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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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Hundreds of Thousands Mobilize Worldwide to 'Draw the Line' for Climate Action and Justice
"From Indonesia and Turkey, to London and South Africa, activists and campaigners are raising the call to draw the line against injustice, pollution, and violence," said 350.org.
Sep 19, 2025
Ahead of this month's United Nations General Assembly and November's UN Climate Change Conference in Brazil, climate and social justice defenders around the world are taking part in a global week of action culminating in weekend events "to draw the line against injustice, pollution, and violence—and for a future built on peace, clean energy, and fairness."
Hundreds of thousands of people in more than 100 countries are expected to take part in this weekend's demonstrations, which will mark the climax of the "Draw the Line" week of over 600 worldwide actions.
Actions are set to take place in cities including Berlin, Buenos Aires, Dhaka, Istanbul, Jakarta, Johannesburg, London, Manila, Melbourne, Mumbai, Nairobi, New Delhi, New York, Paris, São Paulo, Suva, Tokyo, Wellington, and Belém—where the UN Climate Change Conference, also known as COP30, is scheduled to kick off on November 10.
"United under a call from Indigenous leaders of the Amazon and the Pacific, people across more than 90 countries are joining marches, rallies, strikes, and creative actions to demand an end to fossil fuels, a just transition, and real climate justice," Draw the Line said in a statement.
"The mobilizations highlight escalating climate impacts, rising food and energy costs, deadly floods and heatwaves, and growing insecurity driven by fossil fuels and conflict," the campaign added. "Protesters are also uplifting community-led solutions: renewable energy systems, debt cancellation, fair taxation, and land rights for Indigenous peoples and traditional communities."
From Indonesia and Turkey, to London and South Africa, activists and campaigners are raising the call to ✍️____ Draw the Line against injustice, pollution, and violence, and building the moment for the global weekend of actions starting tomorrow⚡#DrawTheLine
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— 350.org (@350.org) September 18, 2025 at 9:35 AM
According to the climate action group 350.org:
This global moment comes at a critical time when the rich and the powerful countries and corporations continue their colonial and extractivist agenda, while world leaders fail to prevent and stop the genocide taking place in Palestine, Sudan, and Congo, and the governments across the world are veering towards authoritarianism, undoing decades of progress. With every tenth of a degree of global heating, the consequences for people and ecosystems multiply, as seen in the devastating wildfires, typhoons, cloudbursts, floods, and extreme heatwaves already sweeping across continents this year.
“We are drawing the line against deceptive tactics led by rich nations and big corporations to perpetuate fossil fuel dominance and delay the equitable just transition to a fossil-free and healthy planet," explained Lidy Nacpil, coordinator of the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development.
"We demand a complete coal phaseout in Asia by 2035 and a rapid and just energy transition out of fossil fuels and to 100% renewable energy before 2050," Nacpil added. "We demand the full delivery of climate finance obligations of the Global North to the Global South for urgent climate action including just transition. This is a crucial part of their reparations for historical and continuing harms to our people.”
The Draw the Line actions coincide with Disrupt Complicity Weekend of solidarity with the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights and against Israel's genocide, forced famine, apartheid, occupation, ethnic cleansing, and settler colonization in Palestine.
Read the full statement: bdsmovement.net/news/disrupt...
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— BDS movement (@bdsmovement.bsky.social) August 28, 2025 at 4:38 AM
“In the current, most depraved, induced starvation phase of the US-Israeli livestreamed genocide against... Palestinians in the Gaza ghetto, Palestinian civil society stands united in calling on people of conscience and grassroots movements for racial, economic, social, climate, and gender justice worldwide to help us build a critical mass of people power to end state, corporate, and institutional complicity with Israel’s regime of settler-colonial apartheid and genocide, particularly through effective BDS actions and pressure," BDS movement co-founder Omar Barghouti said in a statement this week.
"We are not begging for charity but calling for true solidarity, and that begins with doing no harm to our liberation struggle, at the very least, as a profound moral and legal obligation," he added.
The Draw the Line actions come as the world is on track to overshoot the best-case 1.5°C warming target established under the landmark Paris climate agreement. Experts argue that staying below that limit significantly reduces the likelihood of catastrophic weather events, protects vulnerable ecosystems, lowers the risk of devastating food and water insecurity, and curbs climate-related economic harms.
Not only is the planet on track to exceed the 1.5°C target, a key United Nations climate report published last October warned that the world is on course for between 2.6-3.1°C of "catastrophic" heating over the next century, unless urgent action is taken to dramatically slash greenhouse gas emissions by more than half within the next decade.
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1,000+ Experts Rip EPA for 'Reckless Dismissal of Established Climate Science'
Repealing the endangerment finding, they wrote, "is contrary to science and the public interest."
Sep 16, 2025
More than 1,000 scientists and other experts on Tuesday sent a letter to US Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin explaining why they "strenuously object" to his effort to repeal the EPA's 2009 "endangerment finding," which has enabled federal climate regulations over the past 15 years.
Amid mounting fears that he would take such action, Zeldin in late July unveiled the rule to rescind the landmark legal opinion that greenhouse gases endanger public health and the welfare of the American people—part of Republican President Donald Trump's broader pro-polluter agenda.
"As climate scientists, public health experts, and economists, we can attest to the indisputable scientific evidence of human-caused climate change, its harmful impacts on people’s health and well-being, and the devastating costs it is imposing on communities across the nation and around the world," states the new letter, organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists. "This explicit attempt to undermine or weaken these findings, as well as the critical regulations linked to them, is contrary to science and the public interest."
"We also strongly oppose the EPA’s reckless dismissal of established climate science as part of its proposal to repeal the endangerment finding, including the agency’s heavy reliance on an unscientific study commissioned by the Department of Energy. This report is rife with inaccuracies, deliberately cherry-picks and mischaracterizes data, and has not undergone a rigorous scientific review process," the letter continues, echoing an expert review of the government report from earlier this month.
🚨NEW: Scientists from nearly every state, DC, and Puerto Rico are calling out Trump's Environmental Protection Agency for failing to fulfill their core duties: protect the environment and public health.
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— Union of Concerned Scientists (@ucs.org) September 16, 2025 at 11:17 AM
Citing major US and global analyses, along with thousands of independent, peer-reviewed scientific studies, the letter stresses that "the scientific evidence on human-caused climate change and its consequences was unequivocal in 2009 and, since that time, has become even more dire and compelling."
It says that "based on the best available science," scientists know:
- Climate change poses severe harms to human health and well-being;
- Climate change is clearly increasing the likelihood of extreme events; and
- The economic toll of climate change is rising.
Harms to human health and well-being include higher rates of heat-related deaths, increased spread of some infectious diseases, and decreased food and water safety due to climate-fueled extreme weather events, the letter says. It also highlights that, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), "billion-dollar disasters in the United States are on the rise, driven by a combination of climate factors and increased development in disaster-prone areas."
Despite such findings, the Trump administration is making various moves to boost the planet-wrecking fossil fuel industry and the president withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement—again—when he returned to office in January. Parties to the 2015 climate agreement aim to limit global temperature rise this century to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels.
🌎🧪Over 1,000+ scientists joined together to defend the EPA's Endangerment Finding, and you have SIX DAYS to make your voice heard too.
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— Union of Concerned Scientists (@ucs.org) September 16, 2025 at 11:17 AM
"The world stands on the cusp of breaching the 1.5°C (2.7°F) mark on a long-term basis, the global average temperature increase above preindustrial levels that scientists have long warned about," the experts noted Tuesday. "Communities across the nation are already dealing with devastating and costly climate impacts, that are set to worsen as global warming accelerates. Humanity's window to act to stave off some of the worst impacts of climate change is fast closing; any further delay is harmful and costly."
"We urge you to stop dismantling critical climate regulations and evading EPA's responsibility by pushing disinformation about climate science and impacts," they concluded. "Instead, we call on you to act with urgency to help address this pressing challenge by limiting heat-trapping emissions. People across the nation are relying on the EPA to fulfill its mission to protect public health and the environment."
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