According to History.com: “In July of 64 A.D., a great fire ravaged Rome for six days, destroying 70 percent of the city and leaving half its population homeless. According to a well-known expression, Rome’s emperor at the time, the decadent and unpopular Nero, “fiddled while Rome burned.” The expression has a double meaning: Not only did Nero play music while his people suffered, but he was an ineffectual leader in a time of crisis.”

That ancient expression defines well what we are experiencing in our country right now. There is absolutely no basis to refute that immediate and universal action must be taken to slow down and stop the accelerating destruction of our habitable planet Earth. Nothing else will matter when the planet is too hot to support any and all life forms of today.

Here in Maine we have had, and in Washington D.C. we have now, a Nero that that is an ineffectual leader in this most serious of all things we humans face. Eight years of remediation effort was lost with climate change denier Paul LePage, and now we have another uninformed Nero in Donald Trump, also a climate change denier.

Likely the worst part is that most if not all in his cabinet are also deniers. Only the shallowest minds would not question why there is now such intensifying and ravaging storms occurring around the world. The anarchy of gangs in Mexico and Central America driving hordes north to a safer place is only the beginning of the mass migrations that will occur when areas of the planet become too hot for plants or animals to survive.

Our Nero in Washington claims he is a “stable genius” but fiddles while worldwide fires of his own making are burning. His inability to accept scientific fact is beyond comprehension.

 

Jim Chiddix

Waterville


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