A cornucopia!
Bliss of killing without ever seeming to subtract
from the tasty sum of infinity!

— Canadian poet Eric Miller

The recently passed MAGA tax bill, unsurprisingly, does nothing to address the climate crisis or protect the natural world. It does, however, strike another blow against efforts to mitigate climate change, by phasing out tax incentives that were intended to spur investment in wind and solar power, battery storage, electric vehicles, and other low-emissions technology.

Sen. Jim Justice, MAGA-W.Va., was instrumental in adding a lucrative tax credit to the big, ugly bill that could net fossil fuel CEOs and shareholders tens of millions of dollars. He and his family own a coal business, Bluestone Coal Corp., and they stand to benefit bigly from the gift. Justice reportedly owns more than $50 million in stock in Bluestone Resources Inc., more than $25 million in Bluestone Coal Corp., and some $25 million in an inactive coal processing facility in Alabama.

Rep. Bruce Westerman, MAGA-Ark., bought stock in a dozen mining, oil, and methane giants two months before ramming an industry-friendly budget bill through the House Committee on Natural Resources. He is the committee’s chair. His shady stock buys included shares in British Petroleum, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell.

Three days after the MAGA bill that will cause more of the planet-heating pollution that is worsening wildfires was signed by the Mad King, a handful of his sycophants complained that smoke from Canadian wildfires was ruining summer for their constituents. I assume they meant the white ones.

In a letter sent to Canada’s ambassador to the United States, six elected dimwits proudly exhibited their scientific/climate ignorance and their pettiness.

The six-pack wrote: “While we know a key driver of this issue has been a lack of active forest management, we’ve also seen things like arson as another way multiple large wildfires have ignited in Canada. With all the technology that we have at our disposal, both in preventing and fighting wildfires, this worrisome trend can be reversed if proper action is taken.”

Translation: You need to rack your forests.

The MAGAs whined: “Our constituents have been limited in their ability to go outside and safely breathe due to the dangerous air quality the wildfire smoke has created. In our neck of the woods, summer months are the best time of the year to spend time outdoors recreating, enjoying time with family, and creating new memories, but this wildfire smoke makes it difficult to do all those things.”

Meanwhile, the hateful half-dozen has no problem supporting the regime’s efforts to further pollute marginalized communities where someone else’s constituents are mostly people of color and/or poor.

(Two weeks after the hapless July 7 letter was sent a wildfire tore through a historic Grand Canyon lodge and some 70 other structures, including a visitors center and several cabins, and raged out of control. It had been allowed to burn for days before erupting, raising concerns about the regime’s decision not to attack the wildfire immediately. As the Arizona governor noted, the federal government chose to manage the wildfire as a controlled burn during the driest, hottest part of summer.)

The special interests’ legislation the Mad King signed into law July 4 enacts sweeping cuts to energy industries and infrastructure, including the early termination of renewable energy tax credits and the energy community adder. The latter is a provision within the Inflation Reduction Act that increases the value of tax credits for renewable energy projects in low-wealth communities that have long shouldered the brunt of environmentally harmful industries such as coal mining, oil extraction, petrochemicals, and/or other fossil fuel-related operations.

“Gutting these provisions harms historical energy-producing communities,” according to the Center for American Progress.

The massive tax (graft) and immigration (racism) legislation includes billions in new tax benefits for fossil fuel corporations. It is poised to add more fuel to the climate crisis.

MAGAs don’t care — just as they don’t care about you, the natural world, the future of others, or each other. They don’t respect science, expertise, knowledge, or history. They suck on the teats of hate and ignorance.

They demand you to live in their Fantasyland, where floods, heat waves, prolonged drought, drenching rains, acidifying oceans, habitat and biodiversity loss, and rising water and air temperatures are no big deal. They tell you all the climate-changing carbon dioxide emissions accumulating in the atmosphere are good for plants. They contend Jews with space lasers start wildfires, blame cloud seeding for deadly floods, and allege a scattering of offshore wind turbines are killing marine mammals.

MAGA kingpins created this imaginary world so they and the oligarchs can continue to pollute and plunder, at the expense of public health and the environment that sustains us.

Last week the regime noted it would apply new layers of review to solar and wind projects, which will likely create spools of red tape for renewable energy development. I thought big government was bad?

Also last week, the regime gave utilities an additional year to come up with a plan to remediate waterways contaminated by toxic coal ash. This byproduct of coal burning contains mercury, lead, and lithium. These toxic metals can pollute drinking water supplies and have been linked to cancer, birth defects, and developmental delays in children.

The decision was a victory for utilities that had lobbied the regime to delay the cleanup requirements. The delay will further threaten the health of the predominantly poor communities that live around polluting coal-fired power plants.

This week we learned the regime plans to rescind a 2009 declaration known as the “endangerment finding,” which scientifically established that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane endanger human life. That finding is the foundation of the federal government’s only tool to limit pollution from vehicles, power plants, and industry. The regime reportedly intends to argue that imposing climate regulations on automakers poses the real harm to human health because it would lead to higher prices and reduced consumer choice. (The Mad King’s mindless tariffs are going to lead to higher prices and less choice.)

The regime is also allowing coal-fired power plants, chemical manufacturers, and other polluting facilities to bypass a range of environmental regulations on grounds the waivers are needed for national security reasons.

We can’t pray our way out of this crisis. That tactic doesn’t even work in Fantasyland.

The nonstop lying White House Nazis are burning the country down, by hollowing out the public sphere so more wealth and power can be transferred to the greediest and nastiest, disclaiming the rule of law, and provoking global warming.

To keep the climate fires burning, the Mad King has issued an overreaching, and likely illegal, executive order to open protected waters to oil and methane drilling. He’s considering allowing drilling in New England waters, including the Gulf of Maine.

Despite ample evidence that marine oil spills are an ongoing problem, the United States has actually increased offshore drilling since BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig exploded 15 years ago and poured 134 million gallons of oil into the waters off the Louisiana coast. The explosion killed 11 people.

Oil gushed for nearly three months, covering an area on the Gulf of Mexico’s surface the size of 66 Rhode Islands. The spill killed and sickened fish, seabirds, turtles, and whales and devastated fisheries. Its impacts linger to this day.

In April, around the anniversary of the BP catastrophe, the regime launched the process for selling new oil and methane leases, including areas off the Alaska coast. At the same time, the Mad King signed an executive order to sunset rules for all new and existing offshore drilling regulations, including those passed after the Deepwater Horizon explosion. Those rules were designed to prevent similar environmental disasters.

More fossil fuel extraction and burning means more ocean pollution, more destroyed marine habitats, more flooding, and more extreme weather.

Ocean acidification is caused when carbon dioxide is rapidly absorbed by the sea, where it reacts with water molecules leading to a decline in the pH level of seawater. This acidity damages coral reefs and other ocean habitats and can dissolve the shells of marine creatures.

A recently published study found the world’s oceans are in worse health than previously thought. The authors warned we are “running out of time” to protect marine ecosystems.

The deeper in the ocean the researchers looked, the worse the findings were. At 650 feet below the surface, 60% of ocean waters had breached the “safe” limit for acidification, according to the study.

“Most ocean life doesn’t just live at the surface,” the study’s lead author, Helen Findlay, noted. “The waters below are home to many more different types of plants and animals. Since these deeper waters are changing so much, the impacts of ocean acidification could be far worse than we thought.”

Steve Widdicombe, co-chair of the Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network, told The Guardian that “Ocean acidification isn’t just an environmental crisis — it’s a ticking time bomb for marine ecosystems and coastal economies.”

Earth’s one global ocean system, which humans have divided into the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic, and Southern (Antarctic), faces a tremendous amount of stress caused by our gluttony: acidification; warming; greenhouse gas pollution; plastic pollution; stormwater runoff and sewage overflows; overfishing; coral bleaching; and the relentless destruction of biodiversity.

In a white paper published in April, researchers, monitoring satellites to observe pollution from offshore oil and methane drilling, examined imagery between June 2023 and October 2024 and estimated 20 offshore facilities alone accounted for nearly 300,000 gallons of oil released during that time.

Vessels that visited offshore fossil fuel facilities in 2023 were responsible for 9 million tons of carbon emissions, according to the researchers. That same year, methane flaring by offshore facilities emitted 58.7 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent emissions.

There are some active 12,000 offshore oil and gas platforms worldwide, largely in the Gulf of Mexico, the North Sea, and the Persian Gulf. In 2023 alone, some 70,000 new oil and methane wells, on land and at sea, were drilled globally. Worldwide, from 2000 to 2014, the number of production and exploration wells steadily increased, reaching about 100,000 new wells completed each year by the mid-2000s.

One of the white paper’s authors noted that “Conservatively, we think the amount of oil going into the ocean each year rivals the BP spill in size.”

A recent study by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) found that groundwater in Appalachia, the Gulf Coast, and California is susceptible to contamination from orphaned oil and methane wells. Orphaned wells are no longer producing but haven’t been plugged. Stopping them from leaking would cut into profits.

Using a USGS dataset of 117,672 documented orphan wells nationwide, the researchers found that 54% of the leaking wells are within aquifers that supply 94% of the groundwater relied on nationally.

The only solution to the climate crisis and its devastating impacts from the burning of fossil fuels is bold human action. We, especially the United States, the purported leader of the free world, can’t be bothered.

Instead, we get the Mad King ordering agencies to stop estimating the economic impact of the climate crisis when developing policies and regulations. The regime will leave marginalized communities and low-wealth families to pay for the societal cost of carbon.

We get MAGAs killing a regulation requiring tire-makers to reduce planet-warming emissions from their manufacturing processes. Rep. Morgan Griffith, MAGA-Va., released a statement claiming the rule does “very little to serve public health.” Griffith is not a public health official. When he’s not wasting taxpayer money, he’s a private practice attorney specializing in traffic violations.

He also noted “Congress is exercising its authority to undo this harmful Biden EPA measure and provide relief to America’s rubber tire manufacturers.” Tires are made of chemicals, compounds, and materials that release greenhouse gases, heavy metals, and volatile organic compounds.

We get the regime cutting dozens of energy-efficiency regulations for stoves, showerheads, washers, driers, dishwashers, dehumidifiers, and toilets, and then bragging it is the “largest deregulatory effort in history.” The same people who want humans to reproduce like rabbits take glee in wasting energy and water. They believe Earth is an endless buffet and not a finite resource.

The Environmental Protection Agency has reportedly told staff overseeing the industrialized Midwest — a region plagued by a legacy of pollution (see Indiana, Gary) — to stop enforcing violations against fossil fuel corporations.

When world leaders and scientists gathered last month in France for the U.N. Ocean Conference to launch a global appeal to save the world’s oceans, the regime banned National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists from attending.

A popular NOAA website that received nearly a million visitors monthly and was one of the most trusted sources of climate-related information about changing weather patterns, drought conditions, agricultural best practices, atmospheric changes, and greenhouse gas emissions stopped publishing new content July 1. It was terminated by a Mad King executive order titled “Restoring Gold Standard Science.”

While we are acidifying, warming, and polluting the ocean, our fossil fuel addiction is also powering sea level rise. Nearly 40% of the world’s glaciers are already doomed to melt because of the climate crisis, according to a recent study. That loss will jump to 75% if global heating reaches the 2.7 degrees Celsius rise for which the planet is currently on track.

Glaciers in the western United States and Canada have already been severely impacted, according to the study, with 75% already projected to melt. The massive loss of glaciers would significantly increase sea levels, endangering millions of people and driving mass migration. Alligator Auschwitz, the regime’s new concentration camp in the Florida Everglades, would be underwater.

All attempts, even at the state and local levels, to extinguish the climate fire are labeled “libtard,” mocked, and then attacked. For instance, the Mad King is determined to end New York City’s successful congestion pricing program. In a February social media post, the Mad King declared the initiative finished, writing “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!”

As The Guardian reported, he was depicted in an oil painting wearing a crown, triumphantly standing in front of the Empire State Building. All hail the emperor of Fantasyland.

The Mad King’s Department of Transportation has attempted to withdraw federal approval of the NYC program, but so far its efforts have been thwarted by the courts. In frustration, the regime fired its own attorneys, accusing them of undermining their emperor.

Reality-TV-personality-turned-transportation-secretary Sean Duffy has whined the charge is unfair to drivers and is “classist” against the working poor — even though low-wealth people overwhelmingly rely on public transit to get around, when they’re not bicycling or walking. For the record, the regime, of which Duffy is a saluting member, has shredded the country’s social safety net and stripped health care from the working poor.

Duffy, so concerned about class warfare, told Fox Propaganda in April that “I’m not doing green. I’m not doing social justice.” We know.

MAGAs have also passed resolutions seeking to overturn EPA waivers allowing California to set clean air standards to better protect public health from gasoline- and diesel-vehicle pollution. This is the first time Congress has moved to undermine state Clean Air Act authority, and it comes despite the Senate parliamentarian noting the procedure used isn’t allowed.

California has, since 1967, received the waiver periodically from the federal government allowing the state to set tougher standards than national rules limiting motor vehicle pollution.

The MAGA majority of the Supreme Court backed up the regime’s power play, ruling fossil fuel corporations are able to challenge California’s ability to set stricter vehicle standards.

Rules, laws, ethics, and precedent don’t apply to the Mad King and his minions. States’ rights only apply when they say they do.

MAGAs want to eliminate all limits on greenhouse gases from fossil fuel power plants. They argue, selfishly and idiotically, that carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and other emissions, such as mercury, from power plants that burn fossil fuels don’t contribute significantly to pollution or to climate change because they are a small and declining share of global emissions.

But, hear me out, if we open up more land and ocean to drilling and eliminate limits on fossil fuel burning, won’t that increase greenhouse gas emissions? More importantly, however, is that fossil fuel pollution isn’t a small thing and global carbon dioxide emissions aren’t declining.

Worldwide carbon dioxide increased by 0.8% last year, hitting an all-time high of 37.8 gigatons of CO2. This rise contributed to record atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations of 422.5 parts per million in 2024, about 3 ppm higher than 2023 and 50% higher than pre-industrial levels. Atmospheric CO2 is currently at 427.44.

Scientists are worried last year’s jump in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations could mean that CO2 absorption by forests, fields, and wetlands is slowing down. If true, that’s a major problem. But corporate-dominated society will simply shrug.

Inside Climate News reported in April that the “unprecedented increase of atmospheric CO2 is just one of several red lights flashing on the climate dashboard.” Others include the 2023-24 spike of the global average surface temperature; the fact the planet’s average temperature has stayed above a 2.7 degree Fahrenheit (1.5 degree Celsius) temperature target set by the Paris Agreement for 20 of the past 21 months; and the combined sea ice extent in both polar regions has dropped to record or near-record lows the past few years, which means the planet is losing some of its biggest heat shields.

The world is simultaneously burning and drowning and MAGAs lie that reducing greenhouse gas emissions would have no meaningful impact.

The very nature of global warming is that it comes from everywhere and must be mitigated everywhere. Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, the United States has spewed the most greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Instead of leading the way on climate action, our overlords lie about its impact. It’s a moral failure of epic proportions.

Far too many people in power have long displayed few morals. MAGAs are now taking a flamethrower to what ethics and compassion remain.

Since the Mad King recaptured the White House, the regime’s Department of Energy has ordered two coal-fired power plants just outside Philadelphia that were set to be retired to keep burning and polluting.

The EPA is considering rolling back the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, regulations that protect the public from mercury, arsenic, and other toxic air pollution. These protections have slashed mercury pollution from power plants by about 90%.

The U.S. Department of Defense announced last month that it would no longer process and deliver data essential to most hurricane forecasts.

MAGAs don’t care about public/environmental health and have no interest in disaster response — a lethal combination as the planet’s fever spikes.

To protect their deadly profits the fossil fuel industry is now arguing that climate lawsuits against it should be thrown out because they infringe on the corporations’ protections under the First Amendment. This strategy is now being used in courtrooms nationwide, where fossil fuel corporations are fighting lawsuits that claim the industry has misled the country about global warming.

Fantasyland, but we know six Supreme Court justices reside there. They will obey the Mad King’s wishes and protect the fossil fuel oligarchs who, along with Muskrat, bought the sexual predator’s reelection. They, along with the rest of the world’s fossil fuel oligarchs, will then continue to cremate the planet.

A study published in April estimated the world’s biggest corporations have caused $28 trillion in climate damage. A Dartmouth College research team came up with the estimated pollution caused by 111 companies, with more than half of the total dollar figure coming from 10 fossil fuel behemoths: Saudi Aramco, Gazprom, Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, National Iranian Oil Co., Pemex, Coal India, and the British Coal Corp.

A recent investigation found fossil fuel corporations, including Pemex, which provides Mexico with 80% of its crude oil, have downplayed the extent of spills in the Gulf of Mexico.

The dirty industry believes it should be allowed to lie without consequences. It learned that trick from the serial liar who routinely tosses word salads in the Oval Office.

Rampant climate misinformation from fossil fuel corporations, MAGAs, and other bought politicians is obstructing and delaying action, according to a report published in June. It’s turning a crisis into a catastrophe. The researchers found climate denialism has evolved into campaigns focused on discrediting solutions, such as the false claims that renewable energy caused last month’s massive blackout in Spain. Before that, climate deniers were focused on attacking climate scientists and their work.

A study published this month found that climate liars are increasingly spreading false information online about wildfires and hurricanes fueled by the climate crisis.

While their paid and unpaid puppets spew lies and misinformation, fossil fuel corporations have been taking climate science seriously, at least when it comes to protecting their own assets. Behemoths, including ExxonMobil and Shell, began preparing their infrastructure for more intense storms and rising seas decades ago, even while battling regulations to curb the burning of fossil fuels.

Note: The July 4 MAGA legislation that funded a police state is arguably the most regressive tax measure in U.S. history. It transfers huge sums of money from the poorest to the wealthiest. On average, those in the top 0.1% of wealth stand to receive a $300,000 annual tax break. The poorest 20% stand to lose about $560 annually.

Frank Carini can be reached at [email protected]. His opinions don’t reflect those of ecoRI News.