{"id":1322,"date":"2018-11-22T09:04:17","date_gmt":"2018-11-22T14:04:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/?p=1322"},"modified":"2018-11-22T09:04:17","modified_gmt":"2018-11-22T14:04:17","slug":"its-thanksgiving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/index.php\/2018\/11\/22\/its-thanksgiving\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s Thanksgiving"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s Thanksgiving<\/p>\n

It\u2019s Thanksgiving \u2013 the truly American holiday where the focus is on gathering family together and sharing fellowship and food.\u00a0 In many families, it\u2019s time to talk football, or weather, or pretty much anything other than politics.\u00a0 Politics is too volatile; the issues too divisive, for many families to discuss.\u00a0 It ruins turkey digestion.<\/p>\n

A couple of weeks ago I went to a birthday celebration for a friend.\u00a0 I knew that my political views weren\u2019t \u201cacceptable\u201d in that company, and I determined that I would not disrupt the festivities by entering the political melee.\u00a0 But there was that one guy, who constantly wanted to stir the pot.\u00a0 From forest fires to immigration, he kept dropping comments to see what kind of local inferno he could ignite.\u00a0 Out of respect for my friends, I didn\u2019t jump into that fire, but it was hard.\u00a0 I ate a lot, and drank little, in order to keep busy.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s Thanksgiving.\u00a0It\u2019s also the week that Ryan Zinke, the \u201cking\u201d of the Department of the Interior (his flag is raised when he enters, lowered when he\u2019s \u201cleft the building\u201d) blamed the forest fires in California on \u201cradical environmentalists.\u201d\u00a0 His argument:\u00a0 if they\u2019d stop suing logging companies, and the forests could be cut, then there wouldn\u2019t be fires.<\/p>\n

I have to admit there feels like a small truth inside that statement.\u00a0 Forests don\u2019t burn if you cut them down.\u00a0 But it ignores all of the benefits of forests, from carbon dioxide absorption to mudslide management.\u00a0 And, being Ryan Zinke, it plays directly into the hands of \u201cbig lumber\u201d who have spent decades trying to buy passage into the heart of California\u2019s forests.\u00a0 There\u2019s plenty of money to be made there.<\/p>\n

Zinke\u2019s statement echoes the right-wing meme on Facebook, blaming the \u201cwoodsy owl\u201d for the fires.\u00a0 The woodsy owl was an endangered species whose habitat was threatened by logging, one of the first court cases testing the Endangered Species Act.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t log out that forest, but it wasn\u2019t the one that burned in California.\u00a0The woodsy owl\u2019s habitat was located on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington, far from Paradise or Malibu or the other California fire targets.<\/p>\n

Zinke, and President Trump, have both ignored the scientific FACT of human induced global warming.\u00a0 In doing so, they struggle to find reasons for the fires in California, and the increasing levels of hurricane damage in the Southeast, and the growing flood dangers on the coast.\u00a0\u00a0 And they do so not because they are stupid; they ignore global warming because it is to their \u201csupporters\u201d economic benefit to do so.<\/p>\n

Global warming is in large part caused by burning fossil fuels:\u00a0 gas, oil, and coal.\u00a0 In order to deal with global warming, we have to reduce fossil fuel use,\u00a0 it\u2019s really that simple.\u00a0 But, in political terms, that means there is no \u201cclean coal,\u201d there needs to be increased spending on mass transportation to get cars off of the roads, there needs to be less oil and gas production.\u00a0 The US, now the largest petroleum producer\u00a0<\/a>in the world (thanks to fracking, whatever that may be doing to local environments) has every vested interest in increasing fossil fuel use, not decreasing it.<\/p>\n

So global warming can\u2019t be human fault.\u00a0 It must be a \u201cnatural cycle\u201d that we play little part in. \u00a0And forests don\u2019t need to burn: \u00a0we can cut them down.\u00a0 No one burns in a desert. \u00a0And the friends and supporters of Trump and Zinke will make their money, at the cost of untold millions in future generations.<\/p>\n

I know my Thanksgiving table.\u00a0 We can have these conversations \u2013 and no one will throw a drumstick or a roll.\u00a0 But if you are in a \u201cmixed\u201d setting; find a neutral subject.\u00a0 And find the wishbone to share with your Trumpian relative.\u00a0 It would be a start.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s Thanksgiving It\u2019s Thanksgiving \u2013 the truly American holiday where the focus is on gathering family together and sharing fellowship and food.\u00a0 In many families, it\u2019s time to talk football, or weather, or pretty much anything other than politics.\u00a0 Politics is too volatile; the issues too divisive, for many families to discuss.\u00a0 It ruins turkey … Continue reading “It’s Thanksgiving”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nIt's Thanksgiving : Our America - 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