Problem Solved

So in the "world's greatest deliberative body" there aren't the votes to pass a (meaningless) resolution that states the obvious:

WASHINGTON — The Senate rejected the scientific consensus that humans are causing climate change, days after NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared 2014 the hottest year ever recorded on Earth. 

The Republican-controlled Senate defeated a measure Wednesday stating that climate change is real and that human activity significantly contributes to it. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, offered the measure as the Senate debated the Keystone XL pipeline, which would tap the carbon-intensive oil sands in the Canadian province of Alberta. 

The Senate voted 50-49 on the measure, which required 60 votes in order to pass.
“Only in the halls of Congress is this a controversial piece of legislation,” Schatz said. 

The chairman of the environment committee, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., is an enthusiastic denier of climate change, saying it is the “biggest hoax” perpetrated against mankind. 

“The hoax is there are some people so arrogant to think they are so powerful they can change the climate,” Inhofe said Wednesday on the Senate floor. “Man can’t change the climate.”...

If the resolution itself was meaningless, the implications of the vote on it aren't: 1) The United States is signing out of science. 2) The United States is electing idiots to run the country. 3) As long as Republicans control Congress, nothing much will be done to combat climate change, and 4) if they get the White House, it'll be nothing at all.

History, written by survivors of the human race or by aliens who've been waiting till the humans are gone, or by sea creatures or primates who evolve the small amount it'd take to be smarter than humans, will record with amazement what happened to what was -- yes, I agree it was -- the greatest and most innovative, the most brave and generous country that ever there was. When the world needed it the most, it checked out. When the problems humans had created had gotten so monumental that only hard and expensive solutions were available, the US said "We don't do hard, we don't do expensive. And, while we're at it, we don't do thoughtful and selfless concern for the next generation. We only do ignorance and conspiracy and rationalization for greed. We only do some perverse version of Jesus. And, ironically, we only do fk 'em."

And here's the thing: these guys always were and will always be idiots. It's obvious. So the blame and the shame go to those that, equally as selfish and unwilling to think beyond themselves, keep electing them. The teabaggers, the Foxified, the dittoheads, the paranoids, conspiracists, and the self-important religionists who use their religion to excuse hatred, bigotry, and ignorance in order to justify what amounts to no more than selfishness and fear of their own shadows.

To the extent that there's hope for a future, it depends on voters waking up. Given the well-financed, cynical, and highly effective efforts to keep them asleep, it seems pretty damned unlikely. Doesn't it?

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