Sunday, June 27, 2021

What if American Democracy Fails the Climate Crisis?

Ezra Klein and four environmental thinkers discuss the limits of politics in facing down the threat to the planet.

The Participants

Saul Griffith
Chief scientist and founder of both Otherlab and Rewiring America, a nonprofit that advocates rapid electrification to meet our climate goals.

Rhiana Gunn-Wright
Climate-policy director at the Roosevelt Institute and an author of the Green New Deal.

Sheila Jasanoff
Professor of science and technology studies at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Kim Stanley Robinson
Novelist and author, most recently, of "The Ministry for the Future."

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Are our political systems even capable?

Ezra Klein: The American Jobs Act, President Biden's infrastructure bill, includes an ambitious clean-energy standard and huge investments in renewable-energy and electric-car technologies. It is effectively this administration's big climate bill. Its passage right now certainly isn't clear. But even if it did pass in its proposed form, how far would it get us on the climate fight?

Rhiana Gunn-Wright: It would certainly be a good start, but it really leaves a lot to be desired. In particular, the scale is simply too small; $900 billion on climate is not enough to catalyze the pace of decarbonization we will need in order to cut emissions by 50 percent by 2030, while providing millions of good jobs. That's more like $10 trillion over 10 years. It isn't entirely the Biden administration's fault. The reconciliation process in Congress, just because of the way that it is structured, really forces you to rely really heavily on existing programs. For example, the plan routes some of its investments in the built environment through the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Community Development Block Grant program, which has a history of being exploited by developers. It also relies heavily on existing tax credits to fund the building and deployment of clean-energy infrastructure. If the programs that we had were enough to decarbonize, they would have done that already. It is certainly better than what we have now, but there's still a lot of room to improve.

Saul Griffith: It's not even remotely close to sufficient. But something extraordinary did happen when the Biden administration came out and said it was aiming for a 50 percent reduction in emissions by 2030. It may not be binding, but that is enormously more ambitious than John F. Kennedy standing up and saying we'll go to the moon by the end of the decade. We knew how to build rockets, and we knew where the moon was. We don't know all the answers of where we're going... (continues)

Eco-philosophy

Saturday, June 19, 2021

Ecstatic environmentalism

From Emerson to Humboldt to Muir to Leopold to Stewart Brand to Gail Bradbrook, you could tell a history of environmentalism through the ecstatic experiences that inspired its leaders. https://t.co/cd83Z6g1zl https://t.co/HlEIeDfaqs
(https://twitter.com/JulesEvans11/status/1406151595965005825?s=02)

Sunday, June 6, 2021

Let’s Celebrate a Lower Birthrate, Not Lament It

Readers criticize two Times pieces that raised concerns about slow population growth, instead viewing the trend as a positive for the planet.

To the Editor:


World Is Facing First Long Slide in Its Population” (front page, May 23) misses the big picture. World population is still growing by 80 million people annually, and it won’t stop for several more decades.


Most of that growth is happening in the poorest places on earth — many in sub-Saharan Africa. If the Italian towns of Capracotta and Agnone want to boost their populations of working-age residents, there’s a steady stream of people willing to risk their lives crossing the Mediterranean to get there.


The article refers to a paradigm shift necessary to address the “strain of longer lives and low fertility” that “threatens to upend how societies are organized.” As the status quo changes, people adapt to the new normal.


If public health campaigns can get billions of people to wear masks and stay six feet apart for over a year, surely economists and politicians can figure out how to restructure economies away from a strict dependency on infinite population growth. Perhaps the cleaner air and water that will result from our slower growth will even be inspirational...


https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/05/opinion/letters/population-birthrate.html?smid=em-share