CSotD: Those Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer
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The level of exaggeration in German’s cartoon depends on where you live. In some parts of the Northeast US, the skies really have reached a level of orange haze through which a blood-red sun could barely peek.
In others, the smoke from Canadian wildfires is less visible, but that doesn’t make it less evident in the form of what we are told is the equivalent of smoking half a pack of cigarettes. Those who didn’t toss out their N-95 masks when the covid pandemic ended are pulling them out again if they have to spend any time outdoors.
However, there may be some exaggeration in German’s suggestion that it is now impossible to deny climate change. You might think that the increase in wildfires, the tremendous heat waves and the appearance of tornados in places where they are rarely seen would finally convince the people who like to think of themselves as “skeptics,” but that’s not the right term.
Skeptics merely demand proof, and here’s the proof.
There will, however, always be people willing even to line up against 97% of scientists who study climate and are convinced that human activity is causing climate change, just as there are people who think it a sign of their unique wisdom to dispute the Moon Landing or even the shape of the oblate spheroid upon which we live.
It’s not really so much a case of Jonathan Swift’s remark that “Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired,” though that is certainly true.
But climate change denial seems more apt to be disputed by the sort of person Upton Sinclair was describing when he said “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”
Some of us are old enough to remember how the Tobacco Institute labored to produce research allegedly proving that smoking did not cause cancer, and far more of us are old enough to remember when a candidate for the presidency of the United States promised the petroleum industry that, if they donated a billion dollars to his campaign, he would advance their interests once in office.
They did and, as Wuerker’s cartoon says, he does, not simply singing the praises of fossil fuels but actively cancelling development of alternative energy and reversing environmental policies that conflict with interests of his benefactors.
Now he has decided that the intelligent response is to ignore wildfires in Minnesota and the American West and raise tariffs on Canada to punish them for their wildfires.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Two Canadian cartoonists with substantial audiences in this country point out the blatant hypocrisy of this response, with de Adder emphasizing the harm to the planet of Trump’s allegiance to fossil fuels while Whamond points out the ingratitude it shows to a major ally and trading partner.
Trump’s decision to impose punishing tariffs on Canada for its wildfires makes no objective sense, in that there’s no logical connection between trade barriers and the ability to prevent natural disasters, and it seems a case of what the Bible calls returning to folly, given that the Supreme Court has already struck down his previous flood of tariffs and the US is in the process of refunding the tariffs seized under that policy.
King Canute is said to have ordered the tides to reverse, as a demonstration to courtiers that there were some things even the monarch could not do, but the legend has come down as its opposite, an attempt to use executive power to change reality. Imposing tariffs in order to extinquish wildfires seems to fall under that mistaken interpretation, while, as Whamond points out, it brings back memories of Trump’s widely mocked misunderstanding of Finnish forestry practices.
It’s hardly the only industry-friendly action by the president, and Horsey points out the recent move to reset an Endangered Species Act rule that made it illegal to destroy habitat of critically endangered animals. Under the new interpretation, it is legal to destroy these areas as long as the critically endangered animal itself is not physically injured in the process.
Meanwhile, the growth of Artificial Intelligence and the data centers that help provide it has become a global issue, and, as Australian cartoonist Jess Harwood notes, much of the growth of AI seems frivolous in light of the demands of those data centers.
Artists and writers are upset about theft of services, with AI being used to steal copyrighted designs for resale, to repurpose cartoons and to use research without giving its creators credit, much less royalties.
As Coverly says, it seems that the interests of artists and writers as well as the demands on the grid and the damage to the environment are not understood by many of the people who cheerfully use AI for minor reasons that they would have been able to accomplish without it just a few years before. The ease with which it is being introduced belies the costs it imposes on the grid, on the water supply and on the environment generally.
Benton mocks the friendly way AI is entering our lives and the demands it makes.
Wilcox also mocks the lack of thought with which people are becoming enamored of new technologies, but with a chilling sense of reality that might not be so far from the way they justify and even celebrate the climate change they refuse to acknowledge, much less confront and challenge.
But Hudson drops the humorous approach entirely, to point out the long-term damage of an unregulated, ill-considered race to embrace this new technology.
Which introduces a bit of irony, given that we began the day talking about fire, the invention of which is often cited as humankind’s first technological advance.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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