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Look away, part II

Part one, here. Unrelated but really, is anything?

The ‘world’ souring on climate politics (choose your word to emphasize) has a true and correct ‘as if’ quality about it. As we find more ways to do more, we also (reminder: there is no they) find more ways to do less, pollute more, question everything, bury it in euphemism, and not recall what the worlds mean and then discover new ways to say this is Just. Too. Hard.

The retreat from climate politics has been widespread, even in the midst of a global green-energy boom. From 2019 to 2021, governments around the world added more than 300 climate-adaptation and mitigation policies each year, according to the energy analyst Nat Bullard. In 2023, the number dropped under 200. In 2024, it was only 50 or so. In many places — like in South America and in Europe — existing laws have already been weakened or are under pressure from shifting political coalitions now pushing to undermine them.
To our north, the former central banker Mark Carney — whose 2015 warnings about the financial risks from climate change helped set the stage for Paris by alarming the world’s banking elite — became prime minister of Canada in March and as his very first act in office struck down the country’s carbon tax, before storming to a landslide victory in the April election. To our south, President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico, a former climate scientist, has invoked the principle of “energy sovereignty” and boasted of booming oil and gas production in her country — and enjoys one of the highest approval ratings of any elected leader anywhere in the world. Almost everywhere you look, the spike of climate alarm that followed Paris has given way to something its supporters might describe as climate moderation but which critics would call complacency or indifference. “You can’t walk more than two feet at any global conference today without ‘pragmatism’ and ‘realism’ being thrown around as the order of the day,” says Jason Bordoff, a former Obama energy adviser who now runs Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. “But it’s not clear to me that anyone knows what those words mean other than this whole climate thing is just too hard.”
The world hasn’t actually abandoned green energy, with global renewable rollout still accelerating and investment doubling over the last five years. But climate politics is in undeniable withdrawal, and far from ushering in a new era of cooperative global solidarity, Paris has given way to something much more old-fashioned: an atavistic age of competition, renewed rivalry and the increasingly naked logic of national self-interest, on energy and warming as with everything else. In the wake of America’s presidential election, Alex Trembath of the Breakthrough Institute declared that “the era of the climate hawk is over.” Perhaps, at least for now, the age of climate statesmen, too.
Lengthy quote because it’s pay-walled, but worth it if you can.
There is a great [human] tendency (unheard-of among rabbits and swordfish, one assumes) to struggles as one-off battles that are won or lost – rather than ongoing existential struggles for survival better-known among mammals and oceanic fish. Global warming is not a set-piece battle, though it has many sets and pieces. It’s successes need to built upon, it’s failures learned from. The article is also correct in that our language about it has stagnated, dominated as it is by capital interests. The role of the once ne plus ultra United States being self-negated has also proven to be of immense value to the rest of the world.
We yet need to face down the bullies – that is and always has been our existential struggle, presenting every single moment we’ve ever had to shine.
Coates is excellent on an adjacent, rhyming point.
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Answer the door

What are we trying to pretty up, by maintaining fictions that the current state of affairs is somehow normal, that it cannot be as grossly psychopathic for no benefit as it seems? And more importantly, why?

We’ve never had to make the case that maintaining a healthy ecosystem is good. The opposite case seemed self-refuting, until it making it became a badge of honor for disingenuous fraudsters to scare fraidsters, of whom we have plenty plenty and now more than is manageable because the original case that didn’t have to be made at all now seems questionable. Circular is the logic. Refuse to accept it but decline not to acknowledge its presence and malevolence.

Reason has been caught flat-footed in the face of the transparent willingness to lie and scare. Some call it boldness and question whether norms and even constitutional principles can hold. These are quaint notions, a reliance upon and retreat into status that were never anything more than rationalizations for themselves. And as long as they lasted, they bred contempt for any questioning of the status quo. The skullduggery has always been present but for decades channeled mostly yet viciously from pulpits and through direct mail campaigns, seldom wielded openly as the weapons they have become. Those who were getting fleeced should know better, so there was no need to defend them or point out the obvious problems with the arrangement. Or listen to the warnings of those tried.

Reason has not been ready to defend itself. Never felt the need.

Now the need is pounding at the door, and we are trying to act as though we do not hear, might not be home. Maybe the knocking will go away on its own. Consult any car repair manual for a detailed explanation regarding this strategy.

And along with the formerly self-evident case for a healthy ecosystem, add that for democracy, scientific research and discovery, postal delivery, voting rights, civil rights, marriage equality, human rights. Whatever the shape of the latest outrage or their accumulation, it is a symbol of an axiom long considered safe now under assault from all sides, with stunned onlookers staggering backward, wondering WTF and waiting for someone to do something.

And understand these strategies for exactly what they are – efforts to destroy the system.

Knock, knock.

Image: Author photo, Lefkes.

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Exceptionalism

With the AI on the fritz again, dear leader’s tenuous grip on a very limited supply of marbles, and the corporate media unable unwilling to call any of this what it is, the importance of checking the scores is our go-to.

Not those scores.

Here’s what I found: Once fascists win power democratically, they have never been removed democratically. Not once. Ever.

I know that sounds impossible. I kept digging, thinking surely someone, somewhere, stopped them. The actual record is so much worse than you think.

Let’s start with Germany because everyone thinks they know this story. Franz von Papen, the conservative politician who convinced President Hindenburg to make Hitler Chancellor, said “We’ve hired him” in January 1933. He thought he was so clever. Within 18 months, the Nazis were machine-gunning von Papen’s allies in their homes during the Night of Long Knives. Von Papen himself barely escaped to Austria with his life. Every single conservative who thought they could “control” or “moderate” Hitler was either dead, in exile, or groveling for survival by 1934.

Italy was even dumber, if that’s possible. October 1922, Mussolini announces he’s marching on Rome with 30,000 blackshirts. Except here’s the thing: they were poorly armed, disorganized, and the Italian military could have crushed them in about three hours. The King had his generals ready. He had martial law papers drawn up. The military was waiting for the order. Instead, he invited Mussolini to form a government. Just handed him power. Twenty-three years later, partisans hung Mussolini’s corpse upside down at a gas station while crowds beat it with sticks. The king died in exile. Hundreds of thousands of Italians died for that moment of cowardice.

Spain might be the worst because everyone saw it coming. Three years of escalating fascist violence. Actual assassination attempts. Then in 1936, Franco and his generals launch a straight-up military coup. The Spanish Republic begged for help. France said “not our problem.” Britain said “both sides are bad.” America declared neutrality. The result? Franco ruled for 39 years. He died peacefully in his bed in 1975. They’re still finding mass graves in Spain. Still. In 2025.

Want something more recent? Look at Hungary. Orbán won democratically in 2010. By 2011 he’d rewritten the constitution. By 2012 he controlled the media. By 2013 he’d gutted the judiciary. It’s 2025 and he’s still in power. The EU has been “very concerned” for fourteen fucking years. They’ve written strongly worded letters. They’ve held meetings. Hungary is now a one-party state in the middle of Europe and everyone just… accepts it.

Okay, but surely someone, somewhere, stopped them?

The dreaded ‘someone.’ Not be outdone by Herr von Hindenburg

Want to know how many times people successfully “controlled” the fascists they allied with? Zero.

Are we feeling special?

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Carrying the water [away]

The metaphors become really complicated at this level, given the thirsty water requirements of LLMs. But give Bloomberg its due for the most succinct cut-line in history of such things:

It cuts way down past the chase, to the quick, and presents what seems an unlikely reveal, inevitable as it may be. We can be relatively sure that neither Fallon nor Google is ashamed to be called out like this. And Photographer: Google really adds that special something.

The clown show is hard, one would imagine. When making people laugh is what keeps the audience coming back, eventually the comedian will become a water carrier for the status quo. It’s the raisin debt of every influencer, about which they are quite open. The question is what it does to us and everything around us, shaded in this light, as it were. The quick can still burn, if the numbness isn’t total.

Pay attention to what ‘becomes the norm.’ It’s certainly not as passive of an activity as the construction suggests.

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Seeing it as it happens

Figure out what you think, first. Where you stand, what you can support. Yes, you may be challenged in an argument (or be the challenger) so this includes being able to defend what you think. If you can be convinced to change or alter what you think by a superior moral rationale or appeal to reason, this is the path to knowing. Pardon the prologue.

The tendency not to see, much less believe, what is happening in the US at any particularly moment but especially this one is itself more widespread than many want to admit.

Climate change, née global warming, offers some analogue. The shift in the name presents a clue, that the reality had to be softened, broadened, recast in a more natural-seeming context to gather more support or even acknowledgement. This was and is childish. The ‘skeptics’ who tentatively step on board thought-temple and nod will only demand more incontrovertible evidence later, when the latter has piled up beyond any denial. And that’s assuming they were acting in good faith in the first place. My desire for more ice cream before I cleaned my room was genuine. When I was six. Sometimes. Depending on how many times my parents and I worked out these deals.

The point beyond any denial above is critical,  because that is when the negotiations begin. With individuals, with themselves. We don’t want to entertain the possibility that some things are happening, that we have some responsibility for their happening, that they are the results of our actions, actions that have benefitted us greatly, that question the wisdom and grace of those actions and perhaps even their divine sanction. No, it can’t be that. Must be treachery of any other sort. Certainly not ours.

So, there’s a great deal of possible agency, and it can be winsome temptation.

The successful contortions that have both pushed climate solutions so near the point of no return AND super-charged the development of the same solutions – wind and solar power displacing fossil fuels – have been the result of enormous time lags that allowed technology to catch up as well as the proliferation of lies and frauds on an industrial scale. Decades. We had at least a very solid handle on global warming in 1988.

Alas, the analogue has it limits. The transition to fascist authoritarianism offers no such kind of lazy time frame. You can argue, but you need to. It is in motion, speeding up as the summer burns out. And no, simply getting depressed about it is not one of your options. Just clean your fcking room.

 

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Things not to be believed, nor hidden

What do unimaginable riches permit?

History books will not be kind. We won’t believe we did this, we’ll try to hide it but we won’t be able to and we shouldn’t:

“DESTROY” stickers were affixed this week to hundreds of cases of U.S.-branded food aid — 15,000 pounds’ worth — that have languished for months in a Georgia warehouse and then expired before they could be sent overseas to famine-stricken areas like Sudan.

And Mana Nutrition’s warehouse holds plenty more of the peanut paste, a crucial element in treating malnutrition. A $50 million supply has been stacked for months in the nonprofit’s facility in Pooler, a short drive from Savannah, caught in the chaos as the Trump administration upended foreign aid and never shipped.

The food could still help 60 million people, Mana estimates.

“This is a giant glut,” chief operating officer David Todd Harmon said. “All contracted. All bought and paid for. It’s just not been picked up.”

A State Department memo in late May signaled that more than 60,000 metric tons of commodities were sitting in warehouses in the United States and around the world and that an “urgent” plan would begin to shift some of it. The logjam followed the Trump administration’s breakneck dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, slashing more than 80 percent of its programming and laying off all but a tiny fraction of its staffers. The agency’s doors officially closed July 1.

It feels a bit naive not to think some people will be pleased by this. Soi-disant ‘good christians’ everywhere will attempt to rationalize it with excuses that fold perfectly into the circular logic of the worldview that needlessly condemns millions to misery.

There is no reason for this beyond charlatans and cheap vengeance. Your vote has consequences.

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You knewESCO

UNESCO is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, a specialized agency of the United Nations with the aim of promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture.

A sort of civilization interlocutor,  UNESCO helps set global norms and standards, develop tools for international cooperation, generate knowledge for public policies and build global networks of sites and institutions that reflect the world’s cultural and natural diversity of ‘outstanding universal value.’

So, for obvious reasons, the US is of course now withdrawing from UNESCO:

“Continued involvement in UNESCO is not in the national interest of the United States,” says Tammy Bruce, a spokesperson for the State Department, in the statement. Bruce asserts that UNESCO’s vote to admit Palestine as a full member in 2011 was “highly problematic” and “contributed to the proliferation of anti-Israel rhetoric within the organization.”

Audrey Azoulay, director general of UNESCO, denied the anti-Israel claims, arguing in a statement that they “contradict the reality of UNESCO’s efforts, particularly in the field of Holocaust education and the fight against antisemitism.”

“UNESCO has supported 85 countries in implementing tools and training teachers to educate students about the Holocaust and genocides, and to combat Holocaust denial and hate speech,” writes Azoulay, adding that the agency’s work has been “unanimously acclaimed” by leading Jewish organizations.

That’s according to the notoriously hot-headed Smithsonian Magazine.

Yes, all is political, everything. Must learn how to politics.

Instead, we choose to deal with highly complex political, scientific and cultural questions by magically making them simple and easy.  If only there was an international organization designed to serve as arbiter on such matters, rather than re-drawing them as cartoons stick figures.

Image: Credentials from my documentary film project a few years ago.

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The protection gap

Ah, language… you’re we’re soaking in it.

A growing disparity between economic loses from natural disasters and the amount of those losses covered by insurance is bringing together some strange bedfellows. I know, the entire world is now one giant mixed metaphor:

Insured losses from natural catastrophes may reach $145 billion this year — well above the 10-year average — as population growth, urban sprawl and climate change combine to supercharge risks, according to an estimate in April from the Swiss Re Institute.

The rising costs make it essential that the insurance industry “reach out not only to regulators and supervisors, but also to broader policymakers, government departments outside of insurance, academia, and even customers to work together and figure out how to tackle this issue,” Ariizumi said.

Ariizumi spoke near Durban, South Africa, ahead of a panel focused on the protection gap on Thursday. The event, held alongside the G-20 finance chiefs’ meetings, is expected to be attended by World Bank President Ajay Banga and the chair of French insurer Axa SA.

To address losses from natural disasters, Ariizumi said various forms of collaboration are possible such as the public sector agreeing to take on part of the risk when an event is deemed too great for private financial institutions to handle the costs on their own.

Once again, no shade to Bloomberg – they’re just the messenger explaining this through their prism – but this article raises question about t-shirts that say climate change is too expensive to address already answered by those t-shirts.

And this is why, in order to have nice things, massive collection action collaborations by governments to help businesses, which include insurers and media companies alike, to change courses, practices, and tactics toward the betterment of all humans remains job one. We can come back around to it under other guises, but collaboration is socialism collaboration. One day, we’ll come around to that and see how silly all of this was.

And it would be best for everyone if that day is tomorrow.

Image: a corner of Dukes County from the sky, via.

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Vitruvian man, MMXXV, seeks camaraderie, romance

I can get a couple of issues behind on the NYRB, but this a good recent-ish one for your Friday reading:

Because the practice of architecture requires such a store of knowledge, Vitruvius maintains that it is much more than a craft that depends on purely manual skill: it is a lofty liberal art, a pursuit that engages all the human faculties of imagination and reason no less than grammar, rhetoric, or poetry. His career included inspecting catapults for Julius Caesar and building a basilica at Colonia Julia Fanestris (modern-day Fano, on the Adriatic coast) with some radical innovations, such as gigantic two-story interior columns, that belie his popular reputation as a hidebound conservative. A man of strong, sometimes unpredictable opinions who thanks his parents in the preface to Book VI for having given him a first-rate Roman education, Vitruvius was bilingual in Greek and Latin and well read in Greek and Latin poetry, Cicero’s prose, Greek architectural pamphlets, and recent developments in natural philosophy and technology.

His proposed course of study for young architects continues Cicero’s recent efforts to create a system of Roman learning comparable to that of the Greek-speaking world (a world that notably included Alexandria as well as the eastern Mediterranean), and it participates fully in the contemporary effort, fostered by the emperor Augustus, to transform Rome into a capital of distinctively Latin culture. His ambitiously comprehensive treatise is almost certainly the first of its kind for the ancient Greco-Roman world, recasting architecture not only as a liberal art but also as a natural means to extend the reach of Rome’s expanding empire. Clear and precise, his remarks on education show how the Romans of the early Augustan era tried to define their place in a rapidly changing world—both native Romans and Romans newly absorbed into the Res Publica Romana, for Roman education followed swiftly on the legions to prepare young people in conquered territories for participation in the imperial state.

It seems likely that the connection between education, architecture, and empire inspired the creation of the earliest known manuscript of Vitruvius, copied on parchment in the ninth century, perhaps for Charlemagne, perhaps by the hand of his learned adviser Alcuin of York, almost certainly as part of the Frankish king’s project of resurrecting the glories of ancient Rome in a Christian spirit. It is through this same clever wedge, education, that Vitruvius has driven himself and his treatise into the very heart of the way the contemporary world still thinks about any number of things, from human scale to beauty to liberal education to the best methods of town planning. Whether you have read Vitruvius or not, his influence is still palpable in the fabric of modern urban life, and that is why he has been translated as recently as 2017 into Chinese.

Do not study marketing, kids.

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Wind and sun, things of that nature

A Russian nesting doll of spite and stupid.

This is straight up insane, which checks a box within-a-box within-a-box for the lobotomized party. So they’ll probably do it.

The tax provision, tucked inside the 940-page bill that the Senate made public just after midnight on Friday, stunned observers.

“This is how you kill an industry,” said Bob Keefe, executive director of E2, a nonpartisan group of business leaders and investors. “And at a time when electricity prices and demand are soaring.”

The bill would rapidly phase out existing federal tax subsidies for wind and solar power by 2027. Doing so, many companies say, could derail hundreds of projects under development and could jeopardize billions of dollars in manufacturing facilities that had been planned around the country with the subsidies in mind.

Those tax credits were at the heart of the Inflation Reduction Act, which Democrats passed in 2022 in an attempt to nudge the country away from fossil fuels, the burning of which is driving climate change. President Trump, who has mocked climate science, has instead promoted fossil fuels and demanded that Republicans in Congress unwind the law.

But the latest version of the Senate bill would go much further. It would impose a steep penalty on all new wind and solar farms that come online after 2027 — even if they didn’t receive federal subsidies — unless they follow complicated and potentially unworkable requirements to disentangle their supply chains from China. Since China dominates global supply chains, that measure could affect a large number of companies.

That’s from NYT on Sunday, and there are literally no benefits from doing this.

Not unrelated to the way ‘policymakers’ are making pawns of Chinese college students studying and doing research in the US. Always running behind will always do the wrong things. Ahead is right there. In front of you.