We can still win this fight

| 10:30 am EST March 2, 2019
Dear Palmer Report readers, we all understand the difficult era we're heading into. Major media outlets are caving to Trump already. Even the internet itself and publishing platforms may be at risk. But Palmer Report is nonetheless going to lead the fight. We're funding our 2025 operating expenses now, so we can keep publishing no matter what happens. I'm asking you to contribute if you can, because the stakes are just so high. You can donate here.

To our detriment, and more broadly to the detriment of all living things on Earth, the GOP has rubber-stamped laws, projects, and regurgitated whatever rhetoric the fossil fuel lobbyists have fed them for decades now. Yes, I know it’s hard to remember this far back, but even before Trump, the Republican Party had been stalwart in its transparently greed-driven denial of climate change, which in a way created the fetid political petri dish upon which Trump was cultured.

The denial of manmade global warming is something people do for one of two reasons: 1) They don’t know any better and have possibly bought in to the GOP party line, or 2) They’re getting their pockets lined by fossil fuel lobbyists. It takes a suspension of common sense to opine against virtually the entire professional scientific community dedicated to parsing the truth from the evidence they’ve gathered, and the fact that Republicans have managed to successfully dupe many Americans into believing that these professionals are wrong by employing artifice in the form of logical fallacies and lies is not only irresponsible, it is in no uncertain terms giving us a healthy shove as we run towards the cliff edge.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we have just over a decade to mitigate the worst of our pending climate Armageddon, and what have the Republicans done? Nothing. Worse yet, their biggest donors are busy trying to forge the groundwork for a post-climate apocalypse neo-feudalism. One of their main concerns is how to pay for security once the world economy collapses and money becomes worthless. No, seriously. Apparently fleeting wealth is better than donating your fortune to research and infrastructure that would allow for the posterity of life on Earth. Knowing this, Republicans still promulgate climate denial. Who needs foreign adversaries to threaten your future when you have the GOP?

The Republican Party, maybe in just its policy of climate denial, has been cultivating someone like Trump for years. Someone unscrupulous, someone to whom the truth is at best tertiary, someone who is a slash-and-burn monster baby of the kind of thinking that gave rise to trickle-down and drill-baby-drill. And, for now, we’re stuck with that.

But people are starting to get it, and even better, young people have already got it. Just look at Juliana v. U.S., a youth-led movement leading the charge of atmospheric trust litigation. This is our time for every one of us to shine. Go recycle, don’t buy as much plastic, bike to work twice a week, don’t eat meat on Mondays and Wednesdays, drive instead of flying, get solar panels, and vote for environmentally-aware candidates. Do anything that reduces your carbon footprint. For the first time, we have a presidential candidate whose major focus is saving the environment in Washington Governor Jay Inslee. Times are changing. You can’t let the Republicans and billionaires win this, and you sure as hell can’t let our climate-denying president win this.

Dear Palmer Report readers, we all understand the difficult era we're heading into. Major media outlets are caving to Trump already. Even the internet itself and publishing platforms may be at risk. But Palmer Report is nonetheless going to lead the fight. We're funding our 2025 operating expenses now, so we can keep publishing no matter what happens. I'm asking you to contribute if you can, because the stakes are just so high. You can donate here.