Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Robert Wuthnow’s new book, The Left Behind: Decline and Rage in Rural America, is the best book I’ve read on the rural-urban divide in the United States in years. It may, in fact, be the best book I’ve ever read on the topic, and I’ve read a lot of them.
This article is the latest in the current series looking to the 2018 midterm Congressional elections as an opportunity to broaden support for federal clean energy and climate policies. Today’s installment addresses alternative facts and how membership in an identity group can impact the way people process climate data.
In Part 1 of this essay we surveyed the historical, economic, and cultural context for the upset victory of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. I did not mention Russian interference in that election. That’s because it is a subject that deserves to be treated on its own.
While I’m not prepared to make a prediction about Trump’s fate (there are just too many variables and unknowns), I have come to an unpleasant conclusion: While Trump will certainly be gone at some point — whether next month or years from now — we’re never going to return to the pre-Trump status quo.
Sacrifice zones – abandoned, economically shattered places – are spreading in historically white rural areas and small towns across the United States. Rural decline fosters regressive authoritarian politics.
The Donald and his Congressional budget hawks are looking pretty profligate at the moment—having just added $1.5 trillion to the deficit over the next ten years for tax reforms, $300 billion for fiscal years 2018/2019 by the budget deal and a possible $25 billion more to build a Wall. Spending pressures on one side will be met with saving pressures on another.
It turns out that un-clapping Democrats were not the only ones accused of treasonous acts involving Trump’s first State of the Union (SOTU) performance. Bill Nye “, The Science Guy,” was roundly condemned by colleagues in the science community and progressive political activists for having consorted with an enemy of science.
The days of constructive political debate and compromise in the legislative and executive branches of government are long gone, leaving the courts as the primary venues in which the causes and consequences of global climate change are debated, and solutions sought.
The new U.S. energy policy of the Trump era is, in some ways, the oldest energy policy on Earth. Every great power has sought to mobilize the energy resources at its command, whether those be slaves, wind-power, coal, or oil, to further its hegemonic ambitions.
This column, like others in the Canaries in the Coal Mine series, is intended to raise early warnings of dangers that might be lurking beyond the immediate attention of clean energy advocates and climate defenders. Today’s tale continues the discussion about the 2018 midterm elections and what they could mean for federal clean energy and climate policies and programs. c
Right now, due to the bipartisan obsession with economic growth, Democrats look like losers at the GDP racetrack, racist sentiments are fair game again, and the rapacious pursuit of growth is liquidating the environment. Democrats, racial minorities, and environmentalists can pine independently, “Woe is me.”
This column, like others in the Canaries in the Coal Mine series, is intended to raise early warnings of dangers that might be lurking beyond the immediate attention of clean energy advocates and climate defenders. Today’s cautionary tale is about the 2018 midterm elections and what they could mean for federal clean energy and climate policies and programs.
