This might sound good but it’s actually a terrible climate strategy. We cannot have a livable future without shutting down the fossil fuel industry. That’s like locking your house with a monster inside
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Plus in the meantime we had a damn good “natural experiment” in shutting down (covid). Whatever happened to all those silver lining reports about “wow, this had a noticeably big impact on the climate problem”?
That was costing the fossil fuel industry too much money. They have been behind all the efforts to oppose public heath measures and spread disinformation.
100% agree that we need to continue confronting the fossil fuel industry. But it’s not an either-or choice. We also need to build the alternatives. The two approaches need each other. Without confrontation there would be no space to build alternatives. Stronger alternatives weaken the FF industry
It’s unhelpful to present them as alternatives. Building is the easier, politically more palatable, personally less risky approach. Builders should use some of their political capital to support resistance rather than denigrating it.
Sorry if I was unclear. I was agreeing with your point that Podesta”s framing is crap. But I wanted to point out that these are not alternatives but complements.
You are quite right but the political mainstream in the USA remains deep in denial about that … and already climate activists are being blamed for pulling Dems “too far” toward clean energy when so little of what’s necessary has been done. It’s a problem. It’s THE problem.
Capitalism is capable of no other solution to any problem than to produce more stuff, even when the problem is having made too much stuff. Not that solar panels are bad, but it says a lot when we just jump straight to new energy and skip over the idea of less energy like it’s absurd.
The time dimension is key. It would be nice if we could just offer people something better and it would work out but we don’t have time to wait. Past energy transitions took many decades because we didn’t force earlier tech to retire. We don’t have many decades.
Define “we.” Was it progress for the people pushed off their land to make way for the oil industry? Or for the people who saw the air turn red? For the people whose forced labor financed the Industrial Revolution?
Surviving climate change, like so many of our other concurrent crises, is going to require confrontation, which requires courage. And that’s why the party of non-confrontational politics has failed.
Playing devil's advocate: Wasn't confrontation the basis of 99.9% of environmental/climate action for the previous 30 years or so? How did that work out for us?
Also a ton of positive developments HAVE occurred in the last 30 years, including the now wildly widespread understanding that climate change is real and we have to stop it, along with so much tech dev, growth in energy efficiency, etc.
Still a ton to do but it's not like nothing has happened
not sure how he can think of it in political economy terms while completely ignoring the fossil fuel industry's central role in opposing climate action
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Like cell phones and land lines, or cars and horses. Tons of historical precedent for replacement with something better.
I hope when we transition to renewables it won’t be colonialist.
Still a ton to do but it's not like nothing has happened
Carbon emission (only) 2 months genocide in Gaza = whole 1 year emission in Germany
https://prada.substack.com/p/lawsuit-against-british-petroleum