My hope is that Kamala is doing her best to walk a fine line that will allow for her victory in Pennsylvania and the presidency. Then, hopefully, she will attack climate change as the huge threat it is.
I recognize that. She has to walk a fine line to get elected. If our politicians overall had an ounce of integrity, it wouldn't be so. Most people would be educated and on board with reality. I, too, hope she is hiding what she needs to and understands the gravity of our situation.
Geoffrey, In an ideal world, right? If only it were so...
But since the majority of our electorate's intelligence is not yet at that level, the best we can do is hold our noses and vote for the lesser of two evils and hope for the best.
I'm with you, man. I too hope that KH has calculated what it takes to win PA (and as many other swing states as possible) and then do that thing that most all politicians do after winning, ie. go back on their promises.
Maybe she can do it in a classy way like create some kind of safety net for all the people that will be put out of work and some kind of benefits for the corporations that will face collapse, by pointing them in a direction of continuing to exist and thrive if they will pivot to pursuing green and sustainable energy paths.
I admit I don't know what that would be, but the intention is solid and perhaps it actually is doable.
A safety net has been conceived both as part of degrowth and a handful of people willing to mention it, a basic universal income. Working wages for half of Americans barely make ends meet, or less. There are ludicrous plans on the board, such as a $52.5 billion sea wall plan for NYC. The walls planned have no chance against the Arctic and Greenland ice sheet melts, which are unstoppable now. Greenland was shot in 1963 when CO2 crossed 320ppm.
Part of a reasonable plan would be to take that money and move people out of harms way. Of course, one would be considered a lunatic to recognize and fight against reality with logic and intelligence. That would be political suicide.
I would say that most "swing voters" are "actively disengaged" from politics - they avoid thinking about it so they don't have to face the consequences. When they vote they are easily swayed by rumours that confirm their underlying prejudices.
Politicians won’t change until the system encourages them to. To achieve that, we would need a fundemental paradigm shift in conciousness, so that suddenly everyone wakes up and WANTS something different, including money out of politics.
Kamela and everyone else is better than Trump, who literally scrapes the bottom of the barrel, but they won’t save us. They’d be laughed off the stage by the left if they even hinted at the necessary sacrifices.
Society is failing across the board. It’s hard to even imagine the things we’d need to change to stand half a chance.
Agreed. I've stated in a number of my essays that it's up to the people to demand change, it's not coming from the top down. Trump is a manifestation of a system that has left people struggling financially, diminished wages and multiple unrewarding jobs. Reasonable prosperity for everyone was lost decades ago as the worldwide disease of Chicago School/neoliberal economics perpetrated on the globe came to America under the Reagan administration. The wealth gap has unleashed racism, particularly encouraged by Trump. Most American have no clue about how we have been sold out. They blame immigrants instead.
Really not sure of Harris' take on the seriousness and immediacy of climate change, species extinction and our dying oceans. I am hopeful, but doubtful she understands the way you and I do. There is also the question of what happens as the election approaches. Trump has set the stage for insurrection with his lies, particularly in a close contest, which this absurdly is likely to be.
Climate came up, and although I didn't love her answer that should have talked about doing more (time was limited, and as you say, she may be walking a fine line to get elected)...
LINSEY DAVIS: President Trump, thank you. We have another issue that we'd like to get to that's important for a number of Americans, in particular younger voters, and that's climate change. President Trump, with regard to the environment, you say that we have to have clean air and clean water. Vice President Harris, you call climate change an existential threat. The question to you both tonight is what would you do to fight climate change? And Vice President Harris, we'll start with you. One minute for you each.
VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Well, the former president had said that climate change is a hoax. And what we know is that it is very real. You ask anyone who lives in a state who has experienced these extreme weather occurrences who now is either being denied home insurance or is being jacked up. You ask anybody who has been the victim of what that means in terms of losing their home, having nowhere to go. We know that we can actually deal with this issue. The young people of America care deeply about this issue. And I am proud that as vice president over the last four years, we have invested a trillion dollars in a clean energy economy while we have also increased domestic gas production to historic levels. We have created over 800,000 new manufacturing jobs while I have been vice president. We have invested in clean energy to the point that we are opening up factories around the world. Donald Trump said he was going to create manufacturing jobs. He lost manufacturing jobs. And I'm also proud to have the endorsement of the United Auto Workers and Shawn Fain, who also know that part of building a clean energy economy includes investing in American-made products, American automobiles. It includes growing what we can do around American manufacturing and opening up auto plants, not closing them like what happened under Donald Trump.
I'm glad you shared that bit of transcript with me. Obviously, becoming the largest oil producer in the world through fracking is at diametric odds with clean energy. So I can see Harris is walking a line here, and I get it. I was a bit annoyed she only included young people as concerned — I'm 62 and a lot of we older folk were in NYC protesting outside of Citibank for much of the summer, but that's a small quibble.
We also have to look closely at what's called clean energy. That's a misrepresentation. Mining for lithium, cobalt and other minerals requires heavy equipment and fossil fuels, particularly diesel. Harvesting one ton of lithium ore requires on average 500,000 gallons of water in some of the most drought stricken regions of the world, and of course mining is always an environmental disaster. Current wind turbines weigh 164 to 334 tons and require concrete pads weighing thousands of tons, a serious contributor to GHGs in itself. Designs are growing ever larger and the tops of mountains have to be blasted to level them. Roads often have to be reengineered to get the length of the components to the top.
What is missing in this rush to so-called renewables is a plan to lower energy demands. We need a circular economic model, a vision, a plan, a galvanization at the citizen level to transform our societies. This situation is no less than a WWII moment. The nation rallied then, we need ours an others to do the same now.
Oil is fated to become economically unviable to harvest when the energy required to frack and steam it out exceeds the energy that can be harvested. So at some point, building and maintaining turbines and massive solar fields will likely become questionable. I see renewables at best helping us wean down to an inevitably lower energy world, more similar to the one before the age of coal and oil. I think, in many ways, that could be good. Here are some articles touching on some of these subjects if you're interested. Plenty of links to my sources for more investigation.
Well, the BIG problem for people like us Greg, is that we are ALARMISTS.
No one believes anything we say. We are "doomers", we are "crazy", we are obsessed. Something must be WRONG with us.
Friends, family, the public etc believe that for you to be so bothered when they are not, there must be a fundamental misunderstanding on your part. After all, their delusions have been approved by the large extended crowd of “calm down” friends, consultants, business leaders, journalists, politicians, pundits, financial analysts, and media personalities with whom they routinely lunch, work, and ELECT.
Do you see the problem?
Look at the list of people telling you to "calm down". Do you see "Climate Scientists" on that list?
All of the people telling you to "calm down", are doing so because the Climate Scientists are telling them that, "We can do this". Mainstream Climate Science disagrees with us Greg.
If you are an ALARMIST, Climate Science says that you're a "Doomer".
Michael Mann, an actual Climate Scientist has said that "Climate Doomism is worse than Climate Change Denial". He has also stated that he sees "Doomism" as a form of "mental illness".
Typical of Mann’s writings are these two articles.
Climate Doomism Disregards the Science (Sept. 14, 2023) — By Michael E. Mann for APS News
Stop the doom. We failed to prevent climate change — but we will decide how bad it’ll get. (Sept. 27, 2023) — By Michael E. Mann for USA Today
He also found time to write this book.
Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons From Earth’s Past Can Help Us Survive The Climate Crisis.
“The renowned US scientist’s new book examines 4bn years of climate history to conclude we are in a ‘fragile moment’ but ‘there is still time to act’”. -The Guardian Sept 2023
Mann is not an “outlier” in Climate Science. His positions are the “mainstream” and echoed by many other voices in both Climate Science and Climate Activism. Voices like Zeke Hausfather at Berkeley Earth, Gavin Schmidt at GISS, Hannah Ritchie at “Our World in Data”, and Christiana Figueres. The Costa Rican diplomat who led the effort to get the Paris climate accord approved in 2015 and who has stated.
“Optimism is a choice. Do you know of any challenge that mankind has had in the history of humankind that was actually successful in its achievement that started out with pessimism, that started out with defeatism?”
WE are the “Minority Report” in Climate Science.
That's WHY no one is "Looking Up". The SCIENCE they are choosing to believe in, tells them they don't need to.
Their SCIENCE tells them that what you and I are worrying about isn't real.
What they don't understand about SCIENCE, is that "paradigm shifts" happen. A former way of "seeing" something is discredited and a new understanding emerges.
Climate Science is on the verge of a paradigm shift.
OR
We are both CRAZY.
The sad reality is that. Until the Climate Science agrees with us, no one else will.
I don't care for Mann, complete agreement. Peter Kalmus and those in Scientist Rebellion are sounding the alarms. Europe seems to be ahead of us in that regard, but they're getting hotter faster. No worries. When AMOC stops, solved.
Of course, I see the problem. How much time was devoted to climate in the debate? The accelerating rate of extinction never seen before? H5N1 being a growing concern? Where is the billionaire owned media in all this, lol?
We will keep the foot on the gas, ruin the environment further for short run "green" energy sources that, as they are now, merely filling increasing energy demand, anything but cut consumption rationally and as quickly as possible. Hell, needless AI really ticks me off in this regard. The water and energy use for this needless product will grow to be equivalent of adding a small energy hungry country. It's insane. But Homo sapiens is a deluded creature.
Great article on the Greenland ice sheet, BTW. I want to spin on that one, too, and California's wildfires this year. I keep pointing out CA is the fifth-biggest economy in the world and that its agriculture is critical. Economic collapse there will be felt the world over. The ground is collapsing from drained out aquifers. I'm sure you know.
As the years have progressed it seems to me that our govt functions more as a Uniparty…. We are effectively pitted against each other and end up disparaging the “others”, much to our collective detriment. For most normal people we’ll all be hurt as current and future administrations drag us into more war and heedless spending. Neither party can really solve what’s coming, and neither will call for the one thing that can solve our predicament: “less”. No amount of wind or solar tech ( dependent on oil ), can offset the wars that are teetering on the brink. The most ecological move we can make today is to avoid WW3, and then embrace a lifestyle of much less consumption. You’ll find plenty of conservatives and liberals both onboard with that common sense.
There is no doubt that the parties are now far too aligned. Money and the military industrial complex has corrupted what was already corrupted system. Capitalism or neocapitalism, even worse, are unsustainable models in the confines of a finite planet. We're always good at solving with more. We have no ability to address living with less.
Agreed. After years of study, I've accepted the view of thinkers like "Honest Sorcerer", "David Holmgren" and "John Michael Greer": Collapse has been in progress for decades, and will continue for many more decades. It's not an apocalypse movie. It will be in a ragged fashion spanning decades or longer (stairsteps). The sooner we adjust individually the better we can be. Perhaps we build community locally into this downshift.
The top-down powers that be won't ever support this. We'll have to collapse before we see the majority of humans willingly learn to live with less. Thoughts on that?
I use to think this view was nihilistic or lazy, but the more I've studied the more I think it's just an honest view of humanities foibles. I still work to learn to live with less, I enjoy it. I try to encourage others too. But my unresolved "hope" in the elites helping solve the problem led to depression. Giving up that hope was actually liberating. I do what I can in my little town. That's all I can do.
It is wild to be hoping and praying (and voting) that an intelligent democratic president wins an election with a platform that includes the continuation of both fracking and aid to Israel. Such are the times. But like you said, we will run out of resources soon enough no matter her platform. And I'm rooting for her, and us.
I'm rooting for her, too, but have no sense of what her perception is of the depth and immediacy of our crises. Even if she is as wise and courageous as we need her to be, it's a monumental battle with much hidden from our eyes.
The problem is that the US electorate is skewed to the right, and even in the centre-left is biased towards neoliberal ideas of individual "freedom". So anyone who genuinely wants to win such a contest has to be able to attract enough voters from those centrist voters to actually win a majority in those states that can swing the EC.
No doubt, many are skewed right and unwittingly vote against their own interests. This is failure in education, and the success of a system that exploits that weakness. That's why Project 2025 and strongmen in general work to undermine education.
Just a quick thought. As i did in 1968 and voted for Humphrey while most of my friends voted for Dick Gregory as a protest vote, I will probably grudgingly vote for KH. In '68 I felt like the Demos' domestic policy inclinations were better than Nixon's. This time it is even more stark. Again the Demos foreign policy is horrendous but their domestic policy is at least aimed in the right direction. Compare that with the latter day Repubs in their march lockstep into fascism. They make Richard Nixon look like a 'lib' .
My parents voted for Humphrey, too, and I remember going door to door with my mother for McGovern. Yes, the Republicans are completely fascist at this point, but the Dems have shifted far to the right over the decades, as I'm sure you see and lament. The problem now is we're heading into a climate change catastrophe fated for massive migration, agricultural loss and endemic inflation. Neither party either sees, or tells the truth. Traditional domestic policy will not stop or soften the impact of the storms, literal and metaphorical, that are happening. On a practical level, look at insurers pulling out of markets or raising rates to the point of unaffordability. This is the stuff of an impending worldwide economic crash and the unpredictable chaos and violence that guarantees. We need a much bigger vision and rapid, profound change of society at the values level. I don't see anything close to that coming. I hope Harris surprises me, and that she gets both houses and expands the Supreme Court.
Re the 2025 project and Kevin Roberts do you know that he an opus dei propaganda hack/operative. And that the creepoid in chief aka J D Vance is closely associated with opus dei too - he wrote the foreword to Roberts book.
That having been said please check out this 2019 essay re the applied politics of opus dei and other right-wing religionists.
Are you familiar with Chris Hedges prophetic book American Fascists The Christian Right & Its War Against America? It seems to me that the 2025 project is the leading edge vector of this war.
Thanks for the references regarding Trump's association to the Heritage Foundation. Regarding the climate, unfortunately it was not been given the appropriate attention at all. I doubt anything will change towards the right direction.
Yeah, Heritage is a bad actor, one of many with benign sounding names Heartland Institute is awful in its climate denial and disinformation, too. It's a four alarm fire now, and share your pessimism. I feel the Arctic and Amazon are tipped, and the Greenland ice sheet melt threshold was likely passed decades ago.
My hope is that Kamala is doing her best to walk a fine line that will allow for her victory in Pennsylvania and the presidency. Then, hopefully, she will attack climate change as the huge threat it is.
I recognize that. She has to walk a fine line to get elected. If our politicians overall had an ounce of integrity, it wouldn't be so. Most people would be educated and on board with reality. I, too, hope she is hiding what she needs to and understands the gravity of our situation.
Geoffrey, In an ideal world, right? If only it were so...
But since the majority of our electorate's intelligence is not yet at that level, the best we can do is hold our noses and vote for the lesser of two evils and hope for the best.
I'm with you, man. I too hope that KH has calculated what it takes to win PA (and as many other swing states as possible) and then do that thing that most all politicians do after winning, ie. go back on their promises.
Maybe she can do it in a classy way like create some kind of safety net for all the people that will be put out of work and some kind of benefits for the corporations that will face collapse, by pointing them in a direction of continuing to exist and thrive if they will pivot to pursuing green and sustainable energy paths.
I admit I don't know what that would be, but the intention is solid and perhaps it actually is doable.
A safety net has been conceived both as part of degrowth and a handful of people willing to mention it, a basic universal income. Working wages for half of Americans barely make ends meet, or less. There are ludicrous plans on the board, such as a $52.5 billion sea wall plan for NYC. The walls planned have no chance against the Arctic and Greenland ice sheet melts, which are unstoppable now. Greenland was shot in 1963 when CO2 crossed 320ppm.
Part of a reasonable plan would be to take that money and move people out of harms way. Of course, one would be considered a lunatic to recognize and fight against reality with logic and intelligence. That would be political suicide.
I would say that most "swing voters" are "actively disengaged" from politics - they avoid thinking about it so they don't have to face the consequences. When they vote they are easily swayed by rumours that confirm their underlying prejudices.
Walter- This, too is my hope.
Politicians won’t change until the system encourages them to. To achieve that, we would need a fundemental paradigm shift in conciousness, so that suddenly everyone wakes up and WANTS something different, including money out of politics.
Kamela and everyone else is better than Trump, who literally scrapes the bottom of the barrel, but they won’t save us. They’d be laughed off the stage by the left if they even hinted at the necessary sacrifices.
Society is failing across the board. It’s hard to even imagine the things we’d need to change to stand half a chance.
Agreed. I've stated in a number of my essays that it's up to the people to demand change, it's not coming from the top down. Trump is a manifestation of a system that has left people struggling financially, diminished wages and multiple unrewarding jobs. Reasonable prosperity for everyone was lost decades ago as the worldwide disease of Chicago School/neoliberal economics perpetrated on the globe came to America under the Reagan administration. The wealth gap has unleashed racism, particularly encouraged by Trump. Most American have no clue about how we have been sold out. They blame immigrants instead.
Really not sure of Harris' take on the seriousness and immediacy of climate change, species extinction and our dying oceans. I am hopeful, but doubtful she understands the way you and I do. There is also the question of what happens as the election approaches. Trump has set the stage for insurrection with his lies, particularly in a close contest, which this absurdly is likely to be.
Climate came up, and although I didn't love her answer that should have talked about doing more (time was limited, and as you say, she may be walking a fine line to get elected)...
LINSEY DAVIS: President Trump, thank you. We have another issue that we'd like to get to that's important for a number of Americans, in particular younger voters, and that's climate change. President Trump, with regard to the environment, you say that we have to have clean air and clean water. Vice President Harris, you call climate change an existential threat. The question to you both tonight is what would you do to fight climate change? And Vice President Harris, we'll start with you. One minute for you each.
VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Well, the former president had said that climate change is a hoax. And what we know is that it is very real. You ask anyone who lives in a state who has experienced these extreme weather occurrences who now is either being denied home insurance or is being jacked up. You ask anybody who has been the victim of what that means in terms of losing their home, having nowhere to go. We know that we can actually deal with this issue. The young people of America care deeply about this issue. And I am proud that as vice president over the last four years, we have invested a trillion dollars in a clean energy economy while we have also increased domestic gas production to historic levels. We have created over 800,000 new manufacturing jobs while I have been vice president. We have invested in clean energy to the point that we are opening up factories around the world. Donald Trump said he was going to create manufacturing jobs. He lost manufacturing jobs. And I'm also proud to have the endorsement of the United Auto Workers and Shawn Fain, who also know that part of building a clean energy economy includes investing in American-made products, American automobiles. It includes growing what we can do around American manufacturing and opening up auto plants, not closing them like what happened under Donald Trump.
I'm glad you shared that bit of transcript with me. Obviously, becoming the largest oil producer in the world through fracking is at diametric odds with clean energy. So I can see Harris is walking a line here, and I get it. I was a bit annoyed she only included young people as concerned — I'm 62 and a lot of we older folk were in NYC protesting outside of Citibank for much of the summer, but that's a small quibble.
We also have to look closely at what's called clean energy. That's a misrepresentation. Mining for lithium, cobalt and other minerals requires heavy equipment and fossil fuels, particularly diesel. Harvesting one ton of lithium ore requires on average 500,000 gallons of water in some of the most drought stricken regions of the world, and of course mining is always an environmental disaster. Current wind turbines weigh 164 to 334 tons and require concrete pads weighing thousands of tons, a serious contributor to GHGs in itself. Designs are growing ever larger and the tops of mountains have to be blasted to level them. Roads often have to be reengineered to get the length of the components to the top.
What is missing in this rush to so-called renewables is a plan to lower energy demands. We need a circular economic model, a vision, a plan, a galvanization at the citizen level to transform our societies. This situation is no less than a WWII moment. The nation rallied then, we need ours an others to do the same now.
Oil is fated to become economically unviable to harvest when the energy required to frack and steam it out exceeds the energy that can be harvested. So at some point, building and maintaining turbines and massive solar fields will likely become questionable. I see renewables at best helping us wean down to an inevitably lower energy world, more similar to the one before the age of coal and oil. I think, in many ways, that could be good. Here are some articles touching on some of these subjects if you're interested. Plenty of links to my sources for more investigation.
Wind: https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/offshore-wind-change-is-in-the-air
Lithium: https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/showdown-at-thacker-pass
Degrowth: https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/degrowth-the-vision-we-must-demand
Well, the BIG problem for people like us Greg, is that we are ALARMISTS.
No one believes anything we say. We are "doomers", we are "crazy", we are obsessed. Something must be WRONG with us.
Friends, family, the public etc believe that for you to be so bothered when they are not, there must be a fundamental misunderstanding on your part. After all, their delusions have been approved by the large extended crowd of “calm down” friends, consultants, business leaders, journalists, politicians, pundits, financial analysts, and media personalities with whom they routinely lunch, work, and ELECT.
Do you see the problem?
Look at the list of people telling you to "calm down". Do you see "Climate Scientists" on that list?
All of the people telling you to "calm down", are doing so because the Climate Scientists are telling them that, "We can do this". Mainstream Climate Science disagrees with us Greg.
If you are an ALARMIST, Climate Science says that you're a "Doomer".
Michael Mann, an actual Climate Scientist has said that "Climate Doomism is worse than Climate Change Denial". He has also stated that he sees "Doomism" as a form of "mental illness".
Typical of Mann’s writings are these two articles.
Climate Doomism Disregards the Science (Sept. 14, 2023) — By Michael E. Mann for APS News
Stop the doom. We failed to prevent climate change — but we will decide how bad it’ll get. (Sept. 27, 2023) — By Michael E. Mann for USA Today
He also found time to write this book.
Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons From Earth’s Past Can Help Us Survive The Climate Crisis.
“The renowned US scientist’s new book examines 4bn years of climate history to conclude we are in a ‘fragile moment’ but ‘there is still time to act’”. -The Guardian Sept 2023
Mann is not an “outlier” in Climate Science. His positions are the “mainstream” and echoed by many other voices in both Climate Science and Climate Activism. Voices like Zeke Hausfather at Berkeley Earth, Gavin Schmidt at GISS, Hannah Ritchie at “Our World in Data”, and Christiana Figueres. The Costa Rican diplomat who led the effort to get the Paris climate accord approved in 2015 and who has stated.
“Optimism is a choice. Do you know of any challenge that mankind has had in the history of humankind that was actually successful in its achievement that started out with pessimism, that started out with defeatism?”
WE are the “Minority Report” in Climate Science.
That's WHY no one is "Looking Up". The SCIENCE they are choosing to believe in, tells them they don't need to.
Their SCIENCE tells them that what you and I are worrying about isn't real.
What they don't understand about SCIENCE, is that "paradigm shifts" happen. A former way of "seeing" something is discredited and a new understanding emerges.
Climate Science is on the verge of a paradigm shift.
OR
We are both CRAZY.
The sad reality is that. Until the Climate Science agrees with us, no one else will.
Including Kamala Harris.
I don't care for Mann, complete agreement. Peter Kalmus and those in Scientist Rebellion are sounding the alarms. Europe seems to be ahead of us in that regard, but they're getting hotter faster. No worries. When AMOC stops, solved.
Of course, I see the problem. How much time was devoted to climate in the debate? The accelerating rate of extinction never seen before? H5N1 being a growing concern? Where is the billionaire owned media in all this, lol?
We will keep the foot on the gas, ruin the environment further for short run "green" energy sources that, as they are now, merely filling increasing energy demand, anything but cut consumption rationally and as quickly as possible. Hell, needless AI really ticks me off in this regard. The water and energy use for this needless product will grow to be equivalent of adding a small energy hungry country. It's insane. But Homo sapiens is a deluded creature.
Great article on the Greenland ice sheet, BTW. I want to spin on that one, too, and California's wildfires this year. I keep pointing out CA is the fifth-biggest economy in the world and that its agriculture is critical. Economic collapse there will be felt the world over. The ground is collapsing from drained out aquifers. I'm sure you know.
Keep banging the gong, Richard.
As the years have progressed it seems to me that our govt functions more as a Uniparty…. We are effectively pitted against each other and end up disparaging the “others”, much to our collective detriment. For most normal people we’ll all be hurt as current and future administrations drag us into more war and heedless spending. Neither party can really solve what’s coming, and neither will call for the one thing that can solve our predicament: “less”. No amount of wind or solar tech ( dependent on oil ), can offset the wars that are teetering on the brink. The most ecological move we can make today is to avoid WW3, and then embrace a lifestyle of much less consumption. You’ll find plenty of conservatives and liberals both onboard with that common sense.
There is no doubt that the parties are now far too aligned. Money and the military industrial complex has corrupted what was already corrupted system. Capitalism or neocapitalism, even worse, are unsustainable models in the confines of a finite planet. We're always good at solving with more. We have no ability to address living with less.
Agreed. After years of study, I've accepted the view of thinkers like "Honest Sorcerer", "David Holmgren" and "John Michael Greer": Collapse has been in progress for decades, and will continue for many more decades. It's not an apocalypse movie. It will be in a ragged fashion spanning decades or longer (stairsteps). The sooner we adjust individually the better we can be. Perhaps we build community locally into this downshift.
The top-down powers that be won't ever support this. We'll have to collapse before we see the majority of humans willingly learn to live with less. Thoughts on that?
I use to think this view was nihilistic or lazy, but the more I've studied the more I think it's just an honest view of humanities foibles. I still work to learn to live with less, I enjoy it. I try to encourage others too. But my unresolved "hope" in the elites helping solve the problem led to depression. Giving up that hope was actually liberating. I do what I can in my little town. That's all I can do.
It is wild to be hoping and praying (and voting) that an intelligent democratic president wins an election with a platform that includes the continuation of both fracking and aid to Israel. Such are the times. But like you said, we will run out of resources soon enough no matter her platform. And I'm rooting for her, and us.
I'm rooting for her, too, but have no sense of what her perception is of the depth and immediacy of our crises. Even if she is as wise and courageous as we need her to be, it's a monumental battle with much hidden from our eyes.
The problem is that the US electorate is skewed to the right, and even in the centre-left is biased towards neoliberal ideas of individual "freedom". So anyone who genuinely wants to win such a contest has to be able to attract enough voters from those centrist voters to actually win a majority in those states that can swing the EC.
No doubt, many are skewed right and unwittingly vote against their own interests. This is failure in education, and the success of a system that exploits that weakness. That's why Project 2025 and strongmen in general work to undermine education.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. Raging orange love it 😂
My vote will not go towards the genocide and I’m voting for Dr. Jill Steinberg 💚 her fight for climate change and genocide is my fight as well ..
if nothing changes 🔵
nothing changes 🔴
Oh dear, did I say Raging Orange Dunce? I was sure In edited that out.
Just a quick thought. As i did in 1968 and voted for Humphrey while most of my friends voted for Dick Gregory as a protest vote, I will probably grudgingly vote for KH. In '68 I felt like the Demos' domestic policy inclinations were better than Nixon's. This time it is even more stark. Again the Demos foreign policy is horrendous but their domestic policy is at least aimed in the right direction. Compare that with the latter day Repubs in their march lockstep into fascism. They make Richard Nixon look like a 'lib' .
My parents voted for Humphrey, too, and I remember going door to door with my mother for McGovern. Yes, the Republicans are completely fascist at this point, but the Dems have shifted far to the right over the decades, as I'm sure you see and lament. The problem now is we're heading into a climate change catastrophe fated for massive migration, agricultural loss and endemic inflation. Neither party either sees, or tells the truth. Traditional domestic policy will not stop or soften the impact of the storms, literal and metaphorical, that are happening. On a practical level, look at insurers pulling out of markets or raising rates to the point of unaffordability. This is the stuff of an impending worldwide economic crash and the unpredictable chaos and violence that guarantees. We need a much bigger vision and rapid, profound change of society at the values level. I don't see anything close to that coming. I hope Harris surprises me, and that she gets both houses and expands the Supreme Court.
Re the 2025 project and Kevin Roberts do you know that he an opus dei propaganda hack/operative. And that the creepoid in chief aka J D Vance is closely associated with opus dei too - he wrote the foreword to Roberts book.
That having been said please check out this 2019 essay re the applied politics of opus dei and other right-wing religionists.
http://opentabernacle.wordpress.com/2019/03/22/resurgence-of-the-catholic-poltical-right-under-trump
The most recent essay on this site provides an update on the situation with reference to the 2025 project.
this site describes the in and outs of opus dei http://www.odan.org
Are you familiar with Chris Hedges prophetic book American Fascists The Christian Right & Its War Against America? It seems to me that the 2025 project is the leading edge vector of this war.
Thanks for the references regarding Trump's association to the Heritage Foundation. Regarding the climate, unfortunately it was not been given the appropriate attention at all. I doubt anything will change towards the right direction.
Yeah, Heritage is a bad actor, one of many with benign sounding names Heartland Institute is awful in its climate denial and disinformation, too. It's a four alarm fire now, and share your pessimism. I feel the Arctic and Amazon are tipped, and the Greenland ice sheet melt threshold was likely passed decades ago.