Hell Has No Air Conditioners
As imagined by Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) in “The Divine Comedy,” Hell has nine levels, with the lowest reserved for the very worst souls.
Although it’s no longer fashionable to believe that Hell exists, we can’t prove that it doesn’t.
It’s generally thought that among its tortures for condemned souls are extremely high temperatures.
If the climate continues heating up we may create hellish conditions right here on an overheated Earth.
Would it be appropriate for those responsible for allowing this to happen to end in an actual Hell? As the Lord High Executioner sings in Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Mikado,” “my object all sublime . . . is to make the punishment fit the crime.”
Or perhaps the guilty parties could be reincarnated on the unpleasant future Earth they are helping create.
Like Hell, which no one can prove does not exist, no one has ever proved that reincarnation is impossible.
So, in case there is no Hell, Earth itself might take care of inflicting cosmic justice.
Of course as a mere mortal human being, I can’t claim to be a perfect judge of my fellow mortals. But it seems to me that many current American leaders will bear heavy responsibility if we do not curb global warming in time to avoid catastrophe.
I say leaders in the plural here deliberately, since no one person — not even a president —could do the damage currently being done by American policy without the help of other leaders.
I imagine that Hell, if it exists, or a future overheated Earth, will have ample room for guilty members of Congress and the Supreme Court, coal, gas and oil company executives, and the like.
Donald Trump began his second administration by withdrawing the U.S. again from the Paris Agreement to fight climate change.
Although “only” a symbolic action, it telegraphed the new administration’s intentions to sabotage green energy.
Non-symbolic actions quickly followed. It is bad enough that the government has been canceling subsidy programs designed to hasten the day when solar and wind energy replace coal, oil, and gas.
Far worse, the administration is trying to prevent completion of major wind farms that are already largely built and in which people have invested billions of dollars.
This makes no sense economically and will increase the electricity shortages already causing big increases in consumer prices.
And the administration is canceling permissions for new green projects that government agencies had already granted.
Worse still is the administration’s attempt to force other countries to halt their own policies aimed at replacing dirty electricity with green electricity, using tariff rates as bargaining chips.
As long as only the U.S. slows down needed reforms the rest of the world could at least move forward.
From a geopolitical point of view, recent U.S. policies are making China look better and better, as it appears destined to dominate production of green energy and EVs.
The U.S. continues to dominate declining industries like coal, gas and oil — the modern equivalents of buggy whips.
Perhaps most outrageous of all (so far!) is the administration’s attempt to turn off functioning satellites already in orbit that can measure carbon dioxide and methane — the chief warming agents in the atmosphere — as an “economy” measure!
Economy measure?!
As “Swami Beyondananda” recently put it, “if we lose the earth, there goes the GDP.”
In the same vein, the Trump EPA now proposes to stop requiring corporations to measure and report the amount of greenhouse gases they are releasing into the atmosphere.
The administration is also trying to close down its Mauna Loa installation in Hawaii and three other places measuring greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere.
Apparently the administration fears that all these measurements will undermine its already feeble arguments that it is safe to continue burning coal, oil, and gas to produce the power required by modern civilization.
As I noted earlier, reincarnation on a future overheated earth might be an appropriate “reward” for government and private leaders responsible for obstructing the progress of green energy.
But from another point of view, an actual Hell might provide more justice for them.
Hell has no air conditioners.
Paul F. deLespinasse is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Computer Science at Adrian College. Read Professor Paul F. deLespinasse’s Reports — More Here.
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