What can you say? A raging fire on one of the most beautiful and isolated spots on earth (Maui) should be getting much attention and spurring people to action on the climate. Yet even as ever higher temperature records are being set around the world in both the northern and Southern Hemisphere and fires rage on three continents, the MAGA Party is plotting to end any climate related action by the US government.

Let’s not forget that ocean temperatures are at an all time high in the Atlantic especially near Florida. This portends an extremely active hurricane season.

From the Guardian we get a brief look at policy recommendations from the Heritage Foundation, an extremist right wing “think tank” geared to greatly choke any government action on climate at a time it is most greatly needed.

An alliance of rightwing groups has crafted an extensive presidential proposal to bolster the planet-heating oil and gas industry and hamstring the energy transition, it has emerged.

Against a backdrop of record-breaking heat and floods this year, the $22m endeavor, Project 2025, was convened by the notorious rightwing, climate-denying thinktank the Heritage Foundation, which has ties to fossil fuel billionaire Charles Koch.

Called the Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, it is meant to guide the first 180 days of presidency for an incoming Republican president. Climate experts and advocates criticized planning that would dismantle US climate policy. 

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The guide’s chapter on the US Department of Energy proposes eliminating three agency offices that are crucial for the energy transition, and also calls to slash funding to the agency’s grid deployment office in an effort to stymie renewable energy deployment, E&E News reported this week.

The plan, which would hugely expand gas infrastructure, was authored by Bernard McNamee, a former official at the agency. McNamee was also a Trump appointee to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. He previously led the far-right Texas Public Policy Foundation, which fights environmental regulation, and served as a senior adviser to the Republican senator Ted Cruz.

Another chapter focuses on gutting the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and moving it away from its focus on the climate crisis. It proposes cutting the agency’s environmental justice and public engagement functions, while shrinking it as a whole by terminating new hires in “low-value programs”, E&E News reported. The proposal was written Mandy Gunasekara, who was the former chief of staff at the EPA under Trump.

As the nation gears up for the 2024 election the attention of the country is being diverted by the various trials of Donald Trump. Because of this diversion and the media frenzy surrounding the circus and its sideshows the country is not giving serious consideration to real issues.

The top issues are simply this. The MAGA Party will do nothing to stop climate change and will do all they can to make it worse and make it happen faster and harder. Their belief is that wealthy people will be able to withstand the horrors that Mother Earth may hit us with. As for you and me, the poor and middle class and much the poor countries of the world, we deserve to suffer the consequences. 

The second top issue is ending democracy in the US. Part of the expectations in putting together this country the Founders expected that all parties to the governance of this country would support democracy. We now have a Party that does not support democracy. Over the years through exploiting loopholes in democracy they have imposed oligarchies in some states. From persuasion.community:

James Madison in particular, with his dim view of people’s ability to govern themselves on a lasting basis, was obsessed with the need to build protections against mob rule into the United States Constitution. For a popular demagogue to lead a conspiracy to defraud the United States in an attempt to obstruct the lawful results of a presidential election was the stuff of Madison’s nightmares.

Plato had first identified the democracy doom-loop in his Republic 2100 years earlier. In his view, tyranny is implicit in the internal logic of any democracy: by putting power in the hands of those best able to rile up the majority, democracy builds huge incentives for aspiring demagogues to try their luck at manipulating the masses.

The appeals such men use are always the same: riling up the good, downtrodden people against an elite portrayed as corrupt. Given the huge numerical advantage the poor have over the rich in society, democratic decision-making would always be vulnerable to the populist playbook. Aspiring demagogues would continually come forward to try to unleash the mob against the institutions of the republic. Eventually one would succeed, and make himself tyrant. 

The appeals such men use are always the same: riling up the good, downtrodden people against an elite portrayed as corrupt. Given the huge numerical advantage the poor have over the rich in society, democratic decision-making would always be vulnerable to the populist playbook. Aspiring demagogues would continually come forward to try to unleash the mob against the institutions of the republic. Eventually one would succeed, and make himself tyrant.

As the circus (and the diversion the MAGA Party will create) takes our attention we need to let people know that the planet and our form of government are the real issues. We have little time left.