Ten years ago, in an interview with Der Spiegel magazine in March 2005, Pan Yue, China’s eloquent, young vice-minister of China’s State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) told the magazine, “the Chinese miracle will end soon because the environment can no longer keep pace.” Pan Yue added:

“We are using too many raw materials to sustain [our] growth … Our raw materials are scarce, we don’t have enough land, and our population is constantly growing. Currently there [are] 1.3 billion people living in China, that’s twice as many as 50 years ago. In 2020 there will be 1.5 billion … but desert areas are expanding at the same time; habitable and usable land has been halved over the past 50 years.

… Acid rain is falling on one third of Chinese territory, half of the water in our seven largest rivers is completely useless, while one fourth of our citizens do not have access to clean drinking water. One third of the urban population is breathing polluted air, and less than 20 percent of the trash in cities is treated and processed in an environmentally sustainable manner …

Because air and water are polluted, we are losing between 8 and 15 percent of our gross domestic product. And that doesn’t include the costs for health … In Beijing alone, 70 to 80 percent of all deadly cancer cases are related to the environment”.

That was ten years ago.  To be fair, the Chinese did try to rein in population growth with the one child policy, and it didn’t work. Or, rather, it produced a host of spoiled, single male offspring who are  apparently unhappy and must be a problem.  And then the Party went for helter- skelter growth, ruined their own environment, and are suffering from an oppressive, corrupt political system and massive debt that possibly threatens the whole economy.  We tend to loook at China as the successor to American hegemony, but is it really a temporary illusion?  Why is mankind incapable of moderation?

Trump is operating his transition  from New York.    I understand he has suggested that, once he becomes President, he will spend future weekends at Trump Tower, New York.  This may be unusual, some say unprecedented, but the good  news is that as long as he is in New York he won’t be doing as much harm as he would staying in Washington.

My wife and I decided not to talk incessently about the results of the election, but to calmly wait and see what the new President actually does.

Our resolve didn’t last long. Of all the many issues one could worry about, global climate change has to be by far the most important .  Other changes or mis-steps can eventually be corrected, but turning back the international consensus on climate change cannot be corrected, if Trump is as good as his word.  His official transition official chosen to deal with the Environmental Protection Agency is  Myron Ebell,  a fierce climate change denier,  dependent on the oil companies for his income and prepared to wreck the planet and the futures of our children and grandchildren is pursuit of private gain.

Of all the egregious anti-intellectual posturing in the election campaign the gainsaying of almost every respectable scientist in the world, all of whom are daily warning us about the effects of climate change, is the most troublesome.  Almost  every week the New Scientist is reporting mass extinctions of wildlife or the disappearance of glaciers.  Reading this material makes me despair of the stupidity of mankind.  For two hundred years we have been pouring carbon into the thin sliver of breathable atmosphere surrounding the Earth, while destroying the forests that at least absorb some of the carbon, and doing nothing to restrain population increase that requires the extra food production. Where do these deniers think the burnt carbon goes, and what basis  do they have for calling climate science a fraud?

Over one hundred years of public education has still left us with a gullible and anti- intellectual section of the public, ready to believe every deliberately bogus “news” item on social media.  Could we have the money back that was spent on their schooling and at least repair the potholes in the streets? (joke).