Saw a PBS interview that estimated that every child born today already owes 1 million dollars toward the deficit. Thanks Enron! I'm really curious how this is going to all play out. The whole house of cards will crumble but people will still be alive so something has to follow. We're really playing with monopoly money and lately I've been musing that the same scenario that eradicated the American Indian is taking place again. Land is all important. There is no record of the flim flam that happens to allow small groups of people to own land. All that matters is who owns it and who defends it. So, after the collapse the only thing that will matter are the people who claim to be the owners of land (banks)...and the people they employ to defend that claim (thugs). It's been the model of Feudal England and Colonial America. But it has evolved into deeds and broken treaties and exploding loans. Hell, all the evidence points to a ruling that most of America was seized illegally from the Indians. AND IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE.
I realize that there is no such thing as "I told you so" in the story of Humanity. The climate change deniers will eventually reverse their rhetoric (when it's politically beneficial) and when they do they know that there will not be any time to point fingers at groups who delayed the mobilization. And that's so smart. When the climate gets so bad that the Heartland Institute does an about face and becomes pro solar and pro conservation then nobody is going to waste their time trying to remind the public of how the Heartland Institute did everything they could to spread lies and disinformation to favor a small group of oil profiteers. That hangman's trial will never take place because the crisis will take center stage. And they are perfectly correct in believing that if they can use global warming as a way to gain control of land then in the long run they will own more land. That's been the human model from the beginning There are no ramifications for enormous lies because when they are exposed then the average temperature in May will be 110 degrees and there will be no electricity from coal plants...so there will be no jury left to decide who is guilty of what lie 20 years earlier. It's really a perfect crime because it enables an elite to gain control of more land and that's all that matters.
On a scale of 1-10 my "Bleakness Factor" is around 7 today.