This is a post about climate change. But it is also about pandemics, as we are now living thorough a major pandemic.

My argument is simple. We are all doomed. And I don’t have to go far outside of Congress to make my case.

Here is US Senator Mike Lee, denying climate change, and also advocating that we make the problem worse by reproducing more.

Logic would dictate that if a government accepted the fact that burning coal and other fossil fuels had to stop, they would adjust their policies to discourage consumption. In fact, they would have started to change their policies in 1990, with the groundbreaking, first IPCC report. But instead, the governments of the world -both democracies and autocracies- subsidize the fossil fuel industry to the tune of $5 Trillion annually.

Human-driven climate change has irreversible effects, such as the acceleration of species extinction, which in turn threatens human life further.

And what threatens human life further are governments that deny the science and do not govern. That is the contemporary GOP in a nutshell. Since the Reagan era, they have been destroying our nation and the world. The Trump administration simply denies the science and dismantles the government offices charged with tracking threats to human existence.

Which brings us to the Trump administration’s utter and unforgivable incompetence in failing to keep this nation prepared for a deadly pandemic. By my casual count, COVID-19 is the fifth major viral pandemic of the 21st century, and the first one that will kill a significant number of Americans.

Here is Congressman Matt Gaetz wearing a gas mask on the House floor, mocking the pandemic as well as violating the rules that prohibit costumes and being a general asshat.

And here is how the US president reacted in the first month the virus was in our nation.

Before thousands of Americans die due to COVID-19, here is a new defining moment for the Trump presidency. It isn’t my fault. It wasn’t me. I didn’t know.

Today, our president took some more questions. They start at 10:47 in this video. His lies are more transparent than ever. He acts like a child who’d been caught doing something bad. And then explains that his handshakes and touching is expected from a tough guy like him. Someone has to touch the microphones. I expect his test to come back positive tonight.