The Heat is Definitely On
A Meat and Dairy Industries Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM Evaggelos Vallianatos, CounterPunch.org
September 2020

Animal farms are making the planet hot, and are plagued with viruses with the potential of becoming pandemics.

Photograph Source: United State Dept. of Agriculture – CC BY 2.0

I have lived in Claremont, California for 12 years, and never have felt so much heat as I did Saturday, September 5, 2020. That was a very hot day. The temperature hit 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

Two days of intense heat

I usually read and write under the portico in my backyard. But that Saturday and next day, Sunday, September 6, 2020, I did not. The anthropogenic heat in the atmosphere plus the unchanging and life-supporting light and heat from the bright and immortal Sun formed a hot wave, aggressive and enveloping me like I was walking towards a huge fire oven: feeling warmth all over my body, with the temperature rising, and the brain telling me to seek shelter into the “air conditioned” home.

My thoughts immediately rushed to the incredible discomfort, nay death threat, my doves are facing. Two doves living in a corner of my portico are trying hatching another egg for another chick. I see them changing guard over the egg, staying motionless for hours under this burning heat and I feel helpless and very angry – for them and us.

Billionaires and Trump

Why, in the name of all gods, including the one-god of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, we are continuing to fuel the vast and complicated and dangerous climatological engine warming the planet? For the comfort and profit of petroleum billionaires? Is your life so worthless to throw away for the temporary power of these secret tyrants?

Newspapers report this exceptional heat is causing fires, but then we are in the plague and Trump era and we better stay home, listen to the latest nonsense from and about the American king, and wear masks.

The main news is, overwhelmingly, about the latest shenanigans of Trump. Now his niece, now his former lawyer, are coming out with million dollar-book advances for telling us more about the corruption of Trump.

Televisions spend hours and days denouncing Trump (in gentle critiques in repeating his foibles or bravado) or praising the self-acclaimed American monarch.

Outside America’s air conditioned homes the world is burning and the billionaires of TV and newspaper media are filling the brains of hundreds of millions with gossip and thousands of advertising images.

This partly explains why the world will continue to become even more unpleasant and hot. Trump and the billionaires must have convinced themselves they can survive global warming with temperatures as high as 120 degrees Fahrenheit. They probably have towers stocked with air conditioners and frozen food.

The plague from animal torture chambers

The plague is also working for them: killing primarily the infirm with preconditions of obesity, shattered immune system from eating genetically-engineered food laced with neurotoxic and carcinogenic pesticides — and fast food. The meat of fast food comes from the annual slaughter of some 9 billion cattle, chicken and pigs.

These animals eat genetically-engineered corn and soybeans drenched with disease-causing pesticides and anti-biotics. The animals live their short lives in filth and terror. They are sick and their sardine can-like enclosures make people and the natural world sick. In fact, animal farms are making the planet hot, and are plagued with viruses with the potential of becoming pandemics.

Ten critical years

However, don’t expect televisions and newspapers to interrupt their popular and best-selling Trump show in order to educate you about the origins of plagues or climate change, interrelated and man-made by the billionaire class.

Some scientists warn we barely have 10 years to get rid of petroleum, coal, and natural gas in order to put a brake to the gigantic storm of climate change. Trump’s 4 years have been 4 years we have lost in our struggle to save ourselves from ourselves.

Biden administration

Like all reasonable Americans, I hope Joe Biden becomes the next president and, immediately, starts repairing the harm Trump caused to the country and the world.

Above all, a Biden administration (with Democratic majorities in both House and Senate) must declare climate change a national emergency, which it is: introduce and pass legislation banning fossil fuels and nationalize enough of the industry to move the country rapidly to renewable energy, solar cars, busses, bullet trains and trams everywhere, creating a new and powerful infrastructure for a new solar age.

Simultaneously, a Biden administration must bring the world together in order to make the banning of fossil fuels global. Millions of workers in the twenty-first century make a living in the satanic petroleum and coal mills. These workers should be trained to construct and install renewable energy technologies. It goes without saying that the petroleum billionaires should pay all their ill-gotten profits for this transformation.

International Environmental Organization

An International Environment Organization, overriding the business World Trade Organization, should be created, funded and given emergency powers to deal with rogue nations like Brazil burning the Amazon for soybean fields. IEO would be charted to protect biodiversity, forests, wild rivers, lakes, mountains, the seas, and traditional peasant agriculture and small-scale organic family farming. It would, in addition, oversee the shutting down of polluting industry, worldwide, and replacing it with carbon-neutral alternatives.

Can soldiers help the collapsing world?

The world’s armed forces should be employed in this vast transition from pollution-death economies to a livable world. Who knows, such cooperation may even convince world leaders and the world to permanently direct their armed forces for protecting life rather than killing it. Such a change of heart would bring the end of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. 

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