With his singular style, Tom Toles tackles the complex issues of the day. This Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist skillfully targets political, economic and social concerns — in particular complicated environmental issues — with a clear-eyed precision that hits the mark every time.
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Robert Landers said, 6 months ago
While it is true that leaving a high debt for future generations is certainly troubling, leaving a world where you can not breath the air, drink the water, of even live in the limited amount of land left by rapidly rising oceans, is going to be a disaster for future generations of such magnitude that I am certain they will hate us much more for doing that than leaving a high debt!!!
Stipple said, 6 months ago
You are being silly, read what you just posted.
.
Now, think about it some.
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Yes, everyone will be dead and hate no one.
Mark said, 6 months ago
@Stipple
I think I just pulled a rib muscle…
Night-Gaunt49 said, 6 months ago
How can we repair the damage and keep from doing more if we are in fiscal peril? Why do certain Plutocrats have no problem with our climate going Hot House? Why is it in their interest to let it do so for them and their need for power?
Michael wme said, 6 months ago
@Night-Gaunt49
It’s not just the Plutocrats. Most people won’t give up their SUVs, and most Americans want the government to keep gasoline at Saudi prices so they can afford a car that’s large enough to be safe and comfortable. If they can, they’ll try to get one that gets low double-digit gas mileage, but that’s secondary to safety and comfort.
As IIRC Tom Paxton sang, get some of that beachfront property on the coast of Arizona.
Lynne B
said, 6 months ago
The problem is that the groups and individuals paid to muddy the public understanding of the climate problem (like Marc Morano and Steven J. Milloy) have succeeded, succeeded wildly in fact – and it has been relatively easy for them, because unlike even “cancer from smoking”, climate is an extremely complex thing, there is a lot of variability in the system anyway, and the results of all that we do may not even be seen in our lifetimes (depending on how old you are). So it is very easy for them to claim that “everything that is happening is natural” or “humans can’t affect this system” – even though that is really not what the working science has concluded.
Additionally, because a large problem tends to demand large action in response, they can play into the modern paranoia about “government” and conspiracies, to convince people that the science is all an excuse to add taxes and run people’s lives (somehow ignoring the fact that the scientists involved all have to live under the same governments and pay the same taxes, for a start).
But with the public confused about what climate change is and means and how it works, then the powers on the top of the heap in the current status quo, who obviously are the ones who profit from the status quo, can keep people from agitating against the status quo. And THIS is even easier because the status quo is for the most part a comfortable consumer lifestyle that no-one WANTS to change.
It is only at the point that people realize that the status quo carries its own costs and impacts on quality of life – like insane food costs and rising insurance costs and increasing economic disruption from storm damage, for example – that people might be able to relate the problem to something they genuinely need to take action on.
Unfortunately, at that point it’s a little like a smoker quitting after the emphysema has developed.
narrowminded said, 6 months ago
I’m re-reading Jules Verne’ “Mysterious Island”. The “theory” that day was that the earth, as all planets, will continually cool as the sun diminishes in strength and the internal heat at the core cools. Once the core reaches a certain temp. The energy of the sun won’t be enough to support life. The earth is doomed to this fate.
Global warming, now climate change(really, what does that mean) is pure political crises mongering by the left that frightens people so as to gain power over them.
The tyranny of fear.
masterskrain said, 6 months ago
@Night-Gaunt49
I believe it was Dick Cheney who said something like “Why should I worry about what the environment will be like in 100 years? I’ll be dead then!”
Sadly, that DOES seem to be a pretty prevalent attitude nowadays!
richardelguru
said, 6 months ago
narrowminded (shallow too by the looks of it). Guess what, scientific understanding develops over time. Basing your argument on hundred-plus-year-old theories, especially if you are getting them from hundred-plus-year-old science FICTION is just plain daft.
motivemagus said, 6 months ago
@narrowminded
Do you realize how idiotic your “argument” makes you look? You are trying to claim the work of thousands of research scientists working in a host of fields with the most advanced sensory and analytical technology in the world, research going over decades, is somehow less relevant than a work of fiction based on theories with a hundred and fifty years less data? Why? So you can claim a liberal conspiracy?
Man, use Occam’s Razor!
magicwalnut said, 6 months ago
@Lynne B
I used to have a neighbour…a military man, if I remember correctly, who said, “I don’t care. I won’t be here.” Which appears to be the prevailing sentiment.
Ms. Ima said, 6 months ago
@Robert Landers
The sky is falling!!! The sky is falling!!! Pay global warming taxes or no one will be able to breath, drink clean water or the inch rise in the oceans will tsunami and take a few bits of sand off the beach!!!! Run for your lives!!!! Head for the mountains!!! The priests of the Global Warming Religion have spoken!!!! Pay your taxes because the sky is falling!!!!
Ms. Ima said, 6 months ago
@Michael wme
The SUV’s are coming!! The sky is falling!!!!
The rest of the world is using gas at an increasing rate. They are willing to pay more for it.
Beachfront property on the coast of Arizona might happen in 30,000 to 50,000 years but not tomorrow and not because we didn’t sacrifice our legacy to the Global Warming Religion.
Ms. Ima said, 6 months ago
@masterskrain
Even better, O doesn’t care about America because he won’t be President in 4 years.
Ms. Ima said, 6 months ago
@motivemagus
Scientists have found a religion they can all become priests for. GW is the only way to get public and private funds nowadays and they want to eat and get rich. So pay your income to the Global Warming Religion. Every day is a day to preach to the masses. Reform or die. Believe or get killed. Guilt for something that hasn’t happened. Ice melts, that is Occam’s Razor.