The Issue

We know that countless mysterious cultures have come and gone in Central America, Ireland and so on, leaving behind questions and mounds and standing rocks. Over time, things go wrong. 

In the late Bronze Age, western civilization (the original superpowers were the  Egyptians, the Hittites and the Mycenaeans) collapsed for the first time. We don’t know why—maybe climate change, other natural factors and man-made factors. Slowly the Greeks and  Romans built a new western civilization, which collapsed about 1,700 years later. The second collapse had many possible causes, including climate change and inferior leadership. Since then western civilization has been rebuilt a third time, and about 1,500 years have passed.

Our species has shown twice that we are capable of obliterating  major civilizations, destroying nations and trade routes, ending literacy, fragmenting into local tribes. Today global warming and poor leadership have set in motion large numbers of ordinary people who trespass in order to survive. In some countries informal volunteer militias are already hunting down border crossers. Asylum seekers will drown in the Mediterranean this evening.

When the Presidential race began, there were five or six candidates who understood climate change and the possible consequences (Insley, Warren, Sanders, Steyer, others). 

In November it seems likely that our choice will be between a candidate of the fossil fuel industry versus a candidate supported by the fossil fuel industry. We are about to cede another four years to fossil fuels and climate change, because we think that getting rid of (or keeping) Don the tRump is the issue.