(Artificial) Intelligence and a River of Tears
In these days of AI being all the rage, it is tragically ironic, call it TI, that Real Intelligence, call it RI, has been discarded. Hundreds dead and missing In Central Texas from the July 4 flooding and we refuse to acknowledge that industrialization (of over 150 years!), including and most pointedly, CO2 emissions, have made the atmosphere warmer, and that warmer air holds more water and that water will be released in torrents because it has to go somewhere, and fast?
This week, our U.S. EPA has proposed that CO2 emissions are officially not a problem.
[“The EPA has crafted a proposal that would undo the government's ‘endangerment finding,’ a determination that pollutants from burning fossil fuels, such as carbon dioxide and methane, can be regulated under the Clean Air Act. The finding has long served as the foundation for a host of policies and rules to address climate change.” (Reported by NPR, Jeff Brady, July 24, 2025). This is our environmental PROTECTION agency. But, oh yes, this was reported by NPR, that organization from which Congress and the President “rescissioned” (such a benign word, masking what it means: slash/cut) major funds as part of the “Rescission Act of 2025,” which included NPR and who’s local station in my town, Orlando, today is holding an emergency fundraiser trying to raise $400K in one day, the $400K from these latest “rescissions.” But, I digress!]
That is less than and worse than a lack of intelligence. That is insanity.
We like to talk of environmental action and advocacy as motivated by concern for the future of our grandchildren. Tell that to the myriad of grandchildren who were rivered away and drowned in Texas whose future was swept away in the present. The future is now.
Who are these people who are climate change deniers? All I can imagine are Board Members and offices of persons invested in oil and gas and then also car and truck drivers invested in their personal ability and liberty to get where they want to go when they want to get there, in amazing luxury at that. No matter that if they invested in alternative energy sources they could make a ton of money and no matter that with more vehicles on the road there is less mobility (call it traffic – and the science there too is astoundingly disregarded: when wider roads and more roads are built they fill up and choke. They do not eliminate the clog. Check the research. But, oh, yes, we are intelligent).
We like to pat ourselves on the back after all these violent and frequent natural disasters… (which, let me remind you, were predicted years ago by scientists. Oh, that’s right. Science is so woke. I’m sorry. I forgot)….we like to pat ourselves on the back and talk into our news coverage microphones about how resilient we are and about how then we will rebuild and how great our neighbors are for helping us pick up the pieces. Resilience is today’s by-word. Well, we have to find something to say to fill the void of intelligence. And we have to say something that feigns hope in the face of such unmitigated calamity in loss of home and life itself.
But it’s sad. And so wrong. And does not have to be this way. We could be, now in 2025, well on our way into cutting the spewing atmospheric changes gases. But we changed course here in the U.S. We are intelligent. Artificially so.
My granddaughter is seven and will be visiting us next week. Does she even know that many of her soulmates of seven were washed away by climate change this month in Texas? No, she doesn’t know. But I do. So, onward into the fray. I will try to use my intelligence along with my heart.
