Like I've Been Saying . . .

Looks like Hamilton Nolan and I agree:

There are two real issues of primary importance facing America and the world today—two issues that lie at the foundation of many others. Two issues which must be addressed in a meaningful way if we hope to live in a just and thriving nation in the long term. They are economic inequality, and climate change.

Update (December 4):  Paul Krugman makes it clear that if nothing gets done about climate change, the Republican Party is to blame.

Update (December 7):  Chris Hedges calls the climate summit a charade.

We have little time left. Those who are despoiling the earth do so for personal gain, believing they can use their privilege to escape the fate that will befall the human species. We may not be able to stop the assault. But we can refuse to abet it. The idols of power and greed, as the biblical prophets warned us, threaten to doom the human race.

Also, Steven Thrasher writes about a deliberate war on the poor.

The disparities in wealth that we term “income inequality” are no accident, and they can’t be fixed by fiddling at the edges of our current economic system. These disparities happened by design, and the system structurally disadvantages those at the bottom. The poorest Americans have no realistic hope of achieving anything that approaches income equality; even their very chances for access to the most basic tools of life are almost nil.

Update (December 9):  ExxonMobil funded climate disinformation for years, but now Fred Hiatt of the Washington Post reports:

With no government action, Exxon experts told us during a visit to The Post last week, average temperatures are likely to rise by a catastrophic (my word, not theirs) 5 degrees Celsius, with rises of 6, 7 or even more quite possible.

Update (April 2, 2017):  ExxonMobil defends the climate agreement to a hostile administration.

The Paris accord is “an effective framework for addressing the risks of climate change,” a senior Exxon official wrote in a letter to the president’s special assistant for international energy and the environment. “We welcomed the Paris Agreement when it was announced in December 2015 and again when it came into force in November 2016,” Peter Trelenberg, Exxon’s manager for environmental policy, wrote to the White House.

Update (April 8, 2018):  Turns out Shell is another oil company that suppressed warnings about climate change for decades.