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green energy
Climate Villains Deserve the Hell They're Making on Earth
Reincarnation on a future overheated Earth might be an appropriate "reward" for government and private leaders responsible for obstructing the progress of green energy.
Oct 04, 2025
As imagined by Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) in The Divine Comedy, Hell has nine levels, with the lowest reserved for the very worst souls. Although it is no longer fashionable to believe that Hell exists, we can't prove that it doesn't. And it is generally thought that among its tortures for condemned souls are extremely high temperatures.
If the climate continues heating up we may create hellish conditions right here on an overheated Earth. Would it be appropriate for those responsible for allowing this to happen to end in an actual Hell? As the Lord High Executioner sings in The Mikado, "My object all sublime... is to make the punishment fit the crime."
Or perhaps the guilty parties could be reincarnated on the unpleasant future Earth they are helping create. Like Hell, which no one can prove does not exist, no one has ever proved that reincarnation is impossible.
So in case there is no Hell, Earth itself might take care of inflicting cosmic justice.
I imagine that Hell, if it exists, or a future overheated Earth, will have ample room for guilty members of Congress and the Supreme Court; coal, gas, and oil company executives; and the like.
Of course as a mere mortal human being, I cannot claim to be a perfect judge of my fellow mortals. But it seems to me that many current American leaders will bear heavy responsibility if we do not curb global warming in time to avoid catastrophe. I say leaders in the plural here deliberately, since no one person—not even a president—could do the damage currently being done by American policy without the help of other leaders.
I imagine that Hell, if it exists, or a future overheated Earth, will have ample room for guilty members of Congress and the Supreme Court; coal, gas, and oil company executives; and the like.
President Donald Trump began his second administration by withdrawing the US again from the Paris Agreement to fight climate change. Although "only" a symbolic action, it telegraphed the new administration's intentions to sabotage green energy.
Non-symbolic actions quickly followed. It is bad enough that the government has been canceling subsidy programs designed to hasten the day when solar and wind energy replace coal, oil, and gas.
Far worse, the administration is trying to prevent completion of major wind farms that are already largely built and in which people have invested billions of dollars. This makes no sense economically and will increase the electricity shortages already causing big increases in consumer prices.
And the administration is canceling permissions for new green projects that government agencies had already granted.
Worse still is the administration's attempt to force other countries to halt their own policies aimed at replacing dirty electricity with green electricity, using tariff rates as bargaining chips. As long as only the US slows down needed reforms, the rest of the world could at least move forward.
From a geopolitical point of view, recent US policies are making China look better and better, as it appears destined to dominate production of green energy and electric vehicles. The US continues to dominate declining industries like coal, gas, and oil—the modern equivalents of buggy whips.
Perhaps most outrageous of all (so far!) is the administration's attempt to turn off functioning satellites already in orbit that can measure carbon dioxide and methane—the chief warming agents in the atmosphere—as an "economy" measure!
Economy measure?! As "Swami Beyondananda" recently put it, "If we lose the Earth, there goes the GDP."
In the same vein, the Trump Environmental Protection Agency now proposes to stop requiring corporations to measure and report the amount of greenhouse gases they are releasing into the atmosphere.
The administration is also trying to close down its Mauna Loa installation in Hawaii and three other places measuring greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere.
Apparently the administration fears that all these measurements will undermine its already feeble arguments that it is safe to continue burning coal, oil, and gas to produce the power required by modern civilization.
As I noted earlier, reincarnation on a future overheated Earth might be an appropriate "reward" for government and private leaders responsible for obstructing the progress of green energy.
But from another point of view, an actual Hell might provide more justice for them.
Hell has no air conditioners.
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Trump and Vought Turn Shutdown Into a 'Weapon' to Target Democrats
"It's going to harm them," boasted Sen. Mike Lee, a top Trump cheerleader. "Russ Vought, the OMB director, has been dreaming about this moment... since puberty."
Oct 02, 2025
President Donald Trump is using the government shutdown to carry out an unprecedented attack on his enemies through more layoffs of federal workers and cuts to grants aimed at blue states.
In the Oval Office Tuesday, hours before the shutdown began, Trump told reporters that “when you shut it down, you have to do layoffs. So, we’d be laying off a lot of people that are going to be very affected, and they’re Democrats. They’re gonna be Democrats.”
In the days leading up to the shutdown, congressional Democrats attempted to force Republicans to roll back cuts to Medicaid and Affordable Care Act subsidies—cuts that are expected to result in as many as 15 million Americans losing their health insurance while raising premiums for tens of millions more. Trump and the GOP have blamed Democrats for the shutdown, falsely claiming that theyare pushing to fund free healthcare for "illegal aliens."
However, they've struggled to make this story land with the American public. A Washington Post poll released Thursday found that 47% of US adults blame Trump and Republicans for the shutdown, while just 30% blame Democrats and 23% say they are unsure. The sample was divided roughly equally between those who voted for Trump and those who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris (D) in 2024.
In what Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) called an effort to use "taxpayer dollars to try and shift blame," the websites for numerous government agencies—including the US departments of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), as well as Justice, Agriculture, and several others—were updated with banners that blamed "Democrats" and the "Radical Left" for the shutdown.
Meanwhile, government employees, including those at the Small Business Administration (SBA) were directed to include similar partisan language in their out-of-office auto-reply emails.
Experts have told Politico that the use of taxpayer money for such explicit partisan messaging likely violates multiple ethics laws, including the Anti-Lobbying Act, which forbids the use of appropriated funds for lobbying activities designed to “support or defeat legislation pending before Congress.” It also pushes the boundaries of the Hatch Act, which requires federal programs to be used in a nonpartisan fashion.
The progressive consumer watchdog group Public Citizen said it has filed complaints against HUD and the SBA for what it said was an "obvious Hatch Act violation."
"The SBA and other agencies increasingly adopting this illegal, partisan tactic think they can get away with it because Trump has gutted any and all ethics oversight of the federal government," said Craig Holman, a government ethics expert with Public Citizen.
After being asked about Trump's promise to lay off "Democrats" at a press conference on Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance told reporters, "We are not targeting federal agencies based on politics."
But in a Truth Social post early Thursday morning Trump struck a somewhat different tone. He spoke of plans to meet with Russell Vought, the director of the White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB), "to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut. I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity."
Trump also proudly described Vought as "he of PROJECT 2025 fame," referencing his leading role in crafting the Heritage Foundation's infamous blueprint for a far-right takeover of government—a takeover carried out in part through the purging of civil servants disloyal to Trump. During the 2024 election, Trump repeatedly insisted that he had "nothing to do with" Project 2025.
Vought has already begun to unilaterally withhold congressionally appropriated dollars for projects specifically for blue cities and states.
On Wednesday, he said that $18 billion in subway and tunnel funding for New York City had been “put on hold to ensure funding is not flowing based on unconstitutional [diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)] principles.” Not long before that, Trump had threatened to entirely cut off federal funding to the city if its voters elect the democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee and current frontrunner, as its next mayor in November.
Vought then announced Thursday that he was also stripping away another nearly $8 billion worth of funding for climate-related projects, referring to it as "Green New SCAM funding to fuel the Left's climate agenda." Vought said that the funding was being withheld exclusively from projects in states led by Democrats: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington state.
House Republicans were reportedly told by Vought on Wednesday that mass firings would also begin in "one to two" days, though he did not outline specifics about who would be fired. However, a memo Vought issued last week instructed agencies to prepare to eliminate employees “not consistent with the president’s priorities," triggering a lawsuit from federal workers' unions.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told the press Thursday that Vought was carrying out these cuts "reluctantly" and is "not enjoying the responsibility" of deciding which programs and employees get the axe.
But in an interview on Fox News, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), a top Trump cheerleader, was a bit more candid, proudly declaring that Trump and Vought are using the shutdown specifically to hurt Democrats.
"They're doing it deliberately. It's going to harm them," Lee said. "Because Russ Vought, the OMB director, has been dreaming about this moment, preparing for this moment, since puberty."
Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) said that "Vought is pushing a scheme to turn a government shutdown into a weapon to fire career civil servants and dismantle programs Congress has already passed into law. That is not only reckless. It is flatly illegal and unconstitutional."
"Have we ever had a president work so hard to hurt the people he represents?" asked Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.). "I'm not going to be intimidated by these crooks."
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A Trillion Dollars for Wasteful Pentagon and No Money for Social Goods We Need and Want
Poll after poll show Americans would rather have their tax dollars spent on public services than on Pentagon contractors, and would prefer policymakers prioritize spending on healthcare, education, housing, and infrastructure—not the military.
May 18, 2025
President Trump is requesting a record-high $1.01 trillion “defense” budget for FY 2026 while gutting federal agencies and social services that actually keep the country safe – things like clean air and water protection, Medicaid, child nutrition programs, the Department of Education, green energy, and so much more.
The U.S. already spends more on the military than the next nine countries combined despite the Pentagon being the only federal agency that has never passed a federal audit. The United States government alone operates more than 90% of the world’s foreign military bases, controls more than 42% of the world’s nuclear warheads, and dominates 43% of the global arms trade.
As the world’s largest arms dealer, the U.S. sells weapons to the majority of the world’s authoritarian governments and U.S.-made weapons are routinely implicated in human rights abuses - including facilitating Israel’s genocidal assault on Palestinians in Gaza, ethnic cleansing of the occupied West Bank, and fueling the brutal proxy war in Sudan.
Half of the trillion-dollar Pentagon budget will be handed over to corporations and lobbyists who profit from producing weapons that drive political repression, endless war, and climate collapse - including billionaires like Elon Musk. The budget also includes funding and authorization for domestic use of the military to facilitate mass deportations and detentions at an unprecedented scale.
While Pentagon contractors are set to receive record-high public subsidies, too many Americans are struggling to meet their basic needs. Despite being the richest country in the world, the U.S. has the lowest education and health outcomes and highest rate of child poverty among all economically advanced nations. Wealth inequality has never been higher - and three-quarters of the country are pessimistic about their children’s financial future.
There are no militarized solutions to the challenges facing American families and communities. More war and weapons makes us all less safe, not more. Instead of a record-high budget for war profiteers, what could federal spending do for families and communities?
A $1.01 trillion dollar investment could achieve ALL of the following:
- Hire 350,328 registered nurses to fill the national nursing shortage (cost: $44.5 billion); AND
- Insure and treat the one in five adults with opioid use disorder who have no health insurance (cost: $1.85 billion); AND
- Provide health insurance for all four million uninsured children in this country (cost: $11.5 billion); AND
- Provide affordable housing for all 3.9 million Americans who receive an eviction notice each year (cost: $37.5 billion) and all 653,000 Americans who experienced homelessness at last count - a record high (cost: $6.3 billion); AND
- Expand Head Start services to cover all 3 million children under the age of five who live in poverty (cost: $28 billion); AND
- Lift 1.5 million children out of poverty by making the Child Tax Credit fully refundable (cost: $30 billion); AND
- Hire 407,000 Elementary School Teachers to fill the national teacher shortage (cost: $39.5 billion); AND
- Provide four-year scholarships to all 3.9 million 2025 high school graduates (cost: $152 billion); AND
- Replace lead pipes nationwide for safer drinking water (cost: $47 billion); AND
- Build nationwide high-speed rail for faster, cleaner, and safer transportation (cost: $205 billion); AND
- Erase all medical debt, which currently burdens 20 million Americans, nearly 1 in 12 adults nationally (cost: $220 billion); AND
- Create 350,000 clean energy jobs (cost: $60.30 billion); AND
- Send all 127.4 million households in the U.S. a $1,000 check to help offset the current cost-of-living crisis (cost: $127.4 billion).
Solutions to the greatest challenges facing American families and communities are not only possible - they’re popular. A trillion dollar investment in ordinary Americans is not radical; it would effectively help prevent crime, improve security, and raise standards of living across the country. And it’s what most people actually want.
Poll after poll show Americans would rather have their tax dollars spent on public services than on Pentagon contractors, and would prefer policymakers prioritize spending on healthcare, education, housing, and infrastructure—not the military. Pentagon spending consistently ranks below other major programs in terms of importance regarding federal investment. In addition, the majority of Americans disapprove of the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” cuts to federal agencies and programs, believing they make the country more vulnerable. And most voters do not agree with the ham-fisted approach Trump is taking on immigration.
There is still time to fight back. The President’s trillion-dollar Pentagon request so far is just that: a request. Congress ultimately has the final say in deciding how federal money is allocated. There is bipartisan support for cutting waste, fraud, and abuse within the inflated military budget and a variety of proposals from across the political spectrum outlining how this can be achieved (see here, here, and here). As the FY 2026 budget process proceeds, it will be crucial to unite and strengthen interconnected movements fighting for government accountability and a livable future for people and the planet - not corporations who profit from the division and destruction of our communities and world.
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