Day 779 Sunday February 24, 2019
617 Days to the 2020 election and 695 Days to Inauguration Day
I’ve read Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s Green New Deal. You should too. It’s fourteen pages long. You can do it.
When it first came out there seemed to be two reactions:
One) OMG! Collectivism. We can’t afford this. We’re all gonna die!
Two) This is aspirational. It’s a resolution, not legislation. It is something to aspire to.
As I read it I smiled to myself. It reminded me of a time when I was first working and we had a problem. I remember attacking someone with an ad hominem argument, and the person that really had to take action looking at me and saying, “What would you do?” I had nothing.
What Ms Cortez has done is put a stake in the ground. Now the question is what would you do?
At twenty nine years old she’s got a lot of people bitching. They are however considering the question. Climate change has been known to be happening for most of my life time, and it has been known that we humans are the ones causing most of it. It is also known that much of the change isn’t a good thing. If you’re twenty nine years old and you’re looking at all these old folks who have been wrestling with or ignoring this problem for forty to fifty years what would you do? She’s going to inherit their world. Why not speak up and suggest something different? I mean how well has the established order handled this situation?
There’s the argument that we can’t afford it. Really? Exactly what is it we can’t afford? How desperate does the situation have to become? And what exactly are you talking about?
The objections seem to be to pick at one little point or another and say that can’t work or we can’t afford it or there should be another better way. Okay, let’s hear it. So far what I’ve heard is this climate change is the normal cycle of the planet. It’s not from every scientist of any repute I’ve heard from. It costs too much. Specifically what costs too much? What would you do instead? Most of the alternate proposals I’ve heard are brush off arguments and chipping at the edges. How well has that worked for the past fifty years?
Isn’t the problem with modest proposals that they leave room for hacking away and ignoring? A big bold plan that looks at the underlying cause and sets a goal seems like a good idea. The model that is alluded to his FDR’s New Deal, which was really a lot of smaller programs aimed at trying to improve a particular situation, like Rural Electrification. Would that have happened if FDR hadn’t stepped in and set the goal? Or what about the forty hour work week? Or overtime? Or any of the other things that the rich had yelled and screamed about when those bold changes were proposed?
Am I for the Green New Deal? Yes. I mean my generation hasn’t done much. Isn’t it time to let someone else lead the way? No? Shall we let Donald Trump’s pick for UN Ambassador lead the way? She’s the wife of a coal exec billionaire who gave tons of money to the Republicans. She says that she’s not sure about what causes climate change and we really ought to look at it. Yeah. Isn’t that was big tobacco said after being cornered? Yeah, let’s look at it. Let’s do what hasn’t worked for decades. Let’s not really face the problem. Let’s pretend it’s not real. That it is something else. Let’s attack and make fun of someone who is really trying. Hey, we did it to Al Gore, I’m sure we can do it again.
You got something better?
What would you do?
617 Days to the 2020 election and 695 Days to Inauguration Day
PS Rabbit!
Leave a Reply