Political Quotes

“Mr. President, a crash takes place in a system when conditions in that system reach a tipping point and the system rapidly destabilizes. Climate change promises a lot of tipping points in the Earth's natural systems--ocean acidification, for instance, reaching a tipping point where foundational species, such as the pteropod, have trouble forming their shells, and populations of those foundation species crash, taking down the trophic levels above them; polar warming, for instance, releasing trapped frozen methane from Arctic tundra and hyperaccelerating the greenhouse effect. At the more local level, seasonally linked species, reacting to changing seasons, can get out of phase with one another, so the feeder and its food source no longer overlap in time, and then they have a crash. In what Pope Francis has called ``the mysterious network of relations between things,'' climate change promises natural disruptions, large and small. Of course, the same kind of disruption can occur in economics. Because we are ignoring climate change, we are hurtling toward natural disruptions like the kinds I mentioned. On top of that, recent warnings indicate that we are also hurtling toward economic disruptions-- crashes, if you will--which we could avoid or moderate if we prepared. But since the fossil fuel overlords of the present Congress won't let that preparation happen, we need to expect these economic crashes. What are these economic crashes?…”