On June 7, Jeff Bezos announced his plan to go to space on July 20 — just fifteen days after finishing up as CEO of Amazon. It was positioned as a bold next step in the billionaire space race that has been escalating for several years, though it didn’t take long for its true face to show itself. Soon after Bezos set his date, Virgin Galactic CEO Richard Branson — a man known for his marketing stunts — decided he would try to beat the richest man in the world into orbit and scheduled his own space flight for July 11.
But as these billionaires had their eyes turned to the stars and the media showered them with the headlines they craved, the evidence that the climate of our planet is rapidly changing in a way that is hostile to life — both human and otherwise — was escalating.
Near the end of June, Jacobabad, a city of 200,000 people in Pakistan, experienced “wet bulb” conditions where high humidity and scorching temperatures combine to reach a level where the human body can no longer cool itself down. Meanwhile, half a world away, on the West Coast of North America, a heat dome that was made much worse by climate change sent temperatures soaring so high that the town of Lytton, British Columbia, hit 49.6ºC, beating Canada’s previous temperature record by 4.6ºC, then burned to the ground when a wildfire tore through the town.
The contrast between those stories is striking. On one hand, billionaires are engaging in a dick-measuring contest to see who can exit the atmosphere first, while on the other,
— source jacobinmag.com | Paris Marx | 07.13.2021