BALANCED VIEWS

Trump and Pruitt ignore climate change at our peril NFL’s death inevitable as middle class leaves game

Thomas L. Friedman

America faces two serious national security threats that look wildly different but have one core feature in common — they both have a low probability of happening, but, if they did happen, they could have devastating consequences for our whole world.

One of these threats is North Korea. If Kim Jong Un is able to launch missiles that strike the U.S. mainland, the effect will be incalculable.

And even though the odds are low — it would be an act of suicide by the North Korean dynasty — President Donald Trump is ready to spend billions on anti-missile systems, warships, cyberdefenses, air power and war games to defuse and deter this threat.

And if we prepare for an attack and it never happens, we will be left with some improved weaponry that we might be able to use in other theaters — but nothing particularly productive for our economy or job creation.

The other low-probability, high-impact threat is climate change. The truth is, if you simply trace the steady increase in costly extreme weather events — wildfires, floods, droughts and climate-related human migrations — the odds of human-driven global warming having a devastating effect on our planet are not low-probability but high-probability.

But let’s assume for a minute that because climate change is a complex process — which we do not fully understand — climate change is a low-probability, high-impact event just like a North Korean nuclear strike. What is the Trump team doing with this similar threat?

It’s taking a spike and poking out its own eyes. In possibly the most intellectually corrupt declaration of the Trump era — a high bar — Scott Pruitt, a shill for oil and gas companies now masquerading as the head of the EPA, actually declared that even discussing possible links between human-driven climate disruptions and the recent monster storms was “insensitive.” He said that after our country got hit by two Atlantic Category 4 hurricanes in the same year — storms made more destructive by rising ocean levels and warmer ocean waters.

What if we were to prepare for disruptive climate change and it doesn’t get as bad as feared? Where will we be? Well, we will have cleaner air, less childhood asthma, more innovative building materials and designs, and cleaner, more efficient power generation and transportation systems — all of which will be huge export industries and create tens of thousands of good jobs.

Trump has recently fired various knuckle-headed aides whose behavior was causing him short-term embarrassment. The person he needs to fire is Scott Pruitt. Pruitt is going to cause Trump long-term embarrassment. They are authoring a new national security doctrine — one that says when faced with a low-probability, high-impact event like North Korea, the U.S. should spend any amount of money, and if the threat doesn’t materialize, well, we’ll have a lot of Army surplus and scrap metal.

But when faced with an actual high-probability, high-impact threat called climate change, we should do nothing and poke our eyes out, even though if the effect is less severe — and we prepare for it anyway — we will be left healthier, stronger, more productive, more resilient and more respected around the world.

That is the Pruitt-Trump Doctrine — soon to be known as “Trump’s Folly.”

John Kass

To witness the death of the multibillion-dollar National Football League, you really don’t need to see sportswriters wringing their hands over the moral dilemma of covering America’s Roman circus of brain trauma.

And you don’t need to watch multimillionaire football stars, pampered for most of their lives, ostentatiously disrespecting the American national anthem, kneeling, their raised fists in the air.

You don’t need to see the desperation in the NFL’s television commercials: actresses in team gear, holding snack trays to feed their (virtual) families, as the NFL begs middle-class women to mother their game before it dies.

You don’t have to do any of that to see how football is dying.

All you have to do is go out to a youth football field, as I did on Sunday morning, and talk to parents and coaches.

“Just four years ago, we had so many boys signing up for football, we had five teams at this fourth-grade level,” says John Herrera, a dad, software engineer and football coach of the Wheaton Rams in the Bill George Youth Football League in the western suburbs of Chicago.

“And from five teams of fourth-graders four years ago, what do we have now? One team. Just one.” Herrera said. “Football is such a great game, it teaches great lessons to young men. But I’ve got a sense of dread for this game of football that I love.”

Herrera cares about the lessons the game can teach. He and other coaches are deadly serious about instilling “heads up” tackling techniques to protect the heads of their players.

“But it’s the parents,” he said. “They’re worried about the brain.”

It is all about the brain. The brains that are injured in the game, yes, but also about how the human mind works, as the American middle class withdraws from football, a cultural trend that will cut the NFL away from American virtue.

What is virtuous about brain damage? I’d prefer to watch prizefighters. At least prizefighting is honest about its violence. It doesn’t wrap itself up in mom and apple pie.

Putting your kids in football would be akin to giving them cigarettes, and leave you to face the withering judgment of your friends and neighbors. Without that feeder system to provide fresh meat and fresh brains for the NFL meat grinder, the NFL as we know it is doomed.

There is still enough talent and size to fill the ranks. And gambling drives the game along. But without its connection to the middle class, the NFL loses what it can’t afford to lose: market share.

Parents read the news, they know about concussions and CTE, chronic traumatic encephalopathy. While a recent study wasn’t random — brains were donated by concerned families — the analysis by Boston University of brains from dead players showed that of 111 brains from NFL players, 110 suffered CTE, a condition causing depression, psychosis, dementia, memory loss and death.

Heads get in the way.

And football provides not only concussions, but by design, multiple hits to the head. There is no getting around this.

“Sure I’m concerned,” said one of the moms at the game. “But he loves the game so much. We haven’t made a decision as to how long he’ll play. At this level, they’re just learning, they’re not big enough to hurt each other. Later? I’m thinking about it.”

Parents of youth football players are already feeling pressure and social stigma.

“It’s not like smoking, yet,” said a dad. “But it’s getting there.”

It’s already there, Dad. It’s there.