I just met a woman from Belgium who told me that their traditional cloudy and cool summers have been replaced by climate that most people consider to be more conducive to summer fun: sunny and hot.  And, of course, at those latitudes, daylight lasts until almost midnight.  Sounds like good times for all.

The result of global warming will be catastrophic on average, but not for everyone.  If you grow wheat in Western Canada, you’re in great shape.

To take another example, think for a moment of the wine business, where the traditional regions are rapidly falling apart in terms of their capacity to support the highest end of viticulture.  Note, in particular, that the Champagne region of France, after centuries, appears to be on its way out due to extreme summer temperatures.

Maybe you have real estate in areas that, in the past, were too cold that are now perfectly suitable to the next 50 years of grape-growing.  You’re in great shape.

This is where the Mondavi family finds itself.  Robert, with his $400 million wine business, also manages his father’s $600 million estate.  They’re in the process of selling the combined $1 billion in assets on the basis that climate change will, over as short a window as the next 8 – 10 years, make it impossible for them to make wine that’s worth anywhere close to the $700/bottle price that have made them among the world’s most wealthy.

They’re buying up huge swaths of land in stable and more temperate climates, mainly along the shores of many of the Mediterranean islands, which are protected from soaring temperatures due to the heat sinks of the sea.

I recently ran into an extremely wealthy woman who had attended a seminar in which Robert Mondavi explained his plans to a small group of the financially elite, where, predictably, there were a few from the extreme right wing who kicked back that climate change was a hoax, foisted on the world by the Chinese to destroy American capitalism.

According to the story the woman told me, he responded, “My dad and I favor science over Fox News, or whatever information source you may believe.  We’re doing what we think is best with our fortune.  You, of course, are at liberty to do what you wish with yours.”

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From the Daily Wire:

Fox News has agreed to pay $12 million to Abby Grossberg, a former producer for Tucker Carlson, to settle her two lawsuits claiming the network was a hostile and discriminatory environment and that Fox pressured her to lie in a deposition.

When I see civil litigation in cases where crimes appear to have been committed, I tend to wonder why the defendant wasn’t charged.  If I had asked one of my employees to lie under oath, I’d expect to be indicted accordingly.

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Speaking for myself, I’m not at all unafraid.

I’m terrified of the effect that this pathological liar and sociopaths like her are having on our society.

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As noted in the Washington Post, BP is scaling back its climate goals and deepening its investments in oil and gas, casting new doubts on big oil companies’ promises to embrace clean energy. This may or may not be related to the fact that their profits have more than doubled since 2021.

At this point, does anyone believe there is any real sincerity in their slogan “Beyond Petroleum?”

Someone noted recently that Big Oil has gone “insular.”  They’ve realized that they are completely unworthy of the public trust, and that they are detested by those of us who are working to achieve environmental sustainability.  We’ve reached the moment at which they no longer see any benefit from trying to reverse this situation.

If there is hope here, and there is, it will come, as the sages have suggested, not from destroying the old but by making the old obsolete, in this case with the electrification of the energy and transportation sectors.

The grandchildren of today’s oil executives will need to deal with the fact that their ancestors did their damnedest to get rich by rendering this planet uninhabitable.

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Two points to be made here:

1) The percentage of those who identify as Christians in the United States and Europe is quite clearly falling, though that doesn’t mean that nonbelievers are “hostile” to the faithful.

2) Hostility comes in when Christians seek to impose their beliefs on society as a whole.  We don’t want religion taught as science in our schools, we don’t want it used to block our epidemiologists from protecting our health, we don’t want religion fanaticism taking away women’s rights or blocking our attempts to prevent environmental collapse.

On these points, we most certainly do have a tendency to be hostile.

 

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I was stunned to see presidential hopeful Nikki Haley appearing on a Fox News broadcast.  Is this a good look for someone who wants to be taken as a serious candidate to lead our nation in the post-Trump era?

The majority of Americans have liberal values when it comes to things like gun control, quality education, healthcare, environmental responsibility, LBGTQ rights, Ukraine, and abortion.  Why do Haley and her advisors think it’s a good idea to appear with the lowbrows?

Thomas Friedman examines this issue in his NY Times opinion piece: The Fox Newsification of Nikki Haley, an excerpt from which is:

Let’s start with Fox News. We all sort of knew the truth about Fox, but now there can be no doubt: Fox News is to journalism what the Mafia is to capitalism — same basic genre, but a morally corrupt perversion of the real thing.

I truly don’t get this.

 

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So true.  If you happen to be at a place in your life that it makes sense to open your own business and you need to hire employees, let the meme here be your watchword.

To whatever degree you can pay them generously and communicate your appreciation, you’ll be paid back in huge proportion.

Today’s economy tends to exploit human capital; employees, generally, are paid just enough to prevent them from quitting.

But will greed win out in the end?  I doubt it.

 

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Comedy laureate Andy Borowitz says it all here, but this time with a bit of philosophy on top.

Is it possible that America would be better off if the nine people we have positioned to uphold the basic rights of all Americans weren’t in the pockets of billionaires?

 

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The late senator from Alaska Mike Gravel left us with this note about fear.

There is a reason that we live in fear, and that is that we live in a democracy where people need to be motivated to vote for a certain candidate.  These people running for office are not idiots, and they know that our higher instincts are not what get us to the polls.

And this is especially true today, where the common American is so poorly educated and so stressed from the pressures of stagnant wages that he’s easily terrified that things could get even worse.

Watch out for the immigrants coming for your jobs, for the gays coming for your kids, for the socialists coming for your fossil fuels, for the colleges coming for your conservative values, and above all, for the Democrats coming for your guns.

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Many Americans agree with the author of the meme here.

Two observations.

1) Your wishes will not be granted.  Trump and this horrific period in U.S. history will be discussed for as long as an organized human civilization remains on Earth.

2) This is a good thing. Forgetting how close the United States came to becoming an authoritarian state would be a terrible thing, as it would increase the probability of a recurrence somewhere later in time.

 

 

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