This week I’ve been thinking about where I, and ClimateDog, should go from here. Robert Frost’s poem The Oven Bird comes to mind.
There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers;
He says the highway dust is over all.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.
Going forward I’m going to write about America’s Diminished Thing from three points of view.
My first aim is to evaluate America’s weakening protection against the ravages of climate change that are coming at us in the new MAGA world – a very Diminished Thing.
How could I be bowled over by a tragedy whose approach I’ve been warning about, letter after letter, for the past nine months? It’s shameful that I’ve done so little thinking about that calamity’s arrival.
There will soon be dozens of ways in which America no longer represents half the country’s values, hopes and beliefs. While I don’t have many concrete to-dos yet, I believe that those of us whose special interest is climate action may be lucky. We can still be persuasive because the dimensions surrounding our topic are concrete, the measurements are increasingly hard to deny.
A high percentage of Americans are likely to link arms and act in unison when faced with flooding, wildfire or drought. When faced with the fuzzier issues of abortion, in-vitro fertilization, trans youth, school choice, immigrants, guns, and so on, all the questions of ethics, beliefs, bigotry, priorities, social values, ideologies, even religious dictates are not so clear. It helps that the climate change issues we push tend to be denominated more by dollar values, less by family values. For example:
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physical damage and insurance premiums from storm and fire,
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health costs from heat and air quality,
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agricultural prices from drought and heat, and
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big dollar income that can come from leasing land to wind farm operators.
There’s another difference that may make climate discussions more productive. The consequences surrounding those other fuzzy issues fluctuate; climate dangers are only growing.
This will be my second viewpoint. Our big defenses will soon be gone – Biden’s veto and Democratic control of the Senate. Our firewall defenses against the many changes proposed by the Trump forces will need to be built outside the federal government – in the states and individual communities, in citizen petitions and referendums, and especially in the non-profit organizations fighting environmental, humanitarian, and justice causes. My second theme in the coming weeks will be an evaluation of these groups’ abilities to focus the defenses we already have in place, and how we as individuals can help them rapidly augment their strength. and broaden their impact.
America is fortunate to have such a well-developed sector of environmental and justice organizations, the base for what must be rapid growth in their activities. If you want to look at them alongside me, you might check the latest announcements from non-profits like these.
American Civil Liberties Union During Trump’s first administration the ACLU fought his policies more than 400 times. Based on their recent study of Trump’s likely policies, the ACLU is gearing up for bigger fights.
The Sierra Club, with 64 chapters and millions of members, has worked to cut coal use and persuade cities to adopt sustainability plans, among many other environmental campaigns.
Earthjustice, formerly a part of the Sierra Club, uses litigation to protect the environment. With 15 offices handling 620 legal cases over 50 years, Earthjustice claims $17 billion in climate costs avoided annually due to their work.
Friends of the Earth, which takes on international environmental issues like pollution, climate change, and deforestation through policy advocacy, public awareness, and direct action.
Climate damages affect the poor far more than the rich, so climate issues are also justice issues. I’ll be looking at justice-centered organizations whose work may need to be ramped up a lot over the coming years. Please point out promising groups, national and local, to me.
A Trump government is going to make these battles very difficult. Nevertheless, they must be fought. And fought with new tactics and heightened energy and steadfast conviction.
My third theme concerns my own fundamental thinking. Last week as a member of the overconfident liberals, a befuddled woke, one of the powerless elite, I was feeling sorry for myself. I couldn’t believe how much Fact and Truth and Understanding were ignored by over half of my fellow American voters.
But I should have known how easily this can happen. Twenty years ago I was fascinated by What’s the Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, by Thomas Frank. The book is still one of the best descriptions of what today one would describe as the MAGA mind. Writing around the time of George Bush’s reelection, Frank said:
How could so many people get it so wrong? The question is apt: it is in many ways the preeminent questions of our times. People getting their own fundamental interests wrong is what American political life is all about. This species of derangement is the bedrock of our civic order; it is the foundation on which all else rests. This derangement has put Republicans in charge of all three branches of government; it has elected presidents, senators, governors; it shifts the Democrats to the right.”
I’ll work quietly on rearranging my thoughts. If I get anywhere I’ll let you know.”
How much of a Diminished Thing are we looking at? That’s what upcoming ClimateDog newsletters will be about.