For too long, Republicans have worried millions by labeling everything not on their agenda as “socialism.”

Many Democrats are taking that “hard left turn” (“For some Dems, left not right fit;” Chicago Tribune, Thursday 25 July 2019) in response to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that we humans have, at best, 12 years to turn things around in the environment. This same terrifying piece does not say we have time to shrug and wait ’til Year 11, it says we might only have until next year to arrest carbon production’s rise before we arrive at the point of no return; the Potsdam Climate Institute’s Hans Joachim Schnellnhuber warns that the world may be mortally wounded by our negligence by 2020.

We have had zero support from the current White House occupant and his ilk, one of whom (the Environmental Protection Agency’s head) just this week refused to ban a bee-killing toxin. Known to damage children’s brains too, chlorpyrifos and the Administration are evil twin symptoms of what’s wrong in politics, especially on the right.

We can complain about a perceived mismatch between liberals and moderates, or we can all put our noses to the grindwheels and right the many wrongs we’ve generated. Without bees and other pollinators, people won’t have food. Commerce and industry cannot survive without the raw materials Earth provides. It’s beyond head-scratching that conservatives aren’t concerned about conserving the planet.

We are long overdue for a Green New Deal. Still all to true in the Republican playbook, all that matters is the money and power they and their cronies can get, how many new (read: improved and protective) regulations they can sink. This is madness, and it cannot persist.