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Joshua Frank, The New Climate Colonialism

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[Note for TomDispatch Readers: TomDispatch will be taking the Indigenous Peoples’ Day weekend off and returning next Tuesday. Meanwhile, a small reminder: anything you can do to offer this site further support would make all the difference in the world. If you have the urge, do visit our donation page and give what you can. Without you, TomDispatch would simply disappear and, though I don’t write thank you notes for donations, I see every one that comes in and who made it and I simply couldn’t be more appreciative! Tom]

Consider this strange (or perhaps not strange enough): we’re now on a planet where, in late September, the temperature reached a record-breaking 117 degrees in Phoenix, Arizona, a state that also set records this summer for “the most days over 110 degrees, most consecutive days over 100 degrees, and the hottest meteorological summer on record.” Meanwhile, in the East, a Category 4 hurricane, Helene, crossing the ever warmer waters of the Gulf of Mexico, hit Florida’s Big Bend like a sledgehammer and traveled another 600 miles, clobbering states all the way to Tennessee, leaving more than 220 dead and many more still missing, destroying significant parts of North Carolina’s largest mountain city, and clobbering other parts of that state, halting mail service, and “disrupting absentee voting, thousands of voters cut off from polling locations and election administrators scrambling to adjust,” while flooding parts of cities like Atlanta. And count on one thing: as bad as Helene proved to be, in the years (or even months) to come, it might seem like nothing special.

After all, on a planet where the production of fossil fuels — with the United States leading the way when it comes to oil and natural gas, and China taking the prize for coal — is still rising, this planet looks like it could become a hothouse of an historic sort. And under the circumstances, consider this all too strange: in each of the presidential and vice-presidential debates, a moderator brought up the subject of climate change with Donald Trump and then J.D. Vance. In both cases, Trump instantly started talking about migrants (though in the first debate with Joe Biden, he also referred passingly to a “green new scam”). In response, Biden briefly described his administration’s climate record, but all too quickly passed on to other subjects; just as Kamala Harris did, after mentioning that Trump called climate change a “hoax”; as would Tim Walz when responding to vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance’s quick and (meant-to-be) confusing answer on the subject.

In other words, in those three debates, the Republicans (of course!) but the Democrats (surprisingly!) did their best, if not to avoid, then to quickly pass by the subject of climate change as if it were… well, poison (which in a way, of course, it is for the planet as a whole). Forget that it’s a subject that matters deeply to many younger voters; this election season suggests that all too many Americans can’t fully face up to the crisis we’re in or so many of the difficulties involved in dealing with it. That’s why it’s well worth taking a moment and considering TomDispatch regular Joshua Frank’s look at one distinctly grim problem in the possible transition to a greener planet. As in the past, so today, the First World is intent on taking the Third World for… yes, a ride — and not in electric vehicles either. Tom

The Cash Will Soon Flow

Robbing Africa’s Riches to Save the Climate (and Power AI)

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Considered Angola’s crown jewel by many, Lobito is a colorful port city on the country’s scenic Atlantic coast where a nearly five-kilometer strip of land creates a natural harbor. Its white sand beaches, vibrant blue waters, and mild tropical climate have made Lobito a tourist destination in recent years. Yet under its shiny new facade is a history fraught with colonial violence and exploitation.

The Portuguese were the first Europeans to lay claim to Angola in the late sixteenth century. For nearly four centuries, they didn’t relent until a bloody, 27-year civil war with anticolonial guerillas (aided by the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces) and bolstered by a leftist coup in distant Lisbon, Portugal's capital, overthrew that colonial regime in 1974.

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John Feffer, The Sacrifices of Others

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Just in case you hadn’t noticed, Helene, the most recent hurricane to gain staggering strength by crossing the ever-warmer waters of the Gulf of Mexico, proved devastating not just to the Big Bend region of Florida, where it first made landfall and submerged much of the Gulf Coast, but to states as far-ranging as South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee. Meanwhile, in the American Southwest — and remember it’s now fall, not summer — 100-degree days are still — yes, still! — piling up in a record fashion. (Phoenix hit a record-breaking late September 117 degrees!)

Consider that a reminder that we’re ending 2024 on a planet that’s distinctly in trouble, whether you’re thinking about storms or heat, flooding or fires — and the human response to all this? Well, it’s evidently to go to war. Seemingly unstoppable, distinctly devastating conflicts in Ukraine, the Middle East, and Sudan are now killing horrific numbers of people, destroying in a stunning fashion, and pouring yet more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Meanwhile, whether you’re talking about coal in China or oil and natural gas in the United States, the production of fossil fuels is still on — yes! — the rise (and the possible victor in the coming American presidential election is utterly determined to “drill, baby, drill“). Consider all of that little short of shocking in a world where action to deal with this planet’s ever more disturbed climate is, as TomDispatch regular John Feffer (whose weekly column at Foreign Policy in Focus is a must-read affair) makes all too clear today, generally considered someone else’s business and responsibility. Let him explain why it’s so seldom an issue to face right in our own backyards. Tom

Ask (Not) What You Can Do for Your Planet

Getting from NIMBY to YIMBY

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No one wants a nuclear reactor in their backyard. It’s an eyesore and a health hazard, not to mention the hit to your property values. And don’t forget the existential danger. One small miscalculation and boom, there goes the neighborhood!

In the 1970s, in the southwest corner of Germany, the tiny community of Wyhl was bracing for the construction of just such a nuclear reactor in its backyard. Something even worse loomed on the horizon: a vast industrial zone with new chemical plants and eight nuclear energy complexes that would transform the entire region around that town and stretch into nearby France and Switzerland. The governments of the three countries and the energy industry were all behind the project.

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Robert Lipsyte, Old Age Is Wasted by the Old

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Give Donald Trump credit. He’s a genuine record-setter and no one can deny it. After all, he’s now the oldest candidate ever to run for president of the United States and, were he to win in November and last until the end of his term, at 82 and seven months, he would have “Trumped” Joe Biden (who will leave the White House at 82 and two months) and become the all-time oldest president, a true record-setter first class. He would, in other words, have left George Washington (64), Andrew Jackson (69), Dwight D. Eisenhower (70), and even Ronald Reagan (77) in the genuine dust of history.

And were he indeed to end up in the White House again (backed by at least one “Black Nazi“), all one might say is: Let the madness begin.

After all, Donald Trump is increasingly mad in a distinctly aging sort of way. As someone who is indeed older than The Donald (yes!), let me say that, when you hit a certain age, you can begin to feel it. Of course, as the miraculous former New York Times sportswriter, author of SportsWorld: An American Dreamland, and TomDispatch regular Bob Lipsyte, still writing so vividly at 86, makes clear today, old doesn’t necessarily mean (to use a phrase from my radio-listening baseball past) going, going, gone. Not at all.

But of course, it certainly can. And in Donald Trump’s case, it’s already looking ominously and disturbingly that way whether you’re considering his unnervingly strange posts on Truth Social, including “fake images showing prominent Democrats in prison garb and a call for former President Obama to be subject to ‘military tribunals,'” or his increasingly incomprehensible public comments. Take, for instance, this little passage on wind power that he offered a Wisconsin audience recently: “You take a look at bacon and some of these products. Some people don’t eat bacon anymore. And we are going to get the energy prices down. When we get energy down — you know, this was caused by their horrible energy — wind, they want wind all over the place. But when it doesn’t blow, we have a little problem.”

And for anyone who watched the Harris-Trump debate, where The Donald was remarkably incoherent at times, you have to think that age is not doing him any favors. Even if I were a Trump supporter (not for a minute, of course!), I would be worried about that increasingly ancient brain of his. And with that in mind (yes, truly in mind), let Lipsyte enter old age in a new way, consider its distinctly un-Trumpian upside, and call on those of us aging coherently to lend the rest of the world a hand (or even a leg). Tom

Growing Old in the Age (And That’s the Appropriate Word!) of Trump

A Call to (Old) Arms (and Legs)

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After Joe Biden was shuffled off stage on trumped-up charges of senility, I started thinking seriously about the weaponization of old age in our world. Who gets credit for old age and who gets the boot?

At 86, I share that affliction, pervasive among the richest, healthiest, and/or luckiest of us, who manage to hang around the longest. Donald Trump is, of course, in this same group, although much of America seems to be in selective denial about his diminishing capabilities. He was crushed recently in The Great Debate yet is generally given something of a mulligan for hubris, craziness, and unwillingness to prepare. But face it, unlike Joe B, he was simply too old to cut the mustard.

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