Celebrating the Climate Agreement Forged by Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping

A reader responded to my Thanksgiving Day post in which I called for all Americans, especially those to the left of center politically, to stop griping about what Obama has not brought us, and to be grateful for what we have, in fact, received, in terms of environmental progress.  Maybe this whole thing came to a head for me when I realized that the climate-related agreement that Obama forged with Chinese President Xi Jinping, one of the most sweepingly important international accords in the history of humankind, went almost completely unnoticed in the U.S.

Obviously the political right wants to ignore this triumph, as it’s their self-appointed duty to smash anything Obama has done, is doing, or will do — to bits, thus ensuring that Obama’s legacy is as terrible as they can possibly render it.  I’ve previously referred to this as “the most obvious form of treason that any of us has seen in our entire lifetimes,” but that’s not the point I’m trying to make here.

I’m astounded that the left doesn’t seem to “get” what just happened here, and appears strangely reluctant to celebrate a rare victory when it happens to occur.  Are we happy only when a boob like Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, Jim Inhofe or the others make a few more horrible gaffes, exposing both stunning levels of ignorance and revolting lack of human compassion?  What’s the matter with a simple “hurray” when it’s due?

In any case, here’s the discussion:

Reader: You define “leftist” as “one who believes that humankind bears some sort of collective responsibility to take care of one another and all life forms–that happen to be on Earth today, or who may come in the future.”  The problem with that admirable definition of “leftist” is that there is no explanation as to where the money to take care of the needy comes from. 

I respond:

To be honest, I’ve never really accepted your basic premise that there isn’t enough money to accomplish the tasks that are clearly laid out in front of us.  The oil companies have plenty of money to lead Congress and the rest of the world around by the nose.  We just got finished spending more than $6 billion in the 2014 election campaign. The military budget of the United States is $640 billion dollars a year, more than all of the next 16 countries’ budgets combined. The wealthiest 1% of Americans own more than 40 percent of the entire value of goods in this nation. Here’s a graph of inflation-adjusted corporate profits over the last 60 years or so; they don’t look too anemic to me:

Now, if you’re saying that we don’t have the political will to redistribute any significant amount of this wealth in such a way as to serve the seven billion people on this planet and protect our environment, you’re absolutely right about that.  In fact, in just the last few years, the 40% figure (representing the fraction of total worth controlled by the top 1%) has gone right through the roof. 

I really don’t know what’s going to happen here.  Some speculate, and it’s hard to argue against them, that the juggernaut of free market capitalism we’re experiencing at this point in history will continue unabated until and unless there is a cataclysmic event that poses a clear existential threat to all humankind. Interestingly, climate change and the other macro environmental issues confronting humankind may be just that force.