Why Trump and the GOP Platform Will Leave Your Kids a Dead Planet

We’re stuck with a political and election system that makes it virtually impossible for an independent or 3rd party candidate to win the presidency. Until we fix that, it’s not advisable to vote for the best candidate (that’s me, by the way), because the threat posed by the potential election of Donald Trump is so dire. It turns out this is a lousy election for me to try to shake things up. You do not want to cast a vote for me and run the risk that a lying, criminal, incompetent, blowhard will be elected.

At the 2016 GOP Convention, Senator Ted Cruz told delegates to “vote your conscience.” Of course, he was booed, and he later joined the many Republicans who have abandoned their conscience to go all-in on the “Orange Messiah.” So, for anyone seriously considering ignoring their moral compass and voting for Trump: IF you want a bright future for your kids, I’ll highlight some of the dead-planet positions of Trump and today’s GOP. These are also good reasons to vote to ensure the GOP doesn’t end up with majorities in the House and Senate.

There are many items of concern in the GOP Platform. But because we need to have a laser-like focus on the most critical issue of our time, I’ll just catalogue the dangers to our critical life-supporting ecosystems. These are important reasons NOT to vote for Trump/Vance, or any GOP congressional candidate.

Energy: Of course, Donald Trump has vocalized it, “Drill, baby, drill!” The GOP platform elaborates and underscores it:

“…we must unleash American Energy…. We will DRILL, BABY, DRILL and we will become Energy Independent, and even Dominant again. The United States has more liquid gold under our feet than any other Nation, and it’s not even close. The Republican Party will harness that potential to power our future…. Republicans will increase Energy Production across the board, streamline permitting, and end market-distorting restrictions on Oil, Natural Gas, and Coal.”

The Trump/GOP obsession with burning oil, gas, and even coal — ignoring and intensifying the climate crisis — will, without a doubt, leave our kids to live brutal lives on a desolate planet. No, we can’t “power our future” with fossil fuels; we will kill it. We need to rapidly get fossil fuels out of our current energy mix. President Biden may be moving too fast on this for Republicans, but even Biden’s pace is not nearly fast enough. Under Biden, the U.S. is producing more crude oil than any nation in history.

The only energy policy that will give our kids a bright future is an energy diet. Powering this overshoot economy on wind and solar is not possible, and these energy sources have their own set of negative consequences. Neither of the two major-party candidates recognizes the climate crisis as an emergency, but implementing the GOP platform will make the current heat wave, drought and storm intensity look like a Sunday school picnic.

Economy: There are also serious problems with this GOP platform statement:

 “…we want to… build the Greatest Economy in History, revive our Defense Industrial Base, fuel Emerging Industries, and establish the United States as the Manufacturing Superpower of the World.”

These goals ignore the fact that we are in ecological overshoot, demanding more from nature than she can sustainably provide. 

We do want to move manufacture of our goods closer to home (vastly reducing the carbon-footprint of transporting products). But we should not try to increase the amount of manufacturing. We need to curb our appetite for more stuff, to shrink our ecological footprint. Building “the Greatest Economy in History,” and being the “Manufacturing Superpower of the World,” are dead-planet pursuits. They are SO 20th century.

GOP energy and economic plans alone are dealbreakers. But there is more. I’ll write about other cliff-driving aspects of their platform soon.

A bright future for our children is not one of suicidal, pedal-to-the-metal economic growth – with more manufacturing, more energy and cheap gas, more pollution, more waste, and an unlivable climate.

Trump and the GOP are illiterate when it comes to ecological overshoot. They do not understand limits to growth. Putting them in charge will be a Thelma and Louise event – they’ll step on the gas and drive us right off that cliff.

Read about The Bright Future Project at brightfutureproject.us

This was also posted here on Substack.

Posted on 18 Jul 2024, 16:09 - Category: News