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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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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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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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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.

 

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Prosperity Gospel Vamp

As mentioned many times, including public fora, sustainability is a vanishingly low bar. Just transfer the concept to say, friendship, and try to be whelmed at all.

Accordingly, this discussion about ‘everything-bagel-liberalism’ as a stymie to de-carbonization and other incursions into societal progress looks a bit pekid when corporate interests and provincial politicians are allowed the posture of disinterested bystanders:

Green-energy developers will tell you that among the biggest obstacles to new solar or wind projects online are 1) intransigence by gas-dominated utilities that make it practically impossible for renewable developments — which are less profitable for utilities than fossil-fuel infrastructure — to interconnect with the grid, and 2) campaigns by oil-and-gas front groups that work to gin up opposition to clean energy with deceptive claims like “wind turbines kill whales” and “solar panels cause cancer.”

We could pass all the federal permitting reforms Klein and Thompson could dream of, but if powerful fossil-fuel interests continue to call the political shots, we’ll never achieve the clean energy build-out we desperately need.

Similarly, when it comes to the scarcity of affordable housing, Abundance primarily blames zoning laws for constraining supply and driving up prices.

So much of the discourse on sustainable solutions reaches for just-in-time incrementalism that never can be, and only serve to preserve the status quo when radical change is required. Just like prosperity preachers, Abundance liberals need all of the attention for which they clamor. The best of among of them, like those cited here, even move us to consider why their arguments achieve such lift-off velocity in major media. Kudos – it’s a gift. Look askance and ponder.

 

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Consequent antecedent

What if a climate report falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it read it write it?

The Trump administration has dismissed the hundreds of scientists and experts who had been compiling the federal government’s flagship report on how global warming is affecting the country.

The move puts the future of the report, which is required by Congress and is known as the National Climate Assessment, into serious jeopardy, experts said.

Since 2000, the federal government has published a comprehensive look every few years at how rising temperatures will affect human health, agriculture, fisheries, water supplies, transportation, energy production and other aspects of the U.S. economy. The last climate assessment came out in 2023 and is used by state and local governments as well as private companies to help prepare for the effects of heat waves, floods, droughts and other climate-related calamities.

On Monday, researchers around the country who had begun work on the sixth national climate assessment, planned for early 2028, received an email informing them that the scope of the report “is currently being re-evaluated” and that all contributors were being dismissed.

No presto-magic-o, no problem-o. Luckily for us, those pesky climate issues are no match for a brain genius who just does not want to hear about them. Solved.

Fantasy Winning.

Video: frères d’armes

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On fiery rivers

What we talk about when we talk about the great outdoors, environmental protection division. The ‘environment’ is certainly an abstraction, much like all notions of considering any idea removed from its reality before during or after the attempt to frame it on its own terms. Deliberate word choice; all paintings are abstractions, to use a convenient example.

So, we take a thing out of context to do something with it – appreciate it, contemplate it, take in your arms and hold it up the light… where were we? Oh, yes protect it. That’s one reason behind the necessity of such words, a word like ‘environment.’ it’s a general idea but at the same time much more than that.

While we might be capable of protecting individuals trees or even an adored 100-acre wood, it’s necessary to widen our grasp reach, because to really protect those trees it’s necessary to safeguard all of them. Unless the goal is protecting none of them:

WASHINGTON – U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the agency will undertake 31 historic actions in the greatest and most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history, to advance President Trump’s Day One executive orders and Power the Great American Comeback. Combined, these announcements represent the most momentous day in the history of the EPA. While accomplishing EPA’s core mission of protecting the environment, the agency is committed to fulfilling President Trump’s promise to unleash American energy, lower cost of living for Americans, revitalize the American auto industry, restore the rule of law, and give power back to states to make their own decisions.

“Today is the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen. We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more,” said EPA Administrator Zeldin.

And however one may want to rationalize it, this de-regulatory whirlwind is also much more than it seems. Great progress has been made on public health. It will be jarring as it is abandoned.

Image: Pierre Bonnard, Nude in Bathtub, c. 1940s.  Per the above, it’s probably Marthe, but also much more than just her.

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Fearing the wrong storm

Panicky news media and political opposition frets and pre-surrenders to the prospects of what the next US president will do to climate goals and renewable energy projects. If you’re not accustomed to pushing back, prepare to be pushed around.

A few facts:

The U.S. currently produces more crude oil than any country, ever. What more fracking and drill babying will do to the price oil is an unsolvable mystery.

A powerful bomb cyclone is ripping the Pacific Northwest with hurricane-strength winds as the season’s first atmospheric river comes ashore in Northern California, promising torrential rains, floods and mudslides across the region.

Advanced energy capacity is concentrated in renewables, just ask the U.S. military.

Meanwhile, farmers continue to take massive financial hits from the effects of destructive storms.

What to do with this information (yes, after you stop ignoring it)? Use it to make decisions, including voting, but not just that. But speaking of voting, leaders have to be led to the safe place to do the right thing. Who’s going to do that? Who’s going to create the safe place and lead them there?

It’s almost flattering to think global warming is complicated and difficult to solve.

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Moving away from cars

As difficult, and complicated, as contemplating the move away from cars might be, it can be strangely contextualized by reckoning with the move away from Florida:

The Sunshine State rode a post-pandemic growth wave to surpass New York as the country’s third-most populous state, and has four of the country’s five fastest-growing metro areas‍—including Cape Coral–Fort Myers, which Hurricane Ian slammed in 2022, producing the third-most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history. Will Florida’s lifestyle migrants decide they would rather live on higher ground? “The Great Florida Migration Is Coming Undone,” warns the Wall Street Journal.

Fat chance. To the extent that these storms will push anyone from Florida, it will not be people with the means to go, but people without the means to stay. This phenomenon—sometimes called “climate gentrification”—cuts against one popular idea of climate migration, in which wealthier households move to more secure locations and leave the poor to face extreme weather.

Locals are already conscious of this outcome. “The price of repairs may mean we lose our character,” Sam Henderson, the mayor of Gulfport, told the Tampa Bay Times after Helene. “There will be a different kind of people who can afford to live here, moving forward.”

So, a series of counterintuitive developments – much like many of these communities themselves – where, rather than becoming cheaper and less habitable, Florida becomes more expensive and more appealing.

If history is any guide, this devastating hurricane season will increase the state’s rents and home prices, rather than drive them down, and Florida’s growth will continue apace.

Then again, as hundred-year-storm chasers know, history may not be much help in the era of unprecedented weather events fueled by a changing climate. The hazards of long-term sea-level rise are distinct from those associated with disaster recovery, which comes with rebuilt, functioning infrastructure and a sense of returning to normal. Future climate change risks are not included in FEMA flood maps, insurance policies, or Florida land-use planning—and seem not to impact the way people consider the risks of coastal property.

Oh, yes. People prefer less complication.