The Greenius with his friend and fellow volunteer, Charles, getting ready to dig and plant.

Man, I can’t believe it’s been over a month now since I wrote in this space about the vandals who destroyed the trees and native plants at Ken Malloy Harbor Regional Park over Thanksgiving. But time has afterburners when the holidays roll around especially when your friendly neighborhood Greenius is in such demand locally. It’s a blessing to be sure, but things fall through the cracks, as witness my update on, as Paul Harvey used to intone, “the rest of the story…”

The good new is, it’s actually good news for a change.  Very good news indeed.

Charles working, Lilly supervising.

Martin Byhower in his element working with the kids.

I showed up with my shovel, work gloves and orange 5 gallon bucket and after introductions and instructions was put to work digging a deep hole for the large native oak tree sapling I was assigned to plant.  It was one of five oak saplings donated by the city.  I learned to dig the hole deep enough for the entire root ball and how to get the tree and rootball out of the five gallon container it was growing in.  

Greenius digging a hole for his tree

Martin Byhower, kneeling, gives the Greenius a quick lesson on planting the oak trees, which are on a bluff overlooking Ken Malloy Regional Park.

Martin Byhower helping to stake one of the oak trees

Once I got my tree in and covered it with dirt other volunteers hand carried over several buckets of mulch to protect the new planting, block the weeds and help retain moisture.  We then used another bucket brigade to water the tree, employing the backside of the shovel to divert and spread the water around the base of the tree.

After each of  the trees was planted other student volunteers pounded in six foot high heavy wooden stakes to tie the tree to and give it support while it grows.  The energy and enthusiasm of Martin’s volunteer army gave me renewed energy and enthusiasm – not to mention a better feeling about the younger generations we’re leaving our spoiled climate to.  They weren’t there to goof off or just get school credit for the work they were doing, they were there to accomplish something they took seriously.

While I and the other tree people planted the native oak saplings the other half of the group spread out across the hillside to plant wildflower seeds and young drought tolerant california native plants.

Thriving native plants planted over the year by Byhower and his volunteers

In addition to the work we did that day I got to see the results of the plantings Martin and his revolving team of  young student and community volunteers have been doing over the many years he’s adopted Harbor Regional Park as his own.  The transformation is nothing short of remarkable and just goes to show what passionate, dedicated people, even in relatively small numbers can accomplish when they put in the time and persevere.

The view of the refinery looking in the other direction.

The really amazing thing about Ken Malloy Harbor Regional Park is its proximity to the ugly refineries of Wilmington.  Look in one direction and you see one possible future with the native plantings and the lake with beautiful herons, egrets, ducks and other wildlife.  But turn around and look the other way and it looks like something out of John Carpenter’s Escape from Los Angeles.  

If we’re lucky, some day soon the refinery will be gone and will be reclaimed with the same kind of native plantings Martin Byhower and his volunteers are diligently transforming the park with.

Three of the five trees planted ready to spread their roots and reach for the sky

And if we’re really lucky karma will deal harshly with the vandals who wrecked havoc on the Thanksgiving week plantings and they will develop a stinging, itching rash that no salve or ointment will ever relieve.  A Greenius can dream, can’t he?

“Vandals Uproot Saplings Planted by Youngsters“

The story in a nutshell read, “Forget the financial loss.  Vandals crushed a lot more than that this week when they ripped out fledgling oak trees and smashed other plants being cultivated by dozens of young people from across the South Bay in Ken Malloy Harbor Regional Park.“

It steamed my chaps and I wasn’t about to let it go.  I work with a lot of great young people in my environmental efforts and to find out that low class creeps, whoever they are, think they can destroy the best efforts of kids giving their free weekend time to try an improve one of our local parks was just something I am not willing to put up with.  And you shouldn’t either.  That’s why I’m asking you to join me next Saturday, December 10, at 9am at Ken Malloy Harbor Regional Park, to work with Martin Byhower, who heads up the park’s volunteer restoration efforts, and the young volunteers, to repair the damage and help them with their restoration efforts.  I can’t think of a better way to celebrate the spirit of the season.

Martin Byhower and his student restoration volunteers at Ken Malloy Harbor Regional Park

Byhower paid about $300 or $400 for the trees that were ripped out and on Thanksgiving day discovered eight saplings ripped from the ground and crushing plant damage from the moron(s) who drove a car or truck over them.  He also found graffiti scrawled all over the nearby gazebo and on tree trunks in the same area.

So I’m donating $50 and am asking my friends and fellow environmentalists to kick in whatever you can to help pay for new tree saplings and make this wrong thing right.  I’ve already had another $100 in pledged donations from two kind-hearted friends who read my plea on Facebook and I’d be appreciative if any of you can lend a few bucks and/or lend some time on Saturday too.

Martin Byhower

I’ve never met Martin Byhower, but I know about and admire him and his work.  He’s a teacher at Chadwick School in Palos Verdes, where he recruits his students, members of the school’s environmental club and other South Bay students and Boy Scouts to get their hands dirty while learning about the ecology of one of our most important natural habitats. Byhower is also active in our local South Bay Audubon Society, is a well known birder, and has been volunteering his time to improving this park for over 23 years. 

He and the kids he works with deserve better and I’m going to do what I can to help them get it.

Good old now dead Jackass, Ryan Dunn, never provided me with a single ounce of entertainment, but he has handily provided me with an apt metaphor for all his fellow Jackasses who keep talking smack and moron-level nonsense about global warming and climate change being a hoax.

So he’s got that going for him now.

If we’re not the climate equivalent of a Jackass who already has 23 tickets and still gets drunk off his ass and drives 140 miles an hour and crashes and burns well then, I don’t know who is.

According to court records, Dunn had at least 23 driving infractions over the last 13 years from six different counties, among them citations for speeding and careless driving, driving an unregistered vehicle, driving without a license, two parking-related transgressions and a criminal mischief-damage to property citation.

Damn. Who’d have ever guessed HE’D get hisself terminated by automobile? Who could have possibly seen that coming down the road?…

I’ve been reporting since 2007 that we were headed for a climate collision unless we quickly and radically changed course and drastically cut our use of fossil fuels and emission of greenhouse gases.  It’s been an easy story to accurately report because the colossal majority of the world’s experts on this issue all agree.  

And the people who disagree are either blatantly shilling for the dirty fuel industry or have succumb to the relentless multi-billion dollar propaganda campaign that’s been run on the same model the cigarette industry used for decades.  Either way those people are your worst enemies if you have kids or care about what happens to our young generations or the generations who come after them.

That radical course change needed to start a few years ago, but the exact opposite happened instead.  We just kept burning more and more fossil fuels and emitting more and more planet-cooking greenhouse gas emissions.

So be it. You can’t unring that bell even if you don’t hear it tolling, or know for whom it tolls. Even if you don’t understand that them bells are ringing for you and your gal…

And now just as sure as a drunken jackass going 140 miles an hours is destined to crash and burn, so too is our civilization as our shit hits the fan.  And when you’re speeding that fast you shouldn’t be surprised when you hit the wall a lot sooner than you expected to.

People who know what they’re talking about have been predicting the extreme weather that is now the norm in our world since the 1990s.  That extreme weather is the result of the CO2 and other gasses emitted from burning fossil fuels.  That’s the same reason the frozen parts of our planet are now melting, the dry hot places are burning and why the air, land and sea temperatures are all going up to levels that scare the holy shit out of climate scientists.

2010 was the most extreme year of weather in the history of planet earth and anyone who tells you it wasn’t is just another Jackass who you probably shouldn’t ride in the passenger seat with – even if you ARE looking for a fast and furious thrill ride to brighten up your otherwise dull and dreary existence.

It’s only going to get wilder and wackier from here – or as a recent article on the subject put it:

Epic floods, massive wildfires, drought and the deadliest tornado season in 60 years are ravaging the United States, with scientists warning that climate change will bring even more extreme weather.

The human and economic toll over just the past few months has been staggering: hundreds of people have died, and thousands of homes and millions of acres have been lost at a cost estimated at more than $20 billion.

And the United States has not even entered peak hurricane season.

But hell, that doesn’t mean you have to pay any more attention than you have been – or ever even mention any of this stuff or expect your elected officials to do so. Why put a harsh on your mellow?

It’s the first holiday weekend of the summer, damnit! It’s beautiful out today, gasoline is less than $4 a gallon and the stock market was up over 600 points last week.  Life is sweet and they’re going to explode bright, colorful shiny things up in the sky tomorrow night.  Who gives a flying fuck about climate change and global warming right now?  Certainly not most of the people I know.

Fair enough. I’ll just place my faith in the magic bullet, deus ex machina solution to all of it and go about my business.

Just do me a favor, will you?  Don’t go acting all surprised, shocked and “How could this ever have happened?” on us when the hell and high water (as Joe Romm’s great book of 2006 called it) arrives in your neighborhood and becomes impossible to ignore any longer at your house. 

I took an unexpected trip in the WABAC Machine last week while I was on vacation with the lovely and talented Debra just outside Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Park here in America’s most beautiful state, California.

We like to rent a house in the town of Three Rivers when we go up there and we’ve always found different, very cool places to stay on Vacation Rental By Owner (vrbo.com). The house we stayed in this trip was perfect. It was a craftsman-built one-bedroom with every amenity. Private. Quiet. On 13 acres and just a 15 minute drive from the Park’s southern entrance.

There was a nice selection of books, especially guides to the flora and fauna of the High Sierras. We also found magazines (Utne Reader anyone?) CDs and Blueray DVD movies and documentaries.

I pulled an old issue of Sierra (the magazine of the Sierra Club) from July/August 1997. It was there because the cover story was “Among the Ancients, Giant Sequoias of the Sierra” Another article headline that made the cover, “Is Al Gore Our Great Green Hope?”

Wow… 14 years ago doesn’t seem like a million years ago, but damn if it wasn’t.

Vice President, Al Gore, talking about the need to take immediate action on global warming and failing to convince the President or any Republicans that he knew what the hell he was talking about.

Indeed as it turned out he knew far more than the President or any member of Congress did on the subject but none of them cared because Gore’s personality and persona didn’t work on TV.  I’ve always said that it’s a curse to be truly intelligent in the USA and nobody in American politics ever fails when they attack the smartest person in the room for having too damn much intelligence and not enough common man “I want to have a beer with that dude” appeal.

Al Gore is one reason I like to believe in my own favorite version of the String Theory of particle physics – multiple alternative universes occurring simultaneously is the way I like to grok it.

In one of those alternative realities Al Gore got elected President in 2000 and because he understood what was happening with CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions he made cutting emissions, and developing renewable and clean energy sources our country’s focus and goals.

The USA got the leap on everyone else with solar, wind and other fossil free energy as well as electric cars and other alternative fuel vehicles. Light rail and high speed rail boomed in the 8 Gore years and the American economy soared in the new clean energy renaissance.

Unfortunately for me and Deb, we’re living in the alternative universe where the dirty energy mafia runs things, the one where they stole the election from Al Gore and made a former oil company man the President. He then made sure there would be no clean energy renaissance because he’d spend more money than ever imaginable on imaginary wars in the Middle East while allowing his fat cat backers on Wall Street – the brokers, bankers and hedge fund masterminds to take this country to the brink of bankruptcy while they personally made out like bandits.

In this alternative reality we’re in, the crashing and burning of the economy, just when the world was deciding whether to take bold and decisive action on global warming, was a deliberate arson job designed to make sure financial survival trumped making any bold moves like carbon taxes and rapid transitions from oil, coal and gas.

In the dimensional string we live in cartoon characters hold all the seats in both the House and Senate and their legislative actions are decidedly more Itchy and Scratchy than the Simpsons or even Futurama. They preside over the demise of our civilization with the arrogant ignorance of a Donald Trump in his very own make believe TV studio boardroom.

Speaking of the King of TV Comedy, there can be no satire funnier than the reality of other Republican Presidential candidates looking down their noses at The Donald as a legit contender to the throne – as if they were in a different, more exalted class or higher rung on the evolutionary ladder. That dog just won’t hunt in 2011 when all politics is a reality show – and not one that requires any talent or skill other than being the last schmuck standing after everyone else has been fired and given their post-credits taxicab confessional moment to explain why they don’t really suck.

That’s the perfect analogy for our future here in this alternative reality where we’re playing out the “Do Nothing About Global Warming” scenario until it’s far too late and we then witness the hell and high waters that come with CO2 levels above 45o ppm and global temperature increases above 3 degrees. It’s what the cartoon characters who run our dimension call “a hoax.”

Just like helping to “Preserve, Protect and Promote the National Parks” which has been our mission at The Parks Company since we launched the company in July of 1997.

And right there on page 53 of that very same issue of Sierra Magazine I was time traveling through at our Sequoia View Cottage was the very first ad The Parks Company ever ran for our custom designed, original Yellowstone National Park hat.

My best friend, Mike Baggetta, and I started the Parks Company after learning what lousy shape the National Parks were in with billions in deferred upkeep, repairs and regular maintenance because no President or Congress is willing to adequately fund the Parks no matter what the shape of the economy at the time.

If it were up to me, all Presidents and all members of Congress would be banned from the National Parks unless they want to go to anonymously volunteer their time on a parks improvement project. And I’m not talking some phony photo op crap for 30 minutes while the cameras roll. I’m talking about a week or more of tiring physical labor or don’t bother coming. 

In 1997 I was naive enough to believe Mike and I could make a difference and to think that if enough Americans found out about the condition the parks were in they’d want to help too. We traveled to Parks all over the country to see for ourselves, to talk to National Park Rangers and Superintendents and the folks who run the nonprofit support groups.

We also made regular trips to Washington DC to lobby for support for the National Parks at the House, Senate, and NGO levels and we learned that we could meet with anyone we gave money to. The more money we gave the longer the meeting was and better the food got. But nothing we did could gain the parks any more love or funding.

We could convince Mattel and 20th Century Fox and other successful companies to get on board but politicians knew that the Interior Department and its NPS had no juice come budget season and there were no big political payoffs to come from being the champion of the National Parks. Too few people give a shit about that title. 

That was back in 1997-2000 and if I thought things were bad for the parks and people were apathy-maxed out then, all I had to do was wait till 2011 to see how much less Americans could care about the environment, let alone their parks – be they state parks or national.

When the mantra is “Cut government spending and cut taxes too!” then nobody is too worried about what shape the parks – or any other landscape – are in when we pass them onto the next generation – especially not when their belief system has them bizarrely focused on what size national deficit the next generation will inherit.  As if the deficits of any other era in our lifetimes have ever made a rat’s ass worth of difference.

In an economic system as rigged and gamed as ours, the deficit in national parks maintenance, repair and upkeep is monumentally more important than the crooked numbers game racket that is the U.S. deficit. Except not here in this alternative dimension.

And believe me, I know about deficits.  The Parks Company hasn’t made a profit in the 14 years we’ve been in business and most people don’t even know that we exist. But we’ve made people happy with our products and we’ve helped further our “Every Sale Supports the Parks” promise with the small scale grants we’ve made at National Parks around the country. The way we did it was through financial sacrifice -which as you may know is no longer voluntary.

It gave me real joy to see the results of one of those grants while at Sequoia National Park outside the Foothill Visitor Center where we helped pay for plant identification plaques that still look good today… Even if some them have the incorrect plant names on them.

It’s tiny, incremental, insignificant improvements like those plant I.D. markers that are all we have left now here in this dimension of the silly string mulitverse. 

Getting some new bike lanes installed on local city streets, getting plastic bags and water bottles replaced with more sustainable options, putting some solar panels on a few buildings now and then, starting a community garden, doing a beach clean-up a few times a year and going to lots of meetings.  You know, feel-good, positive stuff that’s way too late in the game to make any difference at all, but stuff that will help occupy our time while we hurtle at accelerating speed towards the climate catastrophe that surly is our fate to suffer – and so much sooner than we think… if in fact we are still thinking at all.

The script has already been written and all that’s left for us to do is act it out until the credits roll.

If you don’t know how damaging  plastics are to our environment here are two free showings on Earth Day 2011 – Friday, April 22 – of the movie BAG IT that will enlighten you and make you angry.  Angry is good when it comes to more petroleum based products that we have shoved down our throats until they choke our landfills and oceans.  The Greenius says, Ban Plastic Bags!  Then force the manufacturers of those bags to clean up the mess they’ve made all over the planet.

How’d you like to enjoy 7-and-a-half miles of L.A. streets free of motorized vehicles and open only to bicyclists and pedestrians? Stroll, play, talk, celebrate -do whatever you want on the public street without sucking up gas fumes or fearing for your life from drunk drivers, texting drivers, drivers eating or putting on makeup or just plain dangerous behind the wheel lunatics.

That’s exactly the scene you’re going to get this Sunday, April 10 from 10am to 3pm at the second ever L.A. CicLaVia where public streets from Boyle Heights to Downtown, MacArthur Park to East Hollywood will be shut down to traffic and open to you and me emission free.

My favorite part of this next CicLaVia is the Bike Parade coming from my friends at Greenpeace and Sierra Club which they’re calling ROLL AGAINST COAL.  In case you didn’t know, the City of Los Angeles still gets 40% of its electricity from coal-fired power plants, the dirtiest polluters and greenhouse gassers on the planet. It’s long been time to kick coal out of L.A.’s power supply and that’s exactly what Greenpeace and Sierra Club have in mind with their BEYOND COAL CAMPAIGN.

Sunday’s bike parade is part of that campaign and designed to call more attention to it. Not only will those Rolling AGainst Coal have a traveling good time together as we bike parade throughout the event, but we’ll be busting out the Creative Greenius with the decoration of our bicycles and the visual aides and props we also sport to raise awareness about the city’s addiction to coal and the life-saving difference Los Angeles could make if it fully commits to the green vision for a clean energy future!  Get all the details you need after the jump.

Roll against Coal will meet up at City Hall at 11am (meet your fellow Rollers at the statue on the south lawn of City Hall). The group will spend about 30 minutes decorating our bikes (organizers will have some signs and materials for you but please bring your own materials as well). Participants will also get stylin’ Greenpeace and Sierra Club t-shirts!

At 11:30 we’ll all pose for a memorable group photo in front of L.A. City Hall that will be shared with our members of City Council, and then we’ll hit the streets as a cool, coasting kick-ass coal-fighting pedal powered posse!  And remember, this is CicLaVia so being on our bikes without the cars, buses and trucks will be a joy and cosmic enlightenment – guaranteed!

Did I mention that there will be fabulous *PRIZES* for the most creative bike decorations!?  So don’t worry about feeling foolish or making an ass out of yourself, because you may already be a winner!

Just how creative do you have to be?  Here’s some brainstorming ideas from the Greenius and Greenpeace to get you thinking:

-Build an ominous and scary cardboard coal plant with smoke stacks that you tow behind your bike.  Or build a cardboard solar panel and wind turbine to tow and show!

-Dress for the green jobs that you want to see created in LA – wear a green hard hat and a name badge from your new company.

-Make a sign to hang from your bike: “Coal Free LA by 2020″ “Angelenos Against Coal” “I Roll Against Coal” “I Am Not A Fossil Fool!”

-Dress as a caveman or a dinosaur, or the La Brea Tar Pits because burning coal is just way too old school!

For more details and to RSVP go to the Roll Against Coal Facebook page.  Or you can email the amazing Jenny Binstock at jenny.binstock@greenpeace.org or Evan Gillespie at evan.gillespie@sierraclub.org.

I hope to see you there!

If you’re worried about leaving our kids and grand kids a great big fat bill they’re going to have to pay for because of our multi-trillion dollar federal budget deficit, then stop worrying.  Those numbers don’t mean squat and they won’t be a problem for our future generations.  During my 53 years on the planet we’ve had deficits and we’ve had surpluses and it hasn’t meant a damn bit of difference to the kids or their parents.

It’s only made a difference to professional politicians who regularly wave the bloody shirt of deficits to try and scare the public and get them to spend less money on the poor, the sick, the disenfranchised and especially the environment while we simultaneously splurge like drunks in Vegas on phony wars, shameless subsidies for the dirty fossil fuel industries and tax breaks for rich people and big business.

But what do you expect from people in the political field whose business model is to constantly have their begging hand out while they ceaselessly hit you up for “campaign donations” so they can get elected and re-elected and then have their staff people do all the work while they themselves keep on fundraising.  If you want to take financial advice from people of that ilk then you deserve to get conned and jacked.

But if you’d like a simple explanation of why you should just laugh at the fear of deficits then read on after the break for today’s enlightenment, courtesy of a commenter on Gawker.com

Christopher Mims on Grist turned me onto this yesterday and it made so damn much sense I’m passing it on to you today:

Comment by: James_from_cambridge 03/02/11

Seriously, everybody needs to stop panicking over this ridiculous Republican bullsh*t about the deficit. They create this panic to fool y’all into cutting the New Deal programs we all know and love and that they’ve had a grudge against for the past 80 years (a-holes never forgive, nor forget and Republicans are the biggest a-holes that ever were.) Republicans themselves created these huge deficits, which started after their huge tax cuts for gazillionaires in the 80′s, and they never went away. They figured the tax cuts would force government to cut spending. Never happened, never will happen because the only way to make a dent in the deficit without raising taxes to the level they were at pre-Reagan, is to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, brutally. Again, NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN, because the Middle Classes love their Social Security and Medicare. But these deficits, and the massive debt, don’t matter anyway.

We will never go under as a country for two reasons. 1) We can print money. 2) We’re vampires. That’s right, we’re the Edward Cullen of planet Earth. When Reagan the infirm created those huge deficits and the dollar plunged, the Japanese started investing heavily in the U.S., buying property and our debt. We sucked them dry and when they collapsed, we then moved on to European and Asian investors in the 90′s. Now we have the Chinese, who think they’re being smart by not going on a buying spree of American infrastructure like the Japanese but instead buying up our good old Government bonds. They’re bigger idiots than the Japanese because we’re gonna inflate our way out of this particular debt, and they’ll get back half of what they invested. When we’re done with them and they collapse, which I promise you they will, we’ll move on to the next group of suckers. Probably the Indians (and after that, we’re coming for you South America [I'm looking at you Brazil!], probably around 2025, so get ready!)

We’re too big to fail folks, way too big to fail, ’cause if we do, we’ll take the entire world economy down with us and all other countries know it and will therefore prop us up indefinitely. So stop panicking like little schoolboys in a rectory. Pick up a friggin’ Economics book and stop swallowing Republican lies about what caused the deficit and how important it is anyway (Republican tax cuts that drove down the top marginal rate from 70% in the 1970′s to 35% now is the only cause. How the hell can the Federal govt. function when they’ve completely deprived it of oxygen?)

**Thank God I finally got to use my Economics degree!!**

The Greenius says, if you really care about your kids and future generations then stop worrying about accounting tricks and start focusing on the climate deficit you’re leaving everyone under 40 to deal with.  Instead of cutting the federal budget, our politicians need to cut our greenhouse gas emissions and use of fossil fuels.  But they’re all too cowardly and impotent – on both sides of the aisle – to do anything about that in time to make a difference.  In fact, most of them are doing their best to bring it on as rapidly as possible, and rubbing their hands gleefully as they do.

But at least every one of them will be well financed for their comfortable ride to the hell and high water coming our way.

When I quit the Democratic party last summer the last straw for me was their total FAIL to take a stand and do anything about climate change.  Watching their spineless jellyfish routine in the face of the unified madman approach the Republicans employed was cringe worthy to say the least.

The piss poor performance of California’s Assembly and Senate Democrats to deal with our state’s budget issues only made me feel more certain of my decision.  And my personal experience working with certain Democrats at the local level helped convince me that they weren’t worthy of my loyalty or support any longer.  They probably never were.

I was a registered Democrat from the time I turned 18 in 1975 until the summer of 2010. It was always an easy choice because the Republicans were so clearly the party of phonies, hypocrites and mean-spirited, self-centered, big business boot-licking, environment-hating pollution-lovers.

It didn’t help the GOP that I came of age during the Tricky Dick Nixon era and got married when Ronald Reagan was playing the role of President.  I thought those two were the worst until old George W swaggered into the White House.  And of course that was before the Death Wish Congress took power with their Founding Father’s endorsed mission to destroy the government from the inside out to prove that government is indeed the problem.

My opinion of Republicans has only been endlessly verified from Nixon’s Jew hating day to today’s tea bagging Fox News following  sellouts.  Despicable seems the most apt word to describe their virulent and ceaseless attack campaign against President Obama and his family.  Not since the McCarthy era have I seen such staggeringly shameless daily behavior.

But just not being a Republican doesn’t cut it any longer for me, especially when the Democratic party looks like Krusty the Clown in opposition to the GOP’s Mr. Burns on meth character.

Today’s Republicans at the national level are in a competition to see who can propose the most outrageously bat shit elimination of regulation or government agency – like, oh I don’t know, the Environmental Protection Agency – and not a single local Republican I know is embarrassed or concerned about the real deficit they’re leaving their kids. If only those kids were “unborn” they’d be getting all kinds of protection.

It’s the “civilization and life as we know it deficit” that comes from a climate catastrophe, the kind that’s being waved in for a safe landing by the entire Republican party.  It’s the kind of deficit we can’t just print more money to solve.

And it’s the kind of deficit you can’t count on the Democrats to solve, especially when some of them are not even fighting the Republicans on their most extreme and egregious crap.  They’re not only not fighting them, they’re wrapping their coal dusted arms around it.

Politico reported yesterday morning that two senior House Democrats are on board for the crazy ass introduction of legislation to stop the EPA’s climate change regulations.  And what a surprise, one of them, Congressman Nick Rahall, is from the Black Lung state of West Virginia.  The other, Congressman Collin Peterson, comes from the once progressive state of Minnesota, now more famous as the home of  the Tea Party Princess, Michele Bachmann. Peterson says he wants to “rein in the EPA.”  Yeah, that’s a much better idea than reining in pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

Not that it really matters at this point since the entirety of our government has decided that the best way to fix our climate and fossil fuel addiction problems is to employ the Charlie Sheen rehab yourself at home solution.  That makes us all the kind of winners that Charlie himself has self declared.

High fives all the way around.