Climate and the “Selfish Slacker” Generation

Executives have characterized a new generation of labor entering the workforce as lazy, disloyal, indifferent, and selfish. We’re told this new generation expects instant gratification, they are unwilling to take a blood oath dedicating themselves to the profit line in a quarterly report, and they have the audacity to reject spending every waking hour producing a better widget for their “Job Creator” XYZ Global Corporation.

When I entered the workforce, first as an actuary, and then a couple of years later as a technologist in the early 1980’s (yes, there was electricity and indoor plumbing then), you could afford a decent apartment for less than $600/month, health insurance, groceries, transportation, and even budget and save money for a down payment on a home. Tuition at public universities averaged $1,300/year. Many employers paid most (or all) of your health insurance premiums, and the plans actually covered many services without a “co-pay”. Many employers even provided pension and profit sharing plans intended to supplement your retirement income from Social Security.

All of this translated into someone entering the workforce who was reasonably well-educated, yet not burdened by massive student loan debt with a lifetime of payments to predators like Betsy DeVos, you could have a car, a decent place to live, and be able to put money aside for the future. While there was still an employer/employee relationship, there was a shared economic stake in your health and well-being (thanks to Unions -whether you were in one or not).

To compare, in 2024, while salaries are higher, they have not increased with living costs. An average rental apartment in 1985 consumed 28% of your gross paycheck. In 2024, it’s nearly 40%. Average tuition went from $1,318/year to $11,260/year. Healthcare insurance went from less than $100/month to $650/month -and significant costs in the form of co-pays, denied claims, and deductibles mean your healthcare costs have exploded well beyond the insurance outlay. And the average cost of a starter home has gone from $110K to $800K.

So someone joining the workforce today is likely burdened by significant debt and has a substantially diminished opportunity for a higher quality of life. Do hiring managers and executives think this new generation is so profoundly stupid that they are unaware of their circumstances? Couple this diminished future with global conflict, global tension, the toxic political environment, and the minimal political will to address societal imperatives such as gun violence prevention, and catastrophic climate change and you begin to have a little better insight into why this new generation is perceived as disloyal and indifferent. It is because they are not as dumb as a bag of hammers (or James Comer or Marjorie Taylor Greene or Lauren Boebert). They are aware that the generation charged with employing them (and harvesting revenue and profit from their labor) has already betrayed them.

So while the new workforce generation may have misdirected anger (based upon varied levels of education, information, and capacity for critical thinking), anger, frustration, and the loss of hope are all generally common attributes -not laziness and not indifference.

Our Religion is Profit

It has been said that the meek shall inherit the earth. What is obscured from that particular passage is that it shall be inherited when the plundering, poisoning, profit-taking, and pillaging is done. Of the two major political parties in the United States, the entire objective of one of the parties is to concentrate wealth to a small percentage of the already wealthy. The extraction of oil, gas, and coal is, and has been part of the wealth concentration strategy. There is a large swath of elected officials who are perfectly fine with oil executives and institutional investors making billions of dollars while “representing” homeowners now paying double and triple the insurance premiums due to the destructive force of extreme weather events (while many of the same homeowners in Florida and Texas continue to support and elect climate deniers in Congress, and State/Local government. Science AND Big Oil have known for more than 70 years we were generating money while causing environmental damage and planetary decay. Big Oil, Coal, and the extraction industries continue to steal from the future, from our children and grandchildren in order to reap record quarter over quarter profits.

Billions a Day Keeps Political Will Away

If you were offered one million dollars to, just for one day, throw any trash you produce on the ground at a park, in a river, or in a forest, would you do it? In a recent fiscal quarter, ExxonMobil generated $84.3 billion dollars of revenue. Every day for an entire three-month period they generated nearly a billion (A BILLION!) dollars in revenue.

We know that behaviorally, people don’t like to change. If you like your home in Palm Desert to be chilled at all times to 68 degrees, you like the roominess and luxury of your thirsty gas guzzling SUV, the pool must be heated year-round, and so on.

Take human behavior already pre-disposed to stasis, and then create public confusion about climate change. Is it real? Is it a liberal hoax? Is it China trying to sell cheap solar panels? Is it really caused by human activity? Big Oil can take the money they make in one day, perhaps even half a day and fund “think” tanks to produce visually beautiful reports stating that it’s not climate change, it’s just a natural ebb and flow of weather patterns. Or, in the unlikely event it’s climate change, it’s not from human activity. Or if it is from human activity, there’s nothing we can do as a nation because our energy footprint is tiny compared to the needs of India and China.

After you fund the beautiful looking reports, you get stories to run in newspapers, television news, and elsewhere (because you pay for lots of advertising!) to manufacture consent around “unsettled scientific opinion”. Then you can sprinkle a million here, and a million there on House of Representative and U.S. Senate races to buy votes needed to lease public lands for exploration, drilling, and extraction, to thwart expensive pollution mitigation, toxic air impact around refineries, and other profit over people and planet legislation and policy. (https://www.americanprogress.org/article/climate-deniers-of-the-118th-congress/)

Instead of accelerating climate action and a bold, rapid transition to clean, safe, renewable energy, many politicians now talk about the importance of American energy independence that can only be achieved through the Oil and Gas extraction industries (and it’s called for as part of the Heritage Foundation’s anti-democracy Project 2025). Of course, if “energy independence” was a valid concern, we would have been making a major societal investment into the transformation of our energy portfolio beginning during and after the OPEC Oil Embargo of 1973.

And there is evidence that Big Oil has been aware of the science and looming climate catastrophe since 1954. Yes, that is seventy years. I’m not going to do the calculus around adjusting for inflation, and the variance in energy demand over the last seventy years, (perhaps Bob Lewis will?), however seventy years of a billion dollars a day is over $25 Trillion Dollars. This is almost 4 times the amount of national debt added by the Trump/GOP tax fraud of 2017.

The Genocidal Merchants of Doubt

If you have not read the 2010 book, “Merchants of Doubt” by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway (https://www.powells.com/book/merchants-of-doubt-9781608193943), I’ll wait here while you either read the book, watch the 2014 documentary film, or both.

I’m waiting…

While Dr. Oreskes and Dr. Conway make an important case that the same sinister societal behavioral techniques used to delay action against the tobacco industry (who were well-aware of the horrific medical/health risks of smoking and second-hand smoke) were (and are) used by Big Oil and the extraction industry, I would argue that while tobacco companies were (and are) killing people one at a time for profit, Big Oil is committing climate catastrophe and risking genocide on a global scale for record quarterly profits and executive bonuses. There is a complete supply chain of lying and propaganda that begins with the executive team at ExxonMobil, Chevron, Valero, and others. Because every day they can delay serious, bold action is, at a minimum, $1,000,000,000 in their pocket. It spreads from the executives to “think” tanks and science propagandists who have been paid to produce shiny authentic-looking reports. Then it goes to “friendly” propaganda distribution outlets like Fox “News”. It’s then read by someone who should be doing some fact-checking but simply repeats the lie on CNN and other news outlets. A nice check to a college or university, and the shiny propaganda report replaces peer-reviewed science, creating a whole new generation of people believing clean coal is harmless and tastes great on breakfast cereal. (https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/aug/08/repeating-climate-denial-claims-makes-them-seem-more-credible-australian-led-study-finds)

“Liberal Hoax” Insurance Costs

In Florida, ten years ago the average cost of homeowner’s insurance for a $300,000 home was just under $1,600 per year. In 2024 it is $4,400. If you are retired, living on a fixed pension, what was a $130/month expense is now $370/month. Homeowner insurance premiums are rising faster in Texas (60%), Arizona (62%), Colorado (58%), and Nebraska (60%) since 2018. The homeowner insurance costs are calculated on the basis of risk and uses mathematical models and competition to drive price efficiency. It is not based upon “talking heads” on Fox “News” laughing about warmer Canadian summers.

The trending frequency and severity of extreme/catastrophic climate change-related events such as wildfires, floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes are driving costs, dare I say, through the roof? (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/15/florida-hurricane-insurance-crisis-climate)

Evidence? Read a F*ckn’g Newspaper.

The following represent a handful of fact-based evidence from the United States. The reality is that severe/extreme climate events are occurring on a daily basis throughout the world. Extreme/prolonged drought. Massive wildfires. Hurricanes. Floods.

• “Intense April storm threatens much of U.S. with severe weather” (https://www.axios.com/2024/04/01/us-storm-snow-flooding-spring-severe-weather)

• “US already hit by 7 billion-dollar disasters in 2024 and it's only May: In addition to terrible storms and snow in April, warm temperatures have already made the year the 5th-warmest in the country's 130-year climate history.”
  (https://www.foxweather.com/weather-news/noaa-april-2024-climate-assessment)

• “Nearly half of Americans are expected to experience heat made at least three times more likely because of climate change on Friday, August 2, 2024. This climate change-fueled heat will affect much of the U.S. and extend into Canada and Mexico, from July 31 through August 8, 2024.”
  (https://www.climatecentral.org/climate-shift-index-alert/potential-record-CSI-8-2-2024)

• “Heat spreads across Alaska with no widespread rain in sight”
  (https://www.alaskasnewssource.com/2024/06/26/heat-spreads-across-alaska-with-no-widespread-rain-sight/)

• “Unrelenting heat to keep US sweating during final month of summer: In August, Americans are in for much of the same above-average heat that has dominated this summer so far. Meanwhile, an active Atlantic hurricane season and the ongoing Southwest Monsoon will contribute to the above-average rainfall for parts of the U.S.”
  (https://www.foxweather.com/weather-news/august-2024-outlook-summer-heat)

• “NASA data shows July 22, 2024 was Earth's hottest day on record”
  (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/07/240729173444.htm)

• “Super-charged Atlantic hurricane season poised for intense activity”
  (https://www.accuweather.com/en/hurricane/super-charged-atlantic-hurricane-season-poised-for-intense-activity/1633944)

• “Flash flood emergency declared in New Mexico as heavy rain follows wildfires”
  (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/20/new-mexico-wildfires-village-of-ruidoso)

• U.S. Drought Monitor (https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/)

  

• “Wildfire in Canada forces thousands to evacuate as smoke causes dangerous air quality” (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wildfire-canada-forces-evacuate-smoke-dangerous-air-quality/)

Climate Refugees and Global Conflict

Don’t like people entering the United States illegally (to either sell drugs or to take our high-paying executive jobs -or both if they become CEO of a Big Pharma company?) Just wait!

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports that climate change-related disasters have displaced 21.5 million people since 2010. The numbers are expected to rise as the impacts of climate change become more severe, with extreme weather events, sea-level rise, and resource scarcity pushing more people to leave their homes.

In 2023, an estimated 117.3 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced due to various factors, including climate change. This number is expected to surpass 120 million by the end of April 2024, with climate change being a significant driver alongside conflict and persecution​.

Essentially -you can’t cause global drought, hunger, massive fires, floods, and rising sea levels all over the world without any consequences. The United States and other industrialized nations will pay (in our case -we are already paying with our tax dollars) for the national and international damage done so a handful of executives, banks, and institutional investors could profit. This is Reagan/Trump/GOP Tax Fraud on a massive scale -via externalities -shifting the costs associated with oil, gas, and coal to everyone of us -so the wealthy can have more, More, MORE!!!

How Do We Plug the Well?
Step 1: Stop Electing Climate Deniers!!!

• While the news outlets have moved on to Trump’s next scandal, racist comment, or criminal trial, do not forget for a minute that Trump promised 20 Big Oil executives at a private Mar-a-Lago dinner that he would allow them to do whatever they wanted in exchange for a cool $1,000,000,000. (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/09/trump-oil-ceo-donation)
  According to recent reports, U.S. Congressional Climate Deniers have taken in over $52 million dollars from the climate-destroying fossil fuel industry. Ted Cruz, Steve Scalise, Marco Rubio, James Lankford, Kevin Cramer, John Kennedy, Ron Johnson, Mike Lee, Cynthia Lummis, Religious nut Mike Johnson, Chip Roy, Joni Ernst, Rick Scott, Darrell Issa, “Shillbilly” JD Vance, Ronny Jackson, Lauren Boebert, Scott Perry, Tommy Tuberville, Nancy Mace, James Comer (Pyle), Joe Wilson, Debbie Lesko, Paul Gosar, Byron Donalds, Andy Biggs, M-T (head) Greene all happily took money in exchange for their votes to kill any bold, imperative climate action. (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/05/climate-change-denial-congress)

  If measured in terms of ethics, morality, and criminality it would be considered a criminal act of bribery by most judges, according to the corrupt U.S. Supreme Court it is simply considered a tip.

  

  

  

  

  

• Reject All Candidates Embracing Project 2025 and/or Agenda 47: Both call for “American Energy Independence” which is code for oil exploration everywhere, drilling everywhere, offshore oil rigs: everywhere, leaking/exploding oil pipelines everywhere, trains carrying oil and exploding: everywhere. It is all so a handful of the already obscenely wealthy can extract more wealth, and use some of their gains to write more checks for the elected officials who participate with them in what should be a criminal conspiracy on a massive scale.

  

• Taxation of Extraction Industry Investment: Banks and Institutional Investors
  Institutional investors, including large firms, pension funds, and hedge funds, dominate investment in major oil companies. Banks such as JPMorgan, Citibank, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, HSBC and Barclays are major financiers, and BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street maintain substantial holdings in the Oil and Gas industries. Profit related to these investments should be hit with a substantial tax -which should then be used for a global fund for climate refugees, climate mitigation plans, and economic assistance for island nations most vulnerable to rising sea levels.

• The Myth of Grandma’s 401K
  When people talk about Oil and Gas industry investment -Big Oil and their shills are quick to point out that poor Grandma Betty’s 401K will be ruined without her three shares of ExxonMobil. The reality is that by far the most substantial stock holdings are from banks and institutional investors. Grandma Betty will be just fine investing in solar panels, hydrogen, and wind energy projects instead. And as an added bonus, she’ll be improving the future for her grandchildren.

• Be a Environmental Leader and Role Model

  Speak up and get others to join in taking action. It's one of the quickest and most effective ways to make a difference. Talk to your neighbors, colleagues, friends, and family. Let businesses know you support bold changes – from plastics-free products and packaging to zero-emissions vehicles. Write letters to the editor of your local newspaper. Appeal elected officials to act now. Climate action requires all of us.

• Purchase Green/Renewable Energy from your Utility Company

  Ask your utility company if your home energy comes from oil, coal or gas. If possible, see if you can switch to renewable sources such as wind or solar. Or install solar panels on your roof to generate energy for your home. Switching your home from oil, gas or coal-powered energy to renewable sources of energy, such as wind or solar, can reduce your carbon footprint by up to 1.5 tons of CO2e per year.

• Walk/Bike/Mass Transit

  The world’s roadways are clogged with vehicles, most of them burning diesel or gasoline. Walking or riding a bike instead of driving will reduce greenhouse gas emissions -- and help your health and fitness. For longer distances, consider taking a train or bus. Living car-free can reduce your carbon footprint by up to 2 tons of CO2e per year compared to a lifestyle using a car.

• Vegetarianism/Veganism

  Going vegan or vegetarian has a significant environmental impact. Producing plant-based foods generally results in fewer greenhouse gas emissions and requires less energy, land, and water. Shifting from a mixed to a vegetarian diet can reduce your carbon footprint by up to 500 kilograms of CO2e per year (or up to 900 kilograms for a vegan diet). I’ve been a vegetarian for over 25 years and I’m proof that you can get plenty of sustenance without consuming a dead animal flesh sandwich (or “Happy Meal” or “Whopper” as they are also known).

  

• Join/Start/Support class-action lawsuits: Various State Attorneys General have filed massive lawsuits, children have brought suits to U.S., E.U., and International Courts over environmental and planetary damage caused by Oil, Gas, and Coal.

  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/28/poll-climate-change-lawsuit-oil-industry

  https://climateintegrity.org/cases

  https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20231208-the-legal-battles-changing-the-course-of-climate-change

  And the kids are not alright: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/28/climate/united-nations-children-climate-lawsuit.html

• Recycle/Reuse/Repair

  Electronics, clothes, plastics and other items we buy cause carbon emissions at each point in production, from the extraction of raw materials to manufacturing and transporting goods to market. To protect the climate, buy fewer things, shop second-hand, and repair what you can. Plastics alone generated 1.8 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions in 2019 – 3.4 per cent of the global total. Less than 10 per cent is recycled, and once plastic is discarded, it can linger for hundreds of years. Buying fewer new clothes – and other consumer goods – can also reduce your carbon footprint. Every kilogram of textiles produced generates about 17 kilograms of CO2e.

• Plastics

  Many people still don’t know that the plastics we generally use in daily life are oil-based. Where possible, use bio-plastics and/or paper and reduce the need, especially for plastics that are used once and then discarded.

• Water conservation

  As worldwide droughts become more prolonged, water will become even more precious. If you care about your children, grandchildren, and future generations, conserve your water use, shift to desert or low-water usage landscaping, and know that water is life.

• Less cool in the summer, wear a sweater in the winter.

  Much of our electricity and heat are powered by coal, oil and gas. Use less energy by reducing heating and cooling use, switching to LED light bulbs and energy-efficient electric appliances, washing laundry with cold water, and thinking about how wonderfully fresh clothing that’s been hanging on a clothesline drying naturally smells and feels.

The Takeaway: Stop electing climate-denying should-be criminals and putting them in charge of leading us to a dystopian post-apocalyptic climate hellscape and then accusing new and future generations of not going “all-in” for the “American Dream” when together we’ve turned it into a nightmare that Stephen King, Margaret Atwood, George Orwell, Rod Serling, and Roland Emmerich could not have imagined.