My Back Pages: Stranded Assets and Our Climate Future
The trick is to not over-constrain the solution by adding requirements that eliminate the answer
My Back Pages and Our Climate Future
A day of travel tomorrow, so nothing new until Friday. I’ll offer this though. The site has grown so rapidly, thanks to you all, that many of my back pieces have probably not been seen by most of our current members.
Here’s something from a few years ago that’s even more relevant now.
Stranded Assets & Our Climate Future
“If existing parties are not controlled by voters, then voters have to undertake the comparatively expensive process of running candidates of their own or lose control of the system.”
If I may suggest it, pay attention to what’s at the end, the “solutions” part.
As Thomas Ferguson shows, voters have already lost control of the system. Our leaders are hired by who pays them, and that’s not us.
But it’s not an impossible problem, just a difficult one. The trick is to not over-constrain the solution by adding requirements that eliminate the actual answer. “The solution must be market-driven” is such a requirement. “The solution must be political, electoral” is another.
The solution will be what we make it, will work or not depending on its design, which depends on our analysis. As I wrote: Work backward from the end — zero fossil fuel use by 2050. What has to happen to cause that? Make a list.
I’ll offer these Back Pages posts from time to time. Please let me know if you like them.
Music
Many are taken by the music of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. None of their songs, to my mind, is more tender than this. Enjoy this magnificent version from the 2001 Tribute to Brian Wilson at the Radio City Music Hall.
Note the opening, which brings the chords and changes to the front. There’s a major seventh and minor sixth in the line “made my heart come all undone,” which gives it special grace.
I've played this harp solo before: Democrats have an abundance of feckless politicians who propound an abundance of bad policy. But that in itself is not enough for the abundance of their consultants and other leeches hanging on. So we get treated to an "Abundance" of tired tropes that have successfully neutered any progressive hope for the rescusitation of our prostate republic.
The event that I hope becomes abundantly common is the successful primary challenge to any Democratic politician who refers to Ronald Reagan with admiration beginning with Senator Slotkin.