the NY T this morning had
Walz’s communication style seems to emphasize the need for politicians to explain both the benefits and the specifics of climate policy to voters. “The surest way to get people to buy in is to create a job that pays well in their community,” he told Time’s Justin Worland] last year. “All of us are going to have to be better about our smart politics, about bringing people in.”
The problem isn’t explaining the benefits. That is where they are now - Proposing a green economy of investments, profits, and jobs.
But the problem is financing green machines and jobs that can not avoid more economic activity which means more CO2 which means higher temperatures which leads to droughts, floods, heat death, migrations, and increases the likelihood of war.
There is no path through this maze except the unacceptable - partial or total collapse of the economy, society, and human civilization. Those politicians, well-meaning, who propose more economic activity, “The surest way to get people to buy in is to create a job that pays well in their community,” will at some point, probably before the election, be caught in a mouse trap of promising more income, the cheese, and social discontent, the trap, as people feel the consequences of more production and loss of jobs.1 One immediate danger is that the Harris candidacy will not survive the turmoil. There are many small projects with great internal consistency and amiable common-sense that will have difficulty in this context.
The context will be AI which is perfectly aimed at doing the jobs people went to school to learn how to do. School is a series of modules each of which is made of formatted skills structured to make it easy to teach young people but also allow for quick programming. Learning modules become programming modules, with a deep threat to those with or anticipating jobs. Climate and distribution of income to keep up a failing economy will be addressed by the same politicians. This is going to happen. They will fail. The hope is that new forms of thought and action will emerge, but this is impossible if we hold on too tightly, as we are, to current ways of thinking that caused the problems we are facing.