Ch 4. There Is No Hope, and No One Is Coming to Save You

 “You cannot wait for someone to save you.”

– Oprah Winfrey

If we’re going to stop climate change and save ourselves from potential catastrophe, then there’s something that must be done, immediately.

We must dispose ourselves of the belief that someone else, be it a government, an agency, or a philanthropic billionaire, is going to sweep in and solve the climate change problem (or any of the other problems outlined in this book) for us.

This belief, or hope for some kind of savior, is based on poor assumptions, and backed by bad evidence. 

Here’s what I mean. 

In 2016, Barack Obama ran on a message of hope. His message was right on time, contrasting sharply with the “doom and gloom” rhetoric spouted by post 9/11 conservative voices.

Hope is a commodity that is often easy to sell. A lot of people in America bought into Obama’s message of hope and change. Which might have something to do with why he won two terms of office.

“I believe in evolution, scientific inquiry, and global warming; I believe in free speech, whether politically correct or politically incorrect, and I am suspicious of using government to impose anybody's religious beliefs -including my own- on nonbelievers.”

– Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

Obama was probably the most eloquent president we have had in some time, and his message of hope was infectious. Unfortunately, his deeds didn’t always line up with his rhetoric. In fact, if you look at his record, Obama was, in a lot of ways, very much interested in maintaining the status quo.

However, when it came to the environment, Obama did make some big strides in the right direction. 

The Clean Air Act. Obama did not enact this bit of legislation, as it was passed in 1970, to combat rampant pollution that had some communities literally drowning in their own refuse. What Obama did was to expand the mandate of the Clean Air Act to cover fuel efficiency in automobiles and to encourage clean energy sources. Some critics called Obama’s mandates “a war on coal” because of the heavy regulations he put on that industry.

The Clean Water Act. When GOP led efforts defeated Obama’s environmental proposals, he once again turned to an existing law to get the job done. The Clean Water Act was passed in 1972 and regulated the amount of pollution that could go into protected areas and federal lands.

Obama expanded the definition of what constituted the “waters of the United States” to provide more protection for more areas of the country. 

The Paris Climate Accord. Obama was instrumental in garnering support for this landmark international agreement. Nearly 200 countries came together in a vow to combat climate change. The accord states its goal is to limit “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels'' and pursue efforts “to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.” (Paris Agreement, 2015.)

Obama’s skills in collaboration and cooperation served him well in getting the Paris Climate Accord signed. Obama put in a lot of hard work to keep his promise to be a “green” president. In my opinion, Obama’s greatest accomplishments as president came in the form of environmental regulation and pushing for a greener future.

And then, Obama’s efforts were all but undone by the orange-tinged fingers holding the executive pen.

Donald Trump went out of his way to try and destroy Obama’s legacy in many ways, but he was particularly trollish and thorough when it came to environmental protections. He single-handedly rolled back more than 100 of Obama’s regulations in just a short time in office (Popovich, 2021.)

Here are just the first 10 (of more than 100) steps that Trump took to weaken or simply eliminate Obama-era environmental regulations (Popovich, et al., 2023).

1. Weakened Obama-era fuel economy and greenhouse gas standards for passenger cars and light trucks.

2. Revoked California’s ability to set stricter tailpipe emissions standards than the federal government.

3. Withdrew the legal justification for an Obama-era rule that limited mercury emissions from coal power plants.

4. Formally withdrew the United States from the Paris climate agreement, an international plan to avert catastrophic climate change adopted by nearly 200 counties.

5. Changed the way cost-benefit analyses are conducted under the Clean Air Act, potentially making it harder to issue new public health and climate protections.

6. Canceled a requirement for oil and gas companies to report methane emissions.

7. Revised and partially repealed an Obama-era rule limiting methane emissions on public lands, including intentional venting and flaring from drilling operations. 

8. Eliminated Obama-era methane emissions standards for oil and gas facilities and narrowed standards limiting the release of other polluting chemicals known as “volatile organic compounds” to only certain facilities.

9. Withdrew a Clinton-era rule designed to limit toxic emissions from major industrial polluters, and later proposed codifying the looser standards.

10. Revised a program designed to safeguard communities from increases in pollution from new power plants to make it easier for facilities to avoid emissions regulations. (Popovich, et al., 2023).

This list goes on and on… 

Whether or not you liked Trump as a president is a matter of subjective opinion. However, there is no denying that when it comes to fighting climate change, Donald Trump was not a help. He was a hindrance. Every one of these 100+ actions that Trump took made our country less safe, less clean, and less able to tackle the real and looming threat of catastrophic climate change. 

Building a better world takes a lot of hard work. Maintaining the status quo requires significantly less effort. Our government is set up with a series of checks and balances. The idea of the founding fathers was to prevent any one branch of government holding too much power in case they became despotic.

However, this system of checks and balances also makes it very easy to engage in bad faith obstructionism. In other words, it’s easier to stop something from happening in government than to make something happen.

In 2017, Mitch McConnel said the following:

“The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” (Press conference, 2017.)

While this quote got lots of cheers on right-wing news outlets, it’s quite chilling if you examine it closely. Mitch was saying that obstructing and smearing Obama was more important than any of the myriad problems facing the country (which was in a recession at the time). The GOP was more concerned with stopping Obama from accomplishing anything, even if what he wanted to accomplish would have benefited Americans.

Mitch didn’t learn anything, either. When Biden was elected, he said, “One hundred percent of our focus is on stopping this new administration.” (Press conference, 2020.)

Even though he is no longer the majority leader, Mitch McConnell is arguably one of the most powerful men in the Senate, if not in all of Washington. 

Let that sink in for a second. In a world where we have a doomsday clock that's literally ticking away, this guy said his top priority was to burn up 12 years of that doomsday clock and stop the government from taking any meaningful action! Twelve years of intentional obstruction when our country is in dire need of real leadership and progress. The seeming psychopathy of a person (and a party) who appears to be concerned only with obtaining and maintaining political power is hard to ignore.

A lot of rational people operate on the assumption that every other person wants their children and their descendants to have good health, prosperity and longevity. However, we need to question this assumption based on the available evidence. Almost half of our Congress have made it their mission to stand in obstruction of any form of progress proposed by the “other side.” Regardless of the consequences of that obstruction. 

Unfortunately, the government is structured in a way that it can’t really solve the problem of obstructionism, even if they were to make the effort. And there are few signs that anyone even wants to try.

Even if Mitch McConnel were visited by the ghosts of climate change past, present, and future and had an epiphany, it might not be enough to stop disaster. It would be a step in the right direction, but you have to look at how those changes would be implemented.

Fighting climate change is going to take money. A LOT of money; Trillions. But where is the money going to go? 

Congress will give the contracts and grants to their top donors and sycophants from their country clubs, and in the end, nothing will fundamentally change because those top donors and sycophants don’t want the status quo to change.

If you need proof, just look at the blatant profiteering in the Gulf War with Halliburton. Even if Dick Cheney “officially” divested his holdings in Halliburton, that may not mean as much as it seems. Who knows how many “donations and gifts” that Cheney received in compensation for his work pushing these no-bid contracts in a certain direction. 

While a majority of the country lives below the poverty line, the so-called leaders in Washington and their cronies are lining their pockets and making out like bandits, and nothing of real significance gets done on climate change or any of the other issues important to the working class. 

It might seem like someone, somewhere, be they in big tech, big business, or just an altruistic billionaire, is going to step in and stop the madness. However, before you consider this a possibility, here’s a thought experiment from Twitter that might make you think twice.

 “It's 80,000 BC. You are immortal. The world is still frozen in an ice age. You decide to save $10,000 EVERY DAY, never spending a cent. 82,021 years later, it's 2021. You still don't have as much money as Elon Musk. TAX. THE. FUCKING. BILLIONAIRES.” – Aaron D, Twitter, 2021.

Look at the evidence. Our billionaires aren’t trying to fight climate change. They’re buying up social media companies and trying to figure out how to leave the planet so they won’t have any regulations or government telling them what to do, and they don’t have to go through the costly efforts to save the planet they already have.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that billionaires and homeless people should not exist in the same society (Chappell, 2019.) But that’s just what we have in our current situation. Men like Elon Musk sitting upon piles of gold like Smaug the Dragon. Oh, and speaking of Smaug, some economists decided to calculate the dragon’s net worth based on his mountains upon mountains of gold. 

They concluded that even with all those literal tons of gold, Smaug would only be the fifteenth richest person in America. That is simply insane, that a fictional character whose only purpose is to hoard gold is less rich than fourteen of the one-percenters in this country.

So, based on this evidence, are you still going to wait for one of them to step in and save the day? If so, you’d better settle in for a very long wait. 

Make no mistake, however. As bad as things seem, we can build a better world, but it’s up to us to make it happen. No superhero, or government, or corporation, or wealth hoarding billionaire is going to swoop in and save the day. We’ll have to do it ourselves.

In the next chapter, we’ll ask the question: Can we change the world?