Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Climate change is once again in the public eye having hitched a ride on the coattails of newly elected Congressional candidates swept into office by November’s blue wave. The buzz is palpable, even though the most avid climate hawk knows that no major environmental legislation will be passed by Congress and signed into law before the 2020 national elections.
The hunger for validation from the legacy press of the authentic Indigenous narrative is no longer a hunger but a famine imposed on our very democracy; that to understand the story of this great nation can not be done without including the Indigenous narrative.
Correlating the poll data with the outcomes of the 2018 midterms leads easily to the conclusion that America’s suburbs will be the battlefields on which the 2020 election will be fought.
We each in our way must do what we can, even in the absence of faith, to make our future tenable. We can’t expect others to take care of us. We can’t expect solutions. But we can treat others with respect and dignity…the way we all want to be treated.
Thus one of the things that I want to explore in posts to come is how we got into ways of thought that treat modern industrial lifestyles as normal and desirable—how people in the industrial world, that is, got caught up in a self-defeating attempt to escape from nature, when human beings are at once inescapably dependent on nature and inescapably part of nature—and how that frankly bizarre habit might be swapped out for something saner.
The Paris Accord was truly historic in its having gotten 195 nations to agree to it. In this day and age getting any agreement between nations on a matter as politically sensitive as climate change ranks as a minor miracle. Getting everyone of the nations to live up to the agreement is quite another matter.
I have long argued that people’s concerns about modern life and the future have been poorly reflected in politics, and it is this that lies behind the unease and disenchantment in the electorate, not just the conduct of politicians and the merits of specific policies.
Coming from a pacifist background, and obsessed with linguistics, I’ve grown uneasy with the way war shapes our words. The thought struck me earlier this year: By pitting one group against another, do war metaphors undermine our ability to address the complex problem of climate change, the biggest global crisis we face?
Democracy survives by the consent of the governed. It requires rules that are fair, just and followed—by everyone. Should the three branches ever become one, democracy will be lost.
On Tuesday 13th November 2018, a group of young climate activists descended on the office of Nancy Palosi, expected to lead the Democrats in the US Congress. They were demanding that she set up a special committee to create a proper climate action plan for the country – a Green New Deal.
This article focuses on a legislative maneuver involving the Congressional Review Act (CRA) that the Democrats in the 116th Congress should consider as a part of their overall strategy to educate voters going into the 2020 general elections.
The midterm election brings activists both good news and bad news, but one thing is certain: Reactivity lost. Focusing on the terribleness of Trump did not win the day.
