This year ClimateDog will keep on about ways to protect families and communities from the growing costs and damage of climate change.
But this year is different. We have a special tool — the ballot box!
The stakes will be sky high in November, and many of us have heard what the Republicans plan to do if they win the White House. It’s all laid out in their 900-page Project 2025 blueprint. It aims, among other things, to prevent the federal government from reducing the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by
repealing the Inflation Reduction Act (a landmark law offering US$370 billion for clean technology), closing programs at the U.S. Department of Energy, and encouraging allied nations to use fossil fuels. The blueprint supports Arctic drilling, declaring that the federal government has an "obligation to develop vast oil and gas and coal resources," and reversing a 2009 finding from the Environmental Protection Agency that determined that carbon dioxide emissions are harmful to human health. [Wikipedia, Project 2025]
I’m thinking ClimateDog should spend 2024 helping Americans understand what a Republican win on November 5th would mean to each of us. Maybe I could persuade a few voters that the Democrats’ approach - based on laws and regulations - is far, far better for us. The logic goes like this:
The scattered voluntary actions we’ve been taking, no matter how earnest or inventive, haven’t come close to what’s needed.
Fighting climate change will require widespread, strong, and concerted action to reduce emissions and build protections against damage.
Effective measures can only be concerted if we’re all required (or heavily incentivized) to take them.
Democrats almost universally favor climate regulations that reduce emissions and build protections.
Republicans are against these, a stance that will doom Americans to severe costs and damage.
We need to vote for Democrats this year, in our towns, our states and in Washington. But especially for President!
It’s ‘freedom’ I need to steer clear of
But in writing about this reasoning I’m up against a big definition of what it means to be an American: Freedom! In many climate policy debates, it’s this concept of freedom that lies just below the surface.
"Biden's 'climate crisis' is just the latest excuse for the Left to abuse executive power to push an anti-American, anti-freedom agenda." [Dan Bishop, North Carolina GOP congressman]
Conservatives use the word freedom a lot. To them it means individuals living with lots of choice and opportunity for initiative and invention. It means freedom from interference and pressure from ‘others,’ and the preservation of their way of life. To Republicans, rules and regulations are what weaken these freedoms in their lives. President Trump summed it up:
They want to bury our economy under suffocating, relentless landslides of Washington red tape like we had before I got here. We must never return to the days of soul-crushing regulation that ravaged our cities, devastated our workers, drained our vitality, and thoroughly crippled our nation’s prized competitive edge. [President Trump]
Sure, many of us grew up learning the theory, based on Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand,’ that the pursuit of individual interests always leads to the general good. Most of us also grew up seeing how untrue it is.
Liberals use the word far less, but they do seek and cherish other personal freedoms - freedoms from hunger, poverty, ignorance, physical danger, discrimination, inequity, and other human conditions. To Democrats, rules and regulations are what strengthen these freedoms in their lives.
Freedom is a matter of emotion, tradition, belonging. In trying to fight climate change, I don’t want to get anywhere near the concept.
So what should I try instead?
In this big election year, how might a writer help voters see that they’ll suffer far more climate damage to their lifestyles and their wallets if the Republicans get control in Washington in November?
I have a few ideas on what I might write about - and where - over the coming months. I’ll bounce some of them off you soon. In the meantime please let me have your suggestions, by sending a comment below or emailing me (dstookey at gmail.com).
It’s not fair of me to imply that Conservatives are always against regulations. After all, they favor life-altering rules when it comes to conception and pregnancy. Liberals, on the other hand, want the freedom to choose when to have a child. After birth the roles reverse. Democrats favor regulations that help meet the needs of infants and children - like food aid, health aid, child care, and early learning. Republicans oppose almost all government programs that help support children after conception.
A Climate Justice Economy is the only way forward
https://prosperityforri.com/about-us/f/a-climate-justice-economythe-only-way-forward-2024
A Climate Justice Economy is the only way forward Greg Gerritt January 2024
References for each section are listed at the end of the essay.
Introduction
We face a series of interrelated crises that directly relate to how people make a living in Rhode Island and on planet Earth The climate crisis, caused by the burning of fossil fuels and destruction of ecosystems that store carbon in trees, plants, and soils, is intersecting with the agricultural crisis, the poverty crisis, the undermining of democracy, racism, and the depletion of resources of all kinds. Every serious effort to look at the planetary crisis says we are far beyond what is sustainable on planet Earth even if we think some technological marvel like Carbon Capture is going to bail us out, and it already costs the people of the planet hundreds of billions of dollars a year.
Unfortunately the work to repair the damage is added to the GDP instead of being deducted from it, and resource depletion is counted as income, with no acknowledgement of how depletion detracts from future economic activity. So we continue to marvel at a growing economy that has way too big a hole in it due to the damage we are doing to the planet and the cost of repairs. There has to be another way.
1. I would suggest that focusing on creating a Climate Justice Economy is the only realistic way forward for our communities. I went searching for the term on the internet, but it seems that it has not reached a wide circulation, at least how I mean it. I mean it in the sense that if we are to see prosperous communities in the future, then we must make the primary focus of our economic development efforts climate justice oriented projects, both in terms of policies and resources allocated. Providence has a pretty well defined picture of climate justice as explained in their Climate Justice Plan. Right now climate and justice are add-ons to economic development as practiced by cities, states, and the nation, with most of the effort, resources, and money going to industries that perpetuate inequality, get us no closer to zero emissions, or raise the cost of healthcare and housing. Our economic development planning and activities should be focusing on how to stop the climate catastrophe, end poverty and heal ecosystems and social systems in neighborhoods we currently marginalize. In other words we need to put our advocacy muscle into creating an economy based on climate justice principles and implement systems that place climate justice at the center as we allocate economic development resources.
Read the rest of the essay and see the references at https://prosperityforri.com/about-us/f/a-climate-justice-economythe-only-way-forward-2024
Well said David. Fortunately we still have the freedom to vote!