Conservative Economic Morality

Conservatives speculate in oil and natural gas, even if they know that fossil fuels contribute to global warming/climate change, because they can make a lot of money. It's moral, they feel, to maximize your money, regardless of the consequences--as long as it's legal. They don't particularly believe there is such a thing as global warming, even if they see the evidence all around them: "natural variations," they say, or "sun-spots." But investing in something that may be a major contributor to even more global warming--like the Canadian tar sands--or fracking for oil and gas, is just what you do, when you know you'll make a killing.

I don't invest in oil. I've lost a few dollars on a natural gas ETF. I've made a few on gold--and lost a lot more on gold mines. As a putative progressive, I shouldn't invest even in the gold, since gold mines are highly polluting. But at least I'm only speculating on the "transition fuel," and losing money on it. No conservative would consider "ancillary" consequences--like an uninhabitable planet, or brutish ensuing generations as worth worrying about.

A conservative resists believing in climate change, because it will, unfortunately, require huge coordination by people---and especially, governments--all over the world. It's probably a conspiracy of the World Federalists (a progressive organization that hardly exists any longer), or of the UNA's (United Nations Associations). I was president of a local UNA chapter, once. Mostly, I did the work for an aging, no longer competent older generation, when I was in my 30's. I'm in my 70's now.

The conservative harks back to the golden age of the pioneer, when every man had to depend on his own skill for survival and winning his riches. World climate regulations are clearly antithetical.

But so is modern life. Attila the Hun was the true conservative. In my book, Attila as Told to His Scribes, (available on this website), he wanted to level cities and saw Roman society as a prison he had to destroy--while profiting from the loot: like Romney, like vulture capitalists.

The conservative movement, in Canada as well as the US, appears to have the same bent, but different methods: they'll kill us with global warming, while they prosper--and build climate controlled domes, perhaps, to escape the consequences. Apparently, Harper's Tories, try to suppress protests against their determination to export tar sands oil world wide--from the Pacific via British Columbia, which resists their pipeline plans, and from the Caribbean, via the Keystone XL pipeline. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania Republicans give corporate frackers carte blanche and eminent domain!

"I ain't gonna let no Liberal get between me and the best oil play in the bidness! We gonna make us some money!"

Even if Obama wins, this nation and the world, rush ever more rightward. It might not be progressive to have grandchildren!