The Quiet Road

As I was reading the latest news on the terrifying acceleration of Arctic Climate Change, it struck me that — assuming both humanity and the Santa Claus myth survive the next couple of centuries — at some point we are going to be forced to relocate old Saint Nick to the Antarctic. Unless we add some kind of undersea base into the myth, the North Pole is rapidly becoming an untenable location for Santa’s workshop. And over the next hundred years, even Lapland is likely to look distinctly “unChristmassy” for most of the year.

Some parents will weave Santa’s relocation into the myth… it may well become a “traditional” way of introducing young children to Climate Change? Others will simply insist against the consensus of informed opinion that Santa has always lived in the South Pole and it’s a goddamn Chinese hoax to suggest otherwise.

UPDATE: Within 20 seconds of posting this, I read Philip Challinor’s far better take on the story…

You better watch out
You better not cry
You better not pout
I’m telling you why
Santa Claus is going to drown https://t.co/VlR55gGHtA

— Philip Challinor (@pchallinor) 21 December 2016

As I watched President-Elect Donald Trump become embroiled in a twitter flame-war with China, it struck me that we are indeed entering a period of genuine uncertainty.

I am vaguely hopeful that my general cynicism about US politics and democracy is validated; that the president actually has little or no real power; that Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex will simply keep trundling towards catastrophic climate and resource wars in much the same way its been doing for the past 50 years; and President Trump will essentially become the world’s most embarrassing reality TV show for the next 4 years. The Pentagon’s Court Jester.

Because the alternative… that the guy will actually be responsible for substantial shifts in US policy, that he will set directions and the US behemoth will follow them… that’s honestly quite terrifying. His position on Climate Change alone — if translated into active policy changes — will make him the most damaging president in recent US history. I’m not saying current US policy is anything short of disastrous on this issue… but Trump’s anti-science stance has culminated in threats not just to ignore existing climate research but to veto any further research being carried out by US government organisations. This is very worrying (hint: remove NASA, the EPA and the USGCRP from climate research and you deal a very serious blow to the entire field that will cause lasting damage).

Bizarrely, I find myself sincerely hoping that American democracy is fundamentally broken. That the president is an ineffectual figurehead who will be deftly handled and manipulated by the Illuminati, or the Rockefeller Foundation, or the Gnomes of Zurich, or the Zionist conspiracy, or the the Liberal Elite, or The Greys, or the Milk Marketing Board… to essentially keep everything exactly the way it is.

Normally when a politician gets elected I hope they shake things up; that they challenge the system and turn against the establishment. Not so with Trump. The man is a menace.