The Pulitzer-Prize winning cartoonist for the WashPost, Tom Toles, had another climate cartoon on Monday. It led to the “1,000,000th email today complaining that I am not fair to the Republicans,” to which he replied with a a short post titled, “Own facts.”
Here is his Tuesday post:
Own facts
By Tom TolesWe have a winner. I got my 1,000,000th email today complaining that I am not fair to the Republicans. Well, fair is kind of a matter of opinion. I actually think I am mostly fair to Republicans, within the context of cartooning anyway. I do have real trouble with the party in that their pre-eminent, overarching, unbreakable, ironclad and undiscussable principle is that taxes can never go up, even after they have gone down, even back to levels we thrived with before, even for a brand new and unprecedented class of hyper-hyper-hyper wealthy individuals, even when the solvency of the American government is hanging in the balance. Yeah, I have some trouble with that as a first principle, but that’s still not the main thing.
The main thing is they are in absolute, abject and catastrophic denial about a straightforward set of facts that is probably the most important set of facts we face as a nation, and as human beings on planet earth. They have turned their faces away from climate change in a way that is simply and utterly unforgivable. They now apparently DO feel entitled to their own facts, and they live, campaign and purportedly do their jobs in a zone of outright lies. Lies they have every reason to understand are lies, and lies that will almost certainly result in massive destruction and death. Exactly how would you be “fair” to these people?
Somehow I know that his August 2010 proclamation of his “last rant about the climate” wouldn’t take.
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- Tom Toles climate humor
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Thanks, Tom. Your cartoons are great, and the language you used today is what we need to start hearing from a lot more people.
I’m OK with leadership coming from cartoonists. The Democrats and journalists have abdicated.
Great post. It’s about time to quit the political search for non-partisanship that will never happen and call people who tell lies liars.
I could think of harsher words as well, like causing thousands of deaths and vandalize property in the billions through gross negligence. Then again, gross negligence is absent of intent.
I agree with Mike. Somebody’s got to lead. May as well be a cartoonist.
Hear, hear! Someone has to be willing to call these bastards out for knowingly denying e facts about climate and thus consigning much of the world’s population to great suffering. It isn’t regulation of fossil fuels but continued rampant use of fossil fuels that will destroy our way of life.
Tom Toles paragraphs on Republican beliefs is great. I wish I could use them in my global warming newspaper column or in the presentation I will shortly give to my MIT alumni club, but the non-partisan nature of this newspaper and club makes that imprudent. Nonetheless, Tom speaks the truth!!
All the Civil War anniversaries are a reminder: a LOT of Americans were willing to go to war to protect their right to enslave other human beings. As Grant wrote in his memoir: “… though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.” (http://www.bartleby.com/1011/67.html)
If the human mind is so readily adaptable to defending such a cause, can there be any doubt of human capacity to fight for ANY selfish interest?
Unfair to Republicans? How will history view Republicans when coastal cities from Texas and Louisiana to Florida and up to New York and Maine face drowning? When America is forced to replace trillions of dollars of infrastructure destroyed by global warming? When hundreds of millions are driven from their homes in Bangladesh and the great river deltas of Asia? These puerile fools have not even seen the beginning of the treatment they will receive.
Sign me up for the Tom Toles fan club. This business of refusing to call a liar (or group of liars) a liar has been going on for a couple of decades now and we have paid a very heavy price for it in the form of incompetent and dysfunctional government. The mainstream media’s SOP of disregarding facts and presenting any opposing view as deserving of equal time (and more), regardless of how far-fetched the fantasy presented, is the real key to the whole problem. Only cartoonists and “comedy programming” (J. Stewart) are allowed to tell the truth about the national GOP.
Toles’ paragraph is the type of rhetoric that fires me up and gives me hope. And it is the lack of this type of rhetoric from Democratic leaders who purport to “get it” on climate change that has so disillusioned me towards that party, as well as our president.
We should be loudly and aggressively shaming the republican party on this at every opportunity, and not pretending that their ideology is in any way respectable or benign.
#5 Catman:
Since when did “non-partisan” devolve into “reality denying?” I know what you mean when you say the “non-partisan nature of this newspaper” but maybe it’s time to put accuracy and honesty above stenography. Why not run a column quoting Toles and raise the issue of what is journalistically responsible when one group has become a medieval collection of whackjobs? Do you ignore it? Treat it like the mad uncle in the attic?
Or do you confront it?
As the old saying goes ‘lead, follow or get the hell out of the way.’ That certainly applies to most Republicans and some Democrats as well. Shameful what money does to folks once they get to Washington. Bought and paid for by bio oil and big coal.
I am completely flummoxed by Republican motives.
Because, no taxes and no government is more like actively promoting anarchy. Why?
Is it seeking a civilization endgame advantage? Not very smart – since it defines their position as adversarial and anti-life.
Is it a delusional mis-perception of reality? It is dangerous to have representatives in our government like that.
Eventually, we come to look at ourselves and ask why we put up with this sociopathic thinking.
I don’t know the answer to that one.
Richard,
Republicans are very easy to explain. Think solely in terms of their short-term, personal gain, whether that’s money, re-election, power, favors for family members, etc., and their power to make those things happen. And here’s the hard part: Don’t let yourself think for a second about broader issues like what’s good for other people living today or future generations. It’s Me! Me! Me! 24/7.
If you can do that, every one of their moves becomes perfectly understandable. Republicans play politics the way computers play chess: Strive for the maximum “win” at all times, without regard for ANYTHING else. The problem, of course, is that chess is a finite game that has a definitive outcome and ending, while politics and public policy are infinite games, in which we all have a great interest in there never being an overall “winner” or even particular players becoming too powerful and abusing/exploiting weaker players.
Yes, this is a terribly cynical way of viewing one of the major political parties in the US, and I detest it every bit as much as does anyone reading this. But until the Republicans stop acting in perfect accord with what I’ve described, I will continue to assume that I’ve got it right.
@richard pauli,
because all of those things are perfectly fine if you have all the money and it’s only other people that are getting screwed. I think that’s pretty much it.
There’s also an inbuilt shortsightedness at work here, I think. Reading op-eds in the WSJ (I have a print subscription) it’s difficult to escape the sense that the editors (and probably the majority of the readership) are so blinded by the awesome majesty of “the market” (meaning Wall Street) that they fail to appreciate that it optimizes for the short term at the expense of the long term. It’s a pretty major blind spot.
The GOP isn’t named in the cartoon, which is appropriate. Of course, their intransigence is a big problem. But maybe they shouldn’t be the only target of anger. / jay alt
We are at a stage were fossil fuel industry should probably be nationalized with the aim to managed drawdown in parrallel to market driven drawdown. For certain it would eradicate all this power drive by the fossil fuel industry to sustain itself which is guaranteeing bigger catastophe for the biosphere.
We have some momentum now with Germany, uk and some movement in Japan and Australia to wards now addressing the issue. Hopefully we will move to the required level of action to draw down emissions and concentration pronto.
Alas, the cartoons that set Tom free are seldom the ones that he wants to draw.
Because their patrons, the super rich, believe enough money will make them immune to whatever craziness their policies create for everyone else.
See above. In the case of climate change, they will mostly likely not be able to buy their way out of the consequences of the inaction they are fostering.
The current warming acceleration is terrifying. Pretty soon, there won’t be winter at all. Longer growing seasons in North America, Canada and Greenland will greatly increase food production. This must be kept out of the mainstream media. Joe Romm needs to keep blackmailing and heaping threats on reporters to force their complicity since stupid Amerikkkans will see this as positive. However, we all know it will just make them fatter and dumber, if that’s possible.
More control is needed over the media. Not enough is being done to keep denialists stories suppressed, even though they are right that our “science,” data and computer models are completely fraudulent. We have created a billion dollar business for ourselves and need to keep our climate gravy train going by keeping people in fear at all times.
Otherwise, we won’t have jobs. And we all know we are unemployable in any field that is not directly subsidized by George Soros or the Government.
So, buck up and spread fear of epic catastrophe around every corner. Tell people only “scientists” (what a joke that word has become) can solve the problem and they should sit down, shut up and pay up.
+1 Lou Grinzo
Better to be led by a cartoonist than the current gaggle of cartoons.
I think we are way over thinking this. A large and powerful industry, or that is, the leaders of a very powerful industry are fighting for the life of that industry 9their money machine) because they are rich and they have free time and they can. This behavior has been going on for millenia. In American capitalism, fighting to maintain markets is what we do. The energy leadership sees Global warming as an externality. The risks simply don’t figure into the calculus. They must figure they will all be dead before the shit really hits the fan. This is not a group that particularly feels any civic responsibility.
@John Atcheson
The posting at #5 is misattributed to me. I’ve never attended MIT.
catman306
It seems like people named Tom are straight talkers as well as eloquent writers: Tom Paine, Tom Peters, and of course Tom Toles.
A very wise man once said…..beware the power of poets, they alone decide history.
Welcome to the club.
Jim Wallis of Sojourners Magazine:
http://blog.sojo.net/2011/05/18/presidential-contenders-none-standing-tall-on-climate-change/
Seth —
I don’t know why you found it necessary to use red-baiting and a straw man in your reply. One need not be a “Marxist” to correctly identify capitalism as the economic system at the root of global warming.
Your comments about the current Republican Party confuse Southern agrarianism with an *industrialized* South. You also seem to suggest that southerners would have quickly abandoned their antebellum culture “once the technology became available to them.” But the process of industrialization is not so facile.
And yes, the southern plantation economy — based on forced human labor, instead of fossil fuel — had a much smaller carbon footprint than the northern culture of iron, coal and oil.
On the topic of industrialization and agriculture, I would recommend almost anything by Wendell Berry, including this article:
Nice article entitled “Thank God environmentalism Is Dead” by Brevard College Prof. Bob Cabin on Huffington Post today.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-j-cabin/thank-god-environmentalis_b_863383.html?ref=fb&src=sp
Hello Tom,
“Simply and utterly unforgivable.”
In late 2006, I quit being a ‘pro-cures’ stem cells activist who twice served as a surrogate spokesperson for the GW Bush White House because Conservative denial re climate change caused me to face the blinding realization you phrase so well.
The politicians and social groups I had thought were my biotech allies claimed to be motivated by “morals and religion.” What possible morality can such people claim when they sow lies and distortions to bolster their egos, deny their greed, or preserve their comforts and convenience at a ruinous cost to others?
How can such people be moral in the eyes of ANY God or even themselves when they promote and exploit social mistrust in order to manipulate the public, calcify their power, bloat their profits, and stymie efforts aimed at protecting the earth?
“Utterly unforgivable” is how I feel about myself for having once lent my name and voice to the parasites who leech off Nature and their fellow man–who rob unborn and innocent lives of a healthy and hopeful future. Regarding my former ‘allies’ who partner with Big Oil/Mining in raping the earth and Man, I feel a sickening jumble of sadness, rage, and disgust.
James P. Kelly
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jamespkelly
And water power driven industrial factories …
dhogaza #36, I think you have been a little harsh in calling Lisa an ‘apologist’ for the ante-bellum South in the USA. What she says, I think, is true, and bears contemplation, even of there are other narratives that could broaden our understanding.. The united US did, indeed, embark on an unpredented exploitation of its unmatched natural resources after the South was defeated, and the South was treated like occupied territory for a good while. The African Americans didn’t fare too well, either, the Amendments to the US Constitution that in theory ‘emancipated’ them being ignored for decades. What became known as the ‘betrayal of the Negro’ when Jim Crow laws, KKK terror, lynchings etc kept them well under the thumb. The US expanded to its continental limits then set about forging its global Empire, which is currently crumbling.
Nice! Here’s a related comic frrom Doonesbury:
http://images.ucomics.com/comics/db/2011/db110518.gif
We got stacks of them this side of the pond too, Captain Ska, Liar, Liar
http://youtu.be/BQFwxw57NBI
Harold Camping and his organization have wasted $100 million on his overhyped prediction that the world will end today, May 21, 2011. If you’re reading this, the world didn’t end and Camping’s prediction has been revealed as the resource- and attention-wasting bunch of bull I already knew it was. But the “21″ in Camping’s delusional prediction is not off the mark. The 21st century will see the end of the world as humanity has always known it if we can’t stop dumping our current annual 27 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the planet’s atmosphere (more than a quarter of that from Americans), madly abolishing the Holocene Epoch of stable, favorable climate that enabled human civilization’s rise. If we don’t change our ways, the interglacial planet “on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted,” as climatologist James Hansen has put it, will be gone forever, and the billions of people to come will live in a nasty new “Anthropocene” Epoch and the catastrophic heat of a recreated prehistoric thermal maximum. Read the Earth, not the Bible; and be afraid.