billionaires.
Making existential threats to billionaires is a bad idea.
They tend to respond like the infamous Koch Brothers, major backers of climate change denial. Now, these are smart guys. I’m willing to bet they even understand the science of climate change, probably all too well. They may even know that there is some truth in our two numbers.
But they don’t care. Or rather they care desperately. Their financial future depends on making those two numbers go away or, at least, disappear in a cloud of confusion for as long it takes to unload their fossil fuels. So, they and they’re cronies long ago determined that they would do whatever it takes for as long as it takes and spend as much money as it takes to ensure that nothing could stop them from selling their carbon. Nothing.
Everything, and I mean everything, in the entire political universe, has rotated around that single axis for several decades and led us to the current debacle in Washington. I will skip the specifics of how they did it. (That story can be found in Dark Money, mandatory reading for anyone hoping to understand current politics. Even if you think you understand the Kochtopus, read it because you probably don’t.)
The Koch’s have had one simple agenda for the past thirty-five years. Obliterate any obstacle to selling all of their fossil fuels for as much money as possible with no environmental restraints and keeping as much of the profits as possible. Every major priority of the Trump administration and the Republicans has been driven by that goal. Everything else, the border wall, gun rights, anti-abortion laws, and the profound intolerance rooted in sexism, homophobia, racism, and xenophobia, all of it is a side show. That side show was and is necessary to keep voters with an obsessive, single-minded focus on one or more of these issues in their fold. No one could get elected on a simple pro-fossil fuels, anti-environmental, pro-tax cuts for the wealthy platform. The Koch’s needed voters they could rally with regular bursts of their dog whistles and count on to show up to the polls. Religiously.
So, if you wonder why the first tariff Trump imposed is on solar cells, ask yourself who is harmed by solar cells. If you wonder why the first environmental rollback involves regulations on coal power plant emissions, don’t look at the miners, look at the Kochs. Above all, if you wonder how legislators (even those who once believed in global warming) with little or no training in science can suddenly decide they understand the complexity of climate change science better than the thousands of highly trained men and women around the world who have made this their life’s work, look no farther than Kansas.
None of it makes sense. Until you look through the lens of those two numbers. And then, it’s crystal clear. And terrifying.
