After abstaining from response to Al Fonzi’s previous opinion pieces —spinning his own ludicrous narratives and butchering historical context—Al Fonzi’s “False narratives” (Aug. 2) was just one hypocritical step too far for this pre-Trump member of the former Republican Party and Cuesta College history major.
While Fonzi’s thesis-like statement seemed to imply that society (and 99 percent of the science) is plain wrong about the effects of climate change, and therefore responsible for our failing environmental policy, his curious list of catastrophes was unable to support the underlying message that chemical and fossil-fuel-generated climate change isn’t affecting the fire season and “fire experts don’t agree” about climate change.
With all due respect, Al, if we want to learn anything about climate change, we will ask a scientist, an environmental expert, not a self-proclaimed fire expert who seems to reject modern science and fact in favor of yellow journalism from Fox News.
Don’t believe what you see and hear, right? The East Coast isn’t experiencing record flooding, the coral reef systems aren’t dying, the glaciers aren’t melting, the hurricane seasons aren’t more severe, and our fire seasons aren’t getting longer due to record droughts. These are not the droids you are looking for.
Just say it, Al, you’re a climate change denier … with zero evidence from science and zero support from your version of American history with which to refute mountains of science-based evidence from all over the world. Even NASA and the U.S. military recognize climate change as a real and serious threat to our national security, while folks like Fonzi seem impervious to the same set of facts.
While waxing on about his version of history, Fonzi forgets to identify which “tough decisions” have been neglected by our ignorant “leftist” society, and what bright minds of the fossil fuel or chemical industry can save us from our socialist selves. Which questions should we ask, Al?
Call me a crazy liberal nut, because that is what I will undoubtedly be labeled for my faith in science and distrust of corporate America, but what I find uniquely absurd is the perverse level of denial and justification needed to convince oneself that environmentalists and climate scientists are in the wrong about climate science, while profiteering obstructionists—with a First Amendment right to bribe our chosen representatives—really care about the health of the planet and the hopes of our future generations.
I say these things not to be offensive or demonize radical Republicans, but in defense of common-sense conservationism and sustainability, environmental science, basic human decency, and some goddamn respect for fellow Americans—who are every bit as patriotic as Al—who are tired of the unyielding and baseless attacks on everyone who fails to blindly embrace laissez-faire capitalism, trickle-down economics, hyper-deregulation, corporate welfare, tax cuts for the wealthy, the gutting of the EPA, and the rape of the environment.
I think it’s pretty clear who is mastering the obstructionism, but you need only open your eyes and look at your yellow scenery, your dried out creeks, the plastic in the ocean, and your smoke-filled sky. Δ
Erik Huber is a Cuesta College history student from Atascadero. Send comments through the editor at clanham@newtimesslo.com or write a letter in response for publication by emailing letters@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Aug 9-19, 2018.
Eric, Col. Fonzi is a former North County Republican Party official and his energetic efforts to discredit the wide scientific consensus on climate change/global warming and their symptoms are par for the course. Since the 1990s and Al Gore’s first book on the environmental crisis, Republicans have allied with the petroleum industry to fabricate a counter-narrative to climate science. They first failed with the discrediting of their handful of select “expert” scientists, euphemistically called “skeptics,” and have shifted their arguments to create doubt in the general public.
One such tactic that Col. Fonzi employed was the de-contextualized and potted histories of past conflagrations, as if the kinds of fires we are seeing in recent years are “normal.” Or that the fires are primarily due to unthinned forests. In the former instance, the fires are happening with greater intensity and frequency due to the increase in the unprecedented factors caused by the burning of fossil fuels that create the atmospheric conditions for the kind of destruction we see in the Carr Fire. In the second instance, a great deal of the land destroyed is not in forests at all, but rather low-lying and scattered chaparral that has become extremely dry due to the effects of global warming and related drought.
The world we live in is undergoing great changes.
Not just climate change but also parts of the world just beginning to catch up with us.
To think the developed world can stave off the developing world with legislation and/or Agreements to cut carbons released into the air in an organized fashion is conceit of the highest order.
Yes, things can be done but like all changes in human behavior, it takes education right down to the individual living off the land. Change follows understanding, not the other way around.
So, write those article pitched to the average reader and watch them ask for fuel efficient cars and the many new products just beginning to be available. End some EPA rule. The people will pay attention and make choices that retain the rule’s effect.
It is the choices of individuals that run the world and it’s economy.
When individuals ask for it, the market supplies it.
Hear, Hear, Erik Huber! The Fonz is a nutty as a fruitcake.