Remember reality?

You know, the actual true world in which we live? That old place? Via Climate Progress, I came across this very sad essay by Jeff Turrentine. You may have noted the recent passing of F. Sherwood Roland, who discovered that chlorofluorocarbons used as coolants in air conditioners and other heat pumps were eroding the stratospheric ozone that protects us tender organisms from the earth's ultraviolet radiation.

Back then, when Ronald Reagan was president, we argued a lot over public policy but we largely inhabited the same reality. Although there was the usual denialist reaction by industry, the countries of the earth came together to write the Montreal Protocol that banned chlorofluorocarbons and Ronald Reagan -- yep, the conservative hero that all Republicans today want to compare themselves to -- signed it. Why? Because back then, the future of human civilization and of all life on earth was considered more important than somebody's short term profits, even by conservatives.

I have to say, global climate change denialism is the greatest evil ever perpetrated. Yeah yeah, Godwin's law, but Nazis only committed mass murder and genocide. How does that stack up compared to civilizationocide and biocide? And how is it possible that our culture is so tolerant of the unimaginable horrors that lie ahead -- that are already starting to happen, in fact -- and the psychopaths who are demanding that we allow them to occur? I mean you, James Inhofe, David Koch, Charles Koch, Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney -- yes you. There is no circle of hell deep enough for you.