Many people on the left have had government employment in tax-payer funded universities, NGOs, etc. so have been insulated from the struggles of the working class.
And a great many of the people you describe have never had a job in which their continued livelihood depended on actually producing something substantive or meaningful, or delivering something tangible that benefits the life of an actual customer. They thus have no comprehension of what it means to actually add value to society, which is the definition of “growth”. This is how we come to suffer the consequences of these utterly clueless people who, from the perch of their NGO, promote incomprehensibly stupid ideas like degrowth.
It is beyond depressing that the Democratic Party is incapable of jettisoning the far left and embracing the much larger sensible segment of American society. THAT would make possible a durable majority coalition.
I am the daughter of a electrician who did a lot of high line work and the widow of a carpenter. I am a university faculty member at a state university. The difference between my work life and my father's and husband's work life is/was so stark. I am never cold or hot at work. I can take sick days and still am paid. I can leave the job and go to lunch. I always have a roof above me. I never forget that those electricians and those carpenters who work outdoors and carry their lunch are paying my salary. There is much baseless ranting about "the working class" in my university world from people who have no experience with the working class.
Ms. McCook, I am sorry that you lost your husband. Hard life experiences of that kind can form a common ground even as we disagree. You and I share a different sort of common ground in having heard much ranting about "the working class" from academics on a state university campus who seem to be speaking of workers as abstractions from an ideological tract. Some of the ones I know have indeed never had experience with the type of labor your father and husband did. But others have, either through family or through their own job histories, and some of the latter developed their stances in the context of organized labor -- scarcer now than in the past. (I might add that I also know faculty on the right who claim be in touch with the MAGA working class who have no personal labor background, and treat common dislike of the Left elitism as a sign of shared understanding of the struggles of the working class.)
In none of these cases does the fact that their universities are public rather than private -- government owned or otherwise -- seem to me to matter in any way. (Obviously, the government charter of the school you teach at has not insulated you from the struggles of the working class.) Nor is their current job any cushier than those of colleagues at private institutions. In fact, an increasing percentage are not on tenure track and are subject to working conditions far closer to the working class than to the ivory tower.
I think it is a form of identity politics to shift from disagreement with people about their ideas and the way they express them to caricatured generalizations about their personal histories and working conditions. And misattributing the causes for why the people one opposes speak as they do can only become a guide to mistaken prescriptions for solving problems. I think the responsible thing to do is confront the ideas and the action tactics themselves.
I think you are applying your own definitions to "substantive," "meaningful," "tangible," and so forth, and portraying a broad group of people in caricature. Moreover, when you let a boutique idea like "degrowth," which is (was?) the focus of only a small segment of people and NGOs on the Left (though it got lots of negative press), stand in for a broad range of political actors there is a lack of critical thinking that resembles those you critique.
Biden was often criticized from the Right for letting the progressive Left influence his policies. But if he did the result does not seem to have involved a failure to understand "growth." According to the StL Federal Reserve (FRED) figures, US GDP grew for the three pre-pandemic years of Trump 45 by a total of 14.1%. (I'm skipping the Covid year, which would be unfair to Trump to include.) Over the three post-pandemic years of the Biden administration, it grew by 31.3%. (And if you think it was all due to deficit spending, think again: skipping both FY 2020 and 2021 because of pandemic distortions, for Biden FY 2024 compared to FY 2022 the deficit grew by 32.6% (a lot!); Trump FY 2019 compared to 2017 the budget deficit rose 46.3% (a lot more). (Those are based on US Treasury figures.)
Many more Americans have had employment in tax-payer funded federal, state, and local departments, in the tax-payer funded military, in hospitals and other health-care operations that rely on federal and state tax-payer funding at least as much as state universities, etc., so have been insulated from the struggles of the working class.
(Note: NGO stands for "non-governmental organization." The reason is that they are non-governmental organizations.)
I am retired now, but I was always in the private sector from age 10 all the way on. Which means that you, as a "progressive," hate my guts at least until it comes time to pick my pockets, which is the only skill you and your kind have ever known.
MG, I think you have conflated a variety of different things. Many NGOs do indeed apply for and receive government contracts that provide funds for services -- the American Red Cross is an example, but it does not often do this. Other prominent ones that tend to employ the types of left-leaning people Ms. McCook seems to be thinking of refuse to seek or accept any sort of government funds. Some major examples include Doctors Without Borders, Amnesty International, Greenpeace, and Human Rights Watch. Other NGOs do receive a very large share of their funding through government contracts, such as Global Refuge, which because of their established local networks for refugee resettlement can accomplish that process far more cheaply than the government could if it had to build those networks on its own.
Many private corporations seek and accept contracts for government funding. Defense contractors would be among the best known. Lockheed Martin, SpaceX, Raytheon would be major examples. No one, I believe, considers them part of the government, and no one, I think, claims that their employees have, because of contracts reaching to tens of billions, lost touch with the working class. (And, yes, agricultural NGOs that lobby for support for American farmers, such as the American Farm land Trust also receive government funding. I've already mentioned how tens of millions of healthcare workers are employed by hospitals, drug companies, and so forth, which derive a great share of their revenues from federal and state dollars. No one thinks they have lost touch with the working class.)
Look again at Ms. McCook's initial statement: "Many people on the left have had government employment in tax-payer funded universities, NGOs, etc. so have been insulated from the struggles of the working class." Now what if I wrote the obviously foolish sentence: "Many people on the right have had government employment in tax-payer funded police departments, fire stations, etc. so have been insulated from the struggles of the working class?" Or if I wrote this sentence, "Many people on the left have had non-government employment in privately funded universities, and so are in close touch with the struggles of the working class.?" Or this sentence, "Custodial and landscaping staff at public universities receive tax-payer funding for their salaries and so have been insulated from the struggles of the working class?" This entire line of thinking is misguided.
All Ms. McCook really wants to say is that she thinks people on the left have lost touch with the working class. That's her prerogative, and I can certainly understand her point of view, even though I do not believe it's cogently thought through. (Clearly, many on the left *disagree* with the political views of the majority of the working class, but I think it's not because they have "lost touch with their struggles.") Nothing in the nature of government funding of (portions of) their salaries determines whether they are "insulated from the struggles of the working class" or not. (And, by the way, at many state universities, state taxpayer funding makes up only a miniscule portion of the budget -- at the state school I graduated from, the figure fell below 10% decades ago.)
I am retired, and never had government employment in any form. You, being a "progressive," i.e. a slow-motion communist, hate me until it comes time to pick my pocket.
Great column. Two comments. The new green strategy was doomed from the very beginning when they put a constraint as an objective (zero CO2) instead of a consumer need (abundant cheap energy. If they had picked the energy as the main strategic goal and then made constraint goals, it would have drastically changed where we are now and we would be well on our way to integrating nuclear energy as a key contributor using the solar green energy where it made sense. Who could not see that putting a constraint as the strategic overall objective for a part of our economy that drives growth I do not know but that has resulted in us losing 20 plus years in our energy system.
Second, I agree economic growth is a US strategic goal. If we do not have that we will be stuck in a series of what I call “stop the bleeding “ projects. This is a BIG issue because these type of projects do not fix the underlying issues and every stop the bleeding project has a strong potential of causing more problems than it fixes. I did not make this up as a theory, it is classic Deming
We know that energy drives growth. So really, it should start there, yes?
Here in Maryland, our electricity costs (like everywhere else) are thru the roof. We know demand is surging, and we know we have no realistic plan to address this.
If I were running from Governor, I'd say I don't want to build a nuclear reactor here, I want to build two dozen power plants. Let's make our energy costs so low that people and companies will want to set up shop here because our energy is so damn cheap.
Nationally? Maybe we have the federal government incentivise states to do the same. Each state that can create the same number of nuclear plants as they have representatives gets a 10% reduction in their citizen's income tax for the next decade. Or 2% off each plant above 3.
Or maybe we keep doing the same short sighted shit that doesn't work. But man, it would be fun to have some national goals that everyone could get behind.
Yes energy is a prerequisite for economic growth. So if we had started with economic growth as an objective and developed realistic energy needs ( amount, where, cost et) and we did this 25 years ago we would be in a completely different place. This is a crucial strategic need. We just messed it up by placing the constraint as an objective. I don’t even have to debate the issue of carbon dioxide limits as they would have been taken care of by setting appropriate constraints. This would have led us to reducing coal, utilizing natural gas and going after nuclear energy.
Everytime I think about nuclear power, I think about asparagus. It takes 3 to 5 years to grow to a harvestable state. I've wanted to grow it for the past 15 years. But each year I never did, because, attention span.
I keep reading nuclear plants take up to two decades to build and so nobody wants to. But, I'll bet you in two decades, we'll be sitting around wishing we started building them 20 years ago.
You are right about this! Plant Vogtle went fully online in Georgia in about 2024. (largest nuclear power plant in the US). Planning began in the 1970s.
I think AI is going to jump start us into nuclear. My daughter in law told me she heard that some of the AI companies are starting to talk about building nuclear plants. Does not surprise me
It is also the case that the new green strategy doesn't focus enough on the most important part of reducing emissions, which is making green technologies naturally profitable to the private sector. The long-term solution involves a pipeline whereby government investment in R&D (alongside infrastructure) develops new, more energy-efficient, less emissions-heavy tech and transfers it to the private sector, so that producers in the private sector will refine its development, and then propagate and distribute it to consumers. Trying to have the government do it all by itself, or through negative rather than positive incentives, will never work in the long term. (and trying to get the private sector to do it all by itself, as the right desires, will also never work in the long term)
It is evident in the facts of American economic history, a subject about which I know plenty. Such a pipeline connecting public R&D into new technologies to private industry has been a central part of every technological wave in U.S. (and arguably Western) history. Railroads were nurtured via public-private partnerships to plan and build tracks and other infrastructure, and government investments implemented via organizations like the Army Corps of Engineers (whose research into bridge design, route surveying, and construction techniques influenced early rail lines); so it went for automobiles, steamships, and airplanes. Government-supported R&D at a handful of public universities created the first packet-switching network, which is the basis for the internet. Anyone who says more efficient energy technologies will spring freely from the private sector without the support of government R&D is betting against the shape of economic history—and anyone who says the government can do the development, refining, and distribution of such technology all on its own needs to review the history of Soviet communism, and the roots of its failure.
Solar "works" in some applications, but wind turbines are a Ponzi scheme. Perfect for "progressives," who don't actually bother to know anything other than how to pick the pockets of the walking wallets who they target.
Excellent timing Ruy. A day or two after Nature Magazine retracted a major study predicting the impending Climate Apocalypse. It will be decades before anyone can calculate the real human costs of the Climate overreaction/con, depending on one's perspective. Worldwide, a political reckoning will likely arrive sooner.
Historically, the German Economic Miracle, has produced nearly 25% of the 27 member EU GDP. Germans have long acted as EU's rich Uncle, backstopping the EU's most challenging economic times, while providing an enviable lifestyle for Germans. 3 years into an economic downturn caused by soaring energy prices, that is over. The fallout will not be pretty. Between the Open Border and Climate policy, Merkel will eventually go down in German history as the person to harm the nation most, without ever sporting a Nazi uniform.
In the US, the notion EVs, along with expensive poor performing appliances, could be shoved down the throat of every American, has collapsed. It was always lunacy for Dems to insist every US family, regardless of location, size and lifestyle would one day embrace small EVs, that require a half hour to charge. Only the notions of saving planet via private jet to Davos and the world's wealthiest investing in 8 and 9 figure mansions steps from oceans, supposedly rising so fast they would soon consume the massive estates, made less sense.
Much of US governance the past 1/4 century, has been conducted in a state of panic and overreaction. From 9/11, to Climate and Covid, the adults seem to have left the building. The initial reaction is always, cost does not matter. (Hence our $38 trillion dollar debt.) Treasury printing presses running full tilt, are always followed by mass government edicts that produce a loss of liberty and lower living standards, as DC plays fast and loose with our inalienable rights. All, as Dem hypocrisy soars to new heights. The pendulum is swiftly swinging back, Right. It is more than a little ironic, that a Dem political party that fails to realize their 15 minutes of Climate fame is over, risks extinction.
Maybe I should have read more comments prior to posting mine. But then two saying the same thing might carry more weight towards the LP's new position on man made climate change.
In other words, Democrats need to adopt the MAGA Republican agenda.
It is sort of proved by what is happening in much of Europe. The liberals noting the right growing in popularity have pivoted to adopt the agenda of the right only so those left politicians can retain their gravy-train producing power.
Energy Realism, The left's definition of the science of climate change has never been about science or correct in any way. Climate change predictions are based on models. The base model used for years and favored by the IPCC was labeled RCP 8.5. It was never a scientific model and way overestimated the extremes of doomsday scenarios. We know that now because the IPCC is searching for a new model to replace RCP 8.5, in part because their past is now shown to be corrupt and not reliable in any sense of the word.
In any case, climate science is a corrupted "science". Most scientific journals have been taken over by the climate change industry and corrupt scientists. How do we know about this corruption? Because they spend more time denying discussions are needed or wanted and other scientific results, papers, from being published. The essence of science is constant questioning of current understandings of science and trying to duplicate past results or new strategies to test the old results of science and newer results being published all the time.
And now we have this: From Roger Pielke jr.
"A Huge Retraction, the Usual Playbook, and Reason for Optimism
The collapse of Kotz et al. was followed by predictable climate spin but also signs of a return to scientific integrity"
For years the IPCC and other climate zealots have relied on a base report that was flawed from the beginning but was used anyway for all the catastrophic predictions of climate change and what needed to be done to correct it, until they couldn't get away with it any more. All current science that they say supports the world's claim of climate change being real by man made gases is not true. https://substack.com/inbox/post/180627951
The AP's reaction to this devastating news about how they view climate change, "Some responses to the retraction follow the longstanding admit-no-error-nothing-to-see here approach to scientific integrity that has become normalized among climate activists in the media and in academia.
For instance, the AP tells its readers — incorrectly — that the retraction is a nothingburger and instructs them to move along:
The authors of a study that examined climate change’s potential effect on the global economy said Wednesday that data errors led them to slightly overstate an expected drop in income over the next 25 years."
No doubt, the Dems will have the same reaction. Because they never take personal responsibility for the wrong they have wrought. And they just don't have it in them to pivot to the truth.
I believe that the facts will bear out that the Dems will die on the hill of man made climate change as real even though it is not near the top of any voters concern list. Younger voters still care, but as the truth comes out, and they see their lives have been greatly harmed, by policies based on bogus science, there will be a price to pay. Even in this article current science is not mention. Will it ever be? As gas prices come down and home energy costs come down, actually, my gas bill is $93 dollars per month and elect is $104 for a 3,000 sqft house, such costs have never been an issue for me. Even though a few miles away, every big tech company is now building data centers in our state. The current public electricity company is building gas powered smaller electricity generating plants to supplement the renewable energy those companies require. I believe the majority of the middle of the country have the same attitude. As long as the Dems rabid climate change base denies reality and won't change their approach to lower electrical bills, people will notice. The Dems are the party of bad science and exorbitant energy prices.
When the whole picture is known, or just more of the truth, 2026 is looking very bad for the Dems. But keep using the outdated narratives being used today, they make 2026 look worse and worse for the Dems. The kitchen table is there for the Dems to join the voters who count, educated and savvy independents, disenfranchised identity voters who finally figured out the Dems have been playing them for decades, but the Dems refuse to take a seat.
Will we read about this seismic change in climate changetruth anytime soon in the LP?
However, a major barrier to a full-throated Democratic endorsement of an economic growth agenda (via productivity gains) is that many of the party's most ardent advocates have little if anything to contribute to growing our economy. They have spent their lives honing arguments in favor of government-enforced economic, social, racial, gender, and political justice/equity without having a clue as to what they personally can do to grow our economy to achieve these goals which cannot be achieved in a free and open society without higher levels of labor productivity. So I do not expect that many will be thrilled by a productivity based campaign for "affordability" when their preferred and well honed alternative is simply "tax the rich". Can you imagine Bernie and AOC firing up the crowds with calls for higher "labor productivity"? ("What do we want? Productivity! When do we want it? Now!"
Your admonitions on climate extremism are entirely valid. Some of have said essentially the same over the last 15 years in both Canada and the US. But do you think Democrats can bring themselves to fundamentally reverse themselves on climate? Airheads line Newsome, Healey, Hocul , Murphy etc would tell us otherwise.
Zero chance Dems backtrack on Climate non-sense...just like there's zero chance they are going to backtrack from any of their far left social / cultural ideologies. For Dems and their leftist supporters, these things are ingrained in their sense of self and personal character...which is why they are constantly doubling and tripling down on the wrong side of 80 / 20 issues.
Brilliant essay. Supporting and promoting growth is essential. Some may be ready to accept that Income retribution and government programs aren’t leading to enough growth. But are they ready to set aside long held other priorities and ‘‘to substantially rise living standards for the working class by more economic growth, especially higher productivity growth.’?
Time to make this big change. Even CNN is talking about the low growth blue states.
Fareed Zakaria: If America Has An Affordability Crisis, It Tends To Be In Places Democrats Govern | Video | RealClearPolitics
My sister in law is selling 30 to 50 electronic motorcycles a month in Vientiane. Turns out they cost less to build and a huge amount less to run. For folks who only take the kids to school, go to work, or the market, electric motorcycles far outsell gas powered. With no government subsidies of course. The electric production is all hydro and about 4 cents a kwh, not all green is a failure. As always we will adopt what works and what doesn't work will be a dim memory.
As for growth being the fundamental building block for a renewed Democratic Party. Hardly. Don't get me wrong, I make money on productivity increases and growth,,,,, in the stock market that is. Here in the US productivity growth has been decoupled from wages since the mid 70s. Productivity goes up, wages flatline. Trump correctly identified the huge dissatisfied working class as a potential source of votes. Unless and until productivity and growth translates into more money for normies it will do nothing for the Democratic Party electorily.
Democrats are now in the affordable Park Slope condos with loan forgiveness and au pairs for attorneys stage of denial. It's not enough. Better than Trump is an extremely low bar, it's disheartening to know we don't seem able to clear that bar.
They are decoupled only because wages as we currently conceive of them are out of sync with the way the economy functions--they are a vestige of the era when industrial machinery dominated economic production, and labor-time was what was monetized. Now it is data--personal data--that is monetized. And we don't have a wage system for that yet--so increases in production can't be as robustly recycled to labor.
Growth *is* the answer, but we need to fix the recycling mechanism. Digital rights are a start, and I think the ultimate answer lies in creating some kind of universal data payments system. This is one of the main avenues the left should pursue if it wants to help labor. (UBI is *not* the answer)
Re: productivity growth, increasing wages is only part of its importance--rising productivity is also the only way of reducing prices and the COL without raising unemployment and depressing economic activity.
I don't see how selling someone's data helps businesses with the people like me that don't buy anything. How can they make money off my data? A third of the country makes under $20 an hour. The very people who need a boost in wages don't have much monetary value in data, they spend on rent and lotto tickets. I also can't see productivity coming to housing or health care or the cost of borrowing. If phones and TVs were free most would still struggle. I'd like it if it happened, I just don't see how.
The largest, most powerful corporate entities in the world, that structure the broader economy within whose constraints your business functions--particularly the FAANGS and social media more broadly--book the lion's share of their profits by contracts with third parties (both advertising consultancies and small-to-midsize businesses) that pay for these mega-entities to direct the attention of people using their platforms to ads for these third parties' products through the use of behavioral algorithms. The reason these dominant entities can achieve this mass manipulation of people's attention through these algorithms is because as people use their platforms, the mega-companies run massive data-harvesting operations that captures those users' personal information. Only by running fancy statistics on this data does the algorithm actually do anything. Any business that uses modern advertising and SEO strategies essentially supports this system, and any business that doesn't is still shaped by the economic environment it creates, and also less likely to succeed than a business plugged into it.
Secondly, and perhaps most importantly in regards to the future, personal data is the basis for AI. Fundamentally, all AI consists of is correlative-statistical algorithms crunching massive amounts of data over and over again and producing remixes of it. Every response given by a chatbot, or an image generator, or a music generator, etc. is just a gazillion conversations/pictures/songs recombined and mashed together using a neural net algorithm. This data is produced by people--including you and I--but people aren't paid for it. It is harvested for free by the aforementioned mega-companies and the modern AI superpowers. In order to function, ChatGPT (or more accurately OpenAI) must scrape the entire internet everyday multiple times and collect massive dossiers of information produced by people to run through its neural net algorithms. As AI becomes the main profit center of society--and as everything becomes more software-mediated as a result--the fact that the AI superpowers and their services aren't paying people for the data they monetize will hollow out the middle class, because it will be stuck trying to generate its income in the old, conventional way that is quickly becoming obsolete. Or, more succinctly: data is the new form of labor and the new basis of value, and its creators aren't being compensated for their work. (This is why the idea that 'AI will replace workers' is just a silly way of redefining 'worker' so that you can get free labor)
If instead people have rights to their data, and must be paid a share of any profits that extend from its use, you can restore the natural recycling of value from capital to labor that the wage system was originally invented to sustain, and which is the basis of both capitalism and the middle class. Ultimately, that is the fight the left should lead. My fear is that it is not until things get really bad and the fake gospel of 'AI will make workers obsolete' is ascendant that they will perceive that.
The Left can and does only win through lies, manipulation and fear mongering...their Covid authoritarianism opened a lot of people's eyes to their blatant over-reaches and hypocrisy. The jig is up for the party of "science," "saving democracy," and "no one is above the law."
I would also like to hear exactly how all of what’s presented here differs from the “right populism” bogeyman in the opening paragraph. While I largely agree with the policy positions put forward by Ruy over the past couple of years, they all seem far more likely to come from a Vance or Rubio led (I.e. right populist) GOP than any Democrat.
Given that progressives have totally blown "energy realism" and "growth realism" I declare that progressives should not have political power until after they have crawled over broken glass along the Road to Canossa and begged forgiveness from Pope Don the Populist.
"That means acknowledging that, no, climate change is not an 'emergency' and does not justify an impractical rapid transition to wind and solar."
Although I agree with Mr. Teixeira the need to moderate the Democratic approach to climate change, I don't view his reasoning as responsible nor likely to persuade people who are on the left but not full-blown progressives: precisely the sector of the party whom I take him to be appealing to.
Nothing has changed with regard to the facts of climate change itself. The rate of warming has not confounded predictions except in being slightly faster than most forecasts. The effects in terms of frequency and severity of extreme events are now visible. To brush this off because of a comment made by Bill Gates is a lazy argument. No lazy argument is going to convince the people Mr. Teixeira wants to convince.
The climate has an unusually long timeline for an emergency (which is is). Economic needs and desires are immediate. Mr. Teixeira is correct that voters have demonstrated they are not going to respond to the alarm that climate advocates have sounded. The argument he should be making (and I'm not even going to add an "it seems to me" disclaimer) is that to achieve the *best available outcome* the party must downplay alarmism, accept that the phase-out of fossil fuels will be slow, foreground an electable all-of-the-above platform, and then use elective office to advance green policies to the maximum level that electoral realities makes possible, using whatever strategies work electorally for each initiative. There is a moral imperative to pursue the best available outcome rather than the best conceivable outcome.
A Democratic party that indulges in climate denialism -- which Mr. Teixeira comes very close to here -- cannot retain the active support of its progressive wing. Moving to the center can't work if it bleeds as many votes as it gains: Mr. Teixeira surely knows this. Instead of denying scientific facts and the mounting data that confirm their validity, Mr. Teixeira should be sounding the alarm that the urgency of the situation requires full commitment to sustained electoral pragmatism and unrelenting policy gradualism as a progressive strategy. In time, either technological advances will open means of acceleration or the continued worsening of climate effects will alter the electoral salience of climate-emergency platforms.
"The effects in terms of frequency and severity of extreme events are now visible."
“The observational data published by meteorological agencies in 2023 has confirmed once again that there are no upward trends in global hurricane activity since reliable records began in the 1970s.” Source: Global Warming Policy Foundation
In the decade 1891-1900, there were 21 hurricanes, of which 8 were Category 3 or above. In the decade 2011-2020, there were 19 hurricanes, of which 5 were Category 3 or above. The biggest decade for hurricanes was 1941-1950, with 24 hurricanes of which 10 were Category 3 or above. Source: National Hurricane Center
Maybe it's different with other "extreme events" like blizzards or tornadoes, but the frequency and severity of hurricanes show no evidence of increasing.
John, Category 3 hurricanes are not extreme events. Category 5 Atlantic hurricanes are extreme events. There are records of hurricane by current metrics for the past 101 seasons, Altogether there have been 45 Category 5 hurricanes. Over the past ten seasons (2016-25) there have been 9: that's 20% of the total in 10% of the time span. Wikipedia has the full list: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Category_5_Atlantic_hurricanes ; you can slice the list up in various ways to observe the increasing frequency over time: over half of all such hurricanes have occurred since 1990). The list is extensively documented but does not seem to rely on a single authoritative source.
I hope you understand that the Global Warming Policy Foundation is dedicated to making the case against climate change. I have not reviewed the Foundation's reports and since I'm not a scientist I could not measure their validity against findings of other studies. The fact that its reports support the premises of its mission does not mean that they are in error, but in noting its conclusions I think it is necessary to be aware that the Foundation (and the funders, whom it declines to disclose) may not be disinterested and are certainly not impartial.
(In the upper Midwest, where I live, we are now accustomed to several periods each summer of health alerts because of wildfire smoke--Canada is the source. The smoke is easily visible to the naked eye.)
Naturally, as a "progressive," any source that doesn't toe your line is not disinterested and certainly not impartial -- as if your trusted sources are. You construct a hermetically sealed defense and then tell everyone ELSE to "think critically." You? Oh no. Waaaaaay too scary.
“to achieve the *best available outcome* the party must downplay alarmism, accept that the phase-out of fossil fuels will be slow, foreground an electable all-of-the-above platform, and then use elective office to advance green policies to the maximum level that electoral realities makes possible“. Just what millions of voters fear. If ‘advancing green policy to the maximum level’ is still the way democrats are thinking, they may be very disappointed.
Bait-and-switch tactics is one of the main reasons Americans trust their government so little. In 2020, the Democrats promised to raise the minimum wage; they didn't. They promised to repeal Trump's 2017 tax cuts; they didn't. They promised a "21st Century immigration system", which turned out to mean 12 million more illegal aliens. At least, if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan. Period. No one can take it away from you. Oh, wait...
I'm sure there are millions of voters who would, indeed, oppose any sort of climate change mitigation even if it were free, just because Democrats support it and they will oppose any Democratic position or because they have been persuaded to deny climate-change science. (Of course, these go hand in hand.) If you are a Democratic politician who believes the general scientific findings on climate change and that political action is called for to respond to them, there can be no way for you to reach those people.
The more general framework of Mr. Teixeira's post is that green policies are rejected because the short-term costs are too great, both in terms of straight energy costs and in terms of disadvantages to countries adopting green policies while others seize the opportunity for globally irresponsible short-term gains and do not. (This is the thrust of the WSJ anchor to Mr. Teixeira's argument.)
For a Democrat in the US the question becomes, "What is the greatest short-term cost I can ask my electorate to pay to allow me to pursue far greater long-term benefits in their interest?" There are both electoral and governing dimensions to this question. If the answer is that the US electorate will simply not permit any mitigation of climate change, it will be disappointing indeed.
One element that will change the political dynamics at a future point is the fast-falling cost and fast-rising reliability of renewable energy sources and storage. Another is the rising cost -- in terms of climate-change weather and disaster manifestations -- of failing to respond to climate change. As the former lowers the cost of responding and the latter clarifies the cost of not responding in ever-shorter time frames, the argument for green policies will become increasingly able to stand on its own. Republicans are already working to forestall that point by ending economic incentives to adopt green technologies and economically subsidizing fossil fuel production in various ways. They have made this a culture-war identity issues as well, which may have more salience than the economic issues. Climate operates without regard for our culture wars and will have the final say.
The hubris of man. . We have reliable records of weather for what, 150, maybe longer, let's say 200 years. The average reader of the Liberal Patriot most likely believes the earth is at least one billion years old (I think the scientific secular opinion is closer to 4 billion). Let's further say that we can reliably look at weather patterns back 2 million years due to core samples (core sampling can certainly give us some info, but is by no means definitive if for no other reason then not having enough spread out core samples, let alone what data can be derived).
So, in our most generous scenario, trustworthy weather records for 2 million years / world 1 billion years old, that still yields a record of knowing the patterns of earth's climate for .002% of the time. Yet, so many are so sure, they know what's going on now is fully manmade, unique, is alarming, demands certain actions.
There is no question the climate has been getting warmer, especially in my lifetime, over the past 55 years. The typical conservative (not the negative stereotype) is saying, let's have an honest debate and come up with practical actions, keeping in mind, we don't know what we don't know (that this is or isn't a natural earth cycle, and of course a natural earth cycle can still wipe us out, but would certainly impact what prudent action is taken).
The debate reminds me of the C19 foolishness, in the sense that 'The experts' immediately knew it was a natural virus, best mitigated with isolation of all, all were vulnerable, masks were vital (unless you were sitting down at a table in a restaurant, stand up, danger!, sit down, all good, lol), natural immunity was never a thing, and the vaccine had no serious red flags.
All I'm saying is man too often, on all sides, lacks humility. God bless
Mr. Connor, I appreciate the spirit of your reply, urging humility about the limits of our knowledge. I believe we have been having debates, honest and dishonest, for several decades.
We know very little about weather in geologic time, as you say. But we know a great deal about climate, much more than your uncertainty concerning core samples suggests. And one of the things we know is that although the earth's global climate has in the past past changed dramatically, it has always changed on a far slower pace than anything we are now witnessing. As noted by NOAA: "The annual rate of increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the past 60 years is about 100 times faster than previous natural increases, such as those that occurred at the end of the last ice age 11,000-17,000 years ago." Thus, although the changes seen in your lifetime have been seen before, the natural processes of those past changes required roughly 5500 years.
It took many years for scientists who first noted the current trend to conclude that the changes we began to see in the middle of the last century could not be accounted for by any known factor other than the industrial revolution's gradual but accelerating global spread. The nature of science is such that it can never prove a positive claim, however true, to a certainty; it can only disprove an untrue claim to a certainty. To demand that we have "scientific proof" before action is tantamount to stating that there can in principle be no action. The practical application of science always involves relying on the best available evidence and shifting practice as new evidence warrants it. According to NASA (https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/faq/do-scientists-agree-on-climate-change/), about 97% of climate scientists agree that human activity is the cause of climate change. US public dialogue on the issue takes place largely in political terms, with the two parties taking opposite sides, therefore the views of the 97% of climate scientists who agree on human causation carry about the same weight in public discourse as that of the 3% who claim some different cause. It is, of course, always possible that the 3% have taken a correct position (whether for the reasons they claim or for reasons they haven't imagined), but from the standpoint of a non-scientist I regard the odds of this being true as roughly 32-1 against. The amplification of the small minority, who are treated as brave dissenters by those who find their views politically appealing may make the issue appear a toss-up, but that is a distortion.
I did not expect that comments here would devolve into an argument over whether or not climate change was the result of human activity. There is a broad consensus within the Democratic Party that it is and Mr. Teixeira wrote his post as a prescription for how the members of that party should move their agenda forward in light of their beliefs and an awareness that many Americans did not share their beliefs, and that many more shared their beliefs to some degree, but were more concerned about the short-term costs of acting upon those beliefs. I do not think there is any intellectual or ethical room in that framework for people to say that Democratic politicians should either abandon beliefs based on scientific consensus or cease to advocate for those beliefs to the degree and in forms that advocacy can be effective in advancing them.
There is no such thing as a "climate scientist," and that 97% figure is a "progressive" lie. You and your arrogant leftist friends are flogging a modern religion. But you are a "progressive," and there is an Iron Law that goes like this:
"You can always tell a 'progressive,' but you can never tell a 'progressive' a god damn thing. A 'progressive' is better and smarter than everyone else, so why listen?" How do we know? Because "progressives" are the political equivalent of vegans (which many of them are): They won't shut up about their virtue. The "progressives," in context, are the original white supremacists.
Ethics? Spare us the smug, arrogant lecture. Not that you will.
Eno wrote, "For a Democrat in the US the question becomes, "What is the greatest short-term cost I can ask my electorate to pay to allow me to pursue far greater long-term benefits in their interest?"
This assumes that you know their best interest better than they do. Your intellectual superiority is likely to be more obvious to you than to them.
Within the next 20 years, they will be another Civil War taking place in the streets of the United States. It will be one by the hardline conservatives. The left is dead. It is bankrupt of any ideas that are commensurate with the will of real Americans.
Chris Murphy certainly gets some things wrong, but he’s right to be worried about AI. For all the benefits it can bring, I see two severe downsides:
Relying on AI to do our moral and critical thinking for us will ruin our minds more than social media already has. AI seems to have a very conformist energy that is not conducive to original, creative thinking.
If AI really does destroy tens of millions of jobs, the homicide rate will skyrocket. A large population of people that can’t work or can’t up-skill will include a lot of young men with too much free time and a very low sense of self-worth. That’s especially dangerous in a country awash in guns.
The true "dubious crusade" is the campaign that TLP is conducting against prioritizing climate issues. Although the rhetoric needs addressing and tactics need improving, nothing is, in fact, more important than addressing climate issues, especially now that Trump is rowing backwards as fast as possible on all fronts, including coercing other countries to adopt his duplicitous and unsustainable anti-climate policies. What is needed is a reconfiguration of the rhetoric and the effort of addressing climate issues to speak to the people, and to find a way for TLP-type thinkers to offer the call to arms that is needed against this vital issue. Unlike many issues, where policy choices can, in principle, be made on the basis of polling, climate is a true, exogenous, ominous problem that won't go away and will only get worse if not addressed. It's complicated, but that's why true, effective, and thoughtful political leadership is needed. Leadership, not complacent dismissal, which seems to be what TLP is offering. Oddly, that complacency overlooks the fact that significant majorities of real people, of all economic classes, see that there is indeed a climate crisis. It's a perfect opportunity for the left, if it can find the right rhetoric, to undermine the Trumpers and contribute substantially to solving society's most pressing problem, a problem that underlies many others, including housing affordability, immigration, and many medical issues.
The biggest obstacle to getting people concerned about global warming is the failure of past predictions. Consider these lines from Matt Ridley in The Spectator:
"In his 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth, for which he jointly won a Nobel Prize, he (Al Gore) predicted a sea-level rise of up to 20 feet “in the near future” – out by around 19 feet and nine inches. In 2009, he said there was a 75 percent chance all the ice in the Arctic Ocean would disappear by 2014. In that year there was 5 million square kilometers of the stuff at its lowest point – about the same as in 2009; this year there was 4.7 million square kilometers."
You're absolutely right, Mr. Olson. Those who challenge the existence of global warming have focused relentlessly on erroneous predictions about the effects it would have, anticipating, with good reason, that those errors would discredit the actual scientific facts. They have been particularly successful in the US.
It has long been noted by many atmospheric scientists -- including some Al Gore and his co-producers relied on -- that "An Inconvenient Truth" seriously exaggerated a number of claims, such as those you cite from Mr. Ridley. That's a fault in the film, but not evidence that global warming is not occurring. I pointed to the NOAA data in a reply to you above -- the data is too plain to spin. So the issue becomes whether it matters: will the warming trend actual have major impacts?
In that earlier reply I pointed to the increase in frequency of the most severe hurricanes. Gore claimed the intensity of Hurricane Katrina was caused by global warming, and that was unwarranted -- no single weather event can be unambiguously attributed to global warming, not even a record-breaking heat wave; there are always outlier weather events. But we can now say that Katrina took place within a period of unprecedented uptick in Category 5 hurricanes that are well explained by global warming and not well explained by any other hypothesis that has so far been tested against the data.
Let's take a look at sea ice in the Arctic Ocean, which you note as another claim Mr. Gore greatly exaggerated. Obviously, he was completely wrong to predict its imminent appearance, but the data of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (a government data center) shows that the current extent is almost 11% lower than in 2014, and far below the 1981-2010 baseline norm). The case is similar with sea level rise. Gore's exaggeration was huge and regrettable, but the data is that average sea levels have risen 8-9 inches since the Industrial Revolution began and that the rate is increasing (there was an unexpectedly high increase of 0.23 inches in 2024 alone, over 30% above predictions -- if that turns out to be an indicator of acceleration trends the visible and economic effects will begin to be discernable far earlier).
The changes that are occurring are far slower than what Gore's film predicted, but they are actually occurring more rapidly than scientists studying atmospheric change predicted at the time of Gore's movie. When people like Ridley choose to focus their messages on the movie rather than the science and claim that our judgments about our future should be based on those messages, they are performing a deep disservice to the public (although I don't know whether they understand that; perhaps if they did they would change their message).
Mr. James, I'm really not sure why you feel the need to toss insults at me. I'm sure you know they don't change people's minds, and that sort of response really poisons online spaces. I'm certain that if we were together having coffee we'd be civil and get along despite disagreeing. Maybe in the future we can relate that way here.
Calling climate issues the "new religion" is just the current right-wing substitution for thought, codified in innumerable talking points. But the issue is not belief, as in the doctrine of the Trinity, but whether you accept or not the overwhelming outcome of 40 years of well-established scientific research. The facts are indisputable: climate change is happening and is largely man-made. The scientific analysis has turned out to be largely correct, and the only major error has been that it did not anticipate how fast the problems will accrue. Of course, any scientific analysis is iterative and occasional steps may have got some details wrong, but the overall thrust is irrefutable. The Arctic ice is much diminished; mountain glaciers are shrinking; migration is already being driven by climatic factors (e.g. drought in the highlands of Ecuador); insurance companies are having to raise rates substantially for climate-related risks. Denial is a political option, alas, but it is unsupported and foolish if you care about the future of today's children. The facts are entirely on the side of finding ways to cope with the climate issue, with, one hopes, maintaining something like the current standard of living. It could have been done earlier. It's harder now. But Trumpist denial and destruction will only make the climate issue and its related problems (insurance affordability, migration, cost of food, that much more intractable).
Newcavandish, I'm in general agreement with you and quite astonished to see the denialist reactions of most of Ruy Teixeira's readership here. Given what we're seeing, I think it's important to spend the time necessary to cite specific evidence from sources readers can't easily dismiss. Some commenters, like Mr. James, don't seem ready to engage, but I think may be others who might question the narrative they've come to accept if they know where they can find objective data to measure it against.
I had expected that Mr. Teixeira's blog would become a forum where people at the center or center-left joined Mr. Teixeira in trying to persuade people on the progressive left to re-examine some of their extreme views and modify their political tactics so that excesses on the progressive left stopped undercutting the legitimate positions and popular appeal of the Democratic Party's traditional center of gravity. But it seems the blog audience has largely become simply anti-progressive, with much of it less able than I would have hoped to distinguish between the main Democratic base on the center-left and the much-caricatured "woke" left. This seems to me to have been a growing trend since I subscribed some time ago, and I hope Mr. Teixeira is noting it.
I agree entirely. We need a recentering of Democratic politics, and that's what I had hoped for from TLP, but the gist of it seems to be slipping farther and farther to the reflexive right, without a thoughtful or realistic plan for how to achieve the centrist and effective politics we need, and which the country needs to be persuaded to vote for.
When you call anyone who doesn't sign onto your global warming religion a "denialist," you are showing the "progressive" arrogance that has made the Democratic Party less popular than at any time in decades.
IRON LAW: "You can always tell a 'progressive,' but you can never tell a 'progressive' a single god damn thing. They think they are smarter and better than everyone else, so they feel no need to study anything or listen to anyone other than their co-religionists."
Many people on the left have had government employment in tax-payer funded universities, NGOs, etc. so have been insulated from the struggles of the working class.
And a great many of the people you describe have never had a job in which their continued livelihood depended on actually producing something substantive or meaningful, or delivering something tangible that benefits the life of an actual customer. They thus have no comprehension of what it means to actually add value to society, which is the definition of “growth”. This is how we come to suffer the consequences of these utterly clueless people who, from the perch of their NGO, promote incomprehensibly stupid ideas like degrowth.
It is beyond depressing that the Democratic Party is incapable of jettisoning the far left and embracing the much larger sensible segment of American society. THAT would make possible a durable majority coalition.
I am the daughter of a electrician who did a lot of high line work and the widow of a carpenter. I am a university faculty member at a state university. The difference between my work life and my father's and husband's work life is/was so stark. I am never cold or hot at work. I can take sick days and still am paid. I can leave the job and go to lunch. I always have a roof above me. I never forget that those electricians and those carpenters who work outdoors and carry their lunch are paying my salary. There is much baseless ranting about "the working class" in my university world from people who have no experience with the working class.
Ms. McCook, I am sorry that you lost your husband. Hard life experiences of that kind can form a common ground even as we disagree. You and I share a different sort of common ground in having heard much ranting about "the working class" from academics on a state university campus who seem to be speaking of workers as abstractions from an ideological tract. Some of the ones I know have indeed never had experience with the type of labor your father and husband did. But others have, either through family or through their own job histories, and some of the latter developed their stances in the context of organized labor -- scarcer now than in the past. (I might add that I also know faculty on the right who claim be in touch with the MAGA working class who have no personal labor background, and treat common dislike of the Left elitism as a sign of shared understanding of the struggles of the working class.)
In none of these cases does the fact that their universities are public rather than private -- government owned or otherwise -- seem to me to matter in any way. (Obviously, the government charter of the school you teach at has not insulated you from the struggles of the working class.) Nor is their current job any cushier than those of colleagues at private institutions. In fact, an increasing percentage are not on tenure track and are subject to working conditions far closer to the working class than to the ivory tower.
I think it is a form of identity politics to shift from disagreement with people about their ideas and the way they express them to caricatured generalizations about their personal histories and working conditions. And misattributing the causes for why the people one opposes speak as they do can only become a guide to mistaken prescriptions for solving problems. I think the responsible thing to do is confront the ideas and the action tactics themselves.
I think you are applying your own definitions to "substantive," "meaningful," "tangible," and so forth, and portraying a broad group of people in caricature. Moreover, when you let a boutique idea like "degrowth," which is (was?) the focus of only a small segment of people and NGOs on the Left (though it got lots of negative press), stand in for a broad range of political actors there is a lack of critical thinking that resembles those you critique.
Biden was often criticized from the Right for letting the progressive Left influence his policies. But if he did the result does not seem to have involved a failure to understand "growth." According to the StL Federal Reserve (FRED) figures, US GDP grew for the three pre-pandemic years of Trump 45 by a total of 14.1%. (I'm skipping the Covid year, which would be unfair to Trump to include.) Over the three post-pandemic years of the Biden administration, it grew by 31.3%. (And if you think it was all due to deficit spending, think again: skipping both FY 2020 and 2021 because of pandemic distortions, for Biden FY 2024 compared to FY 2022 the deficit grew by 32.6% (a lot!); Trump FY 2019 compared to 2017 the budget deficit rose 46.3% (a lot more). (Those are based on US Treasury figures.)
Many more Americans have had employment in tax-payer funded federal, state, and local departments, in the tax-payer funded military, in hospitals and other health-care operations that rely on federal and state tax-payer funding at least as much as state universities, etc., so have been insulated from the struggles of the working class.
(Note: NGO stands for "non-governmental organization." The reason is that they are non-governmental organizations.)
Many NGOs receive government funds.
So do many farms. That is why farmers are insulated from the struggles of the working class.
Yes Bob, it's the exact same thing. 🙄
I am retired now, but I was always in the private sector from age 10 all the way on. Which means that you, as a "progressive," hate my guts at least until it comes time to pick my pockets, which is the only skill you and your kind have ever known.
They are funded by the government. "Non government" is just a fig leaf.
MG, I think you have conflated a variety of different things. Many NGOs do indeed apply for and receive government contracts that provide funds for services -- the American Red Cross is an example, but it does not often do this. Other prominent ones that tend to employ the types of left-leaning people Ms. McCook seems to be thinking of refuse to seek or accept any sort of government funds. Some major examples include Doctors Without Borders, Amnesty International, Greenpeace, and Human Rights Watch. Other NGOs do receive a very large share of their funding through government contracts, such as Global Refuge, which because of their established local networks for refugee resettlement can accomplish that process far more cheaply than the government could if it had to build those networks on its own.
Many private corporations seek and accept contracts for government funding. Defense contractors would be among the best known. Lockheed Martin, SpaceX, Raytheon would be major examples. No one, I believe, considers them part of the government, and no one, I think, claims that their employees have, because of contracts reaching to tens of billions, lost touch with the working class. (And, yes, agricultural NGOs that lobby for support for American farmers, such as the American Farm land Trust also receive government funding. I've already mentioned how tens of millions of healthcare workers are employed by hospitals, drug companies, and so forth, which derive a great share of their revenues from federal and state dollars. No one thinks they have lost touch with the working class.)
Look again at Ms. McCook's initial statement: "Many people on the left have had government employment in tax-payer funded universities, NGOs, etc. so have been insulated from the struggles of the working class." Now what if I wrote the obviously foolish sentence: "Many people on the right have had government employment in tax-payer funded police departments, fire stations, etc. so have been insulated from the struggles of the working class?" Or if I wrote this sentence, "Many people on the left have had non-government employment in privately funded universities, and so are in close touch with the struggles of the working class.?" Or this sentence, "Custodial and landscaping staff at public universities receive tax-payer funding for their salaries and so have been insulated from the struggles of the working class?" This entire line of thinking is misguided.
All Ms. McCook really wants to say is that she thinks people on the left have lost touch with the working class. That's her prerogative, and I can certainly understand her point of view, even though I do not believe it's cogently thought through. (Clearly, many on the left *disagree* with the political views of the majority of the working class, but I think it's not because they have "lost touch with their struggles.") Nothing in the nature of government funding of (portions of) their salaries determines whether they are "insulated from the struggles of the working class" or not. (And, by the way, at many state universities, state taxpayer funding makes up only a miniscule portion of the budget -- at the state school I graduated from, the figure fell below 10% decades ago.)
I am retired, and never had government employment in any form. You, being a "progressive," i.e. a slow-motion communist, hate me until it comes time to pick my pocket.
Great column. Two comments. The new green strategy was doomed from the very beginning when they put a constraint as an objective (zero CO2) instead of a consumer need (abundant cheap energy. If they had picked the energy as the main strategic goal and then made constraint goals, it would have drastically changed where we are now and we would be well on our way to integrating nuclear energy as a key contributor using the solar green energy where it made sense. Who could not see that putting a constraint as the strategic overall objective for a part of our economy that drives growth I do not know but that has resulted in us losing 20 plus years in our energy system.
Second, I agree economic growth is a US strategic goal. If we do not have that we will be stuck in a series of what I call “stop the bleeding “ projects. This is a BIG issue because these type of projects do not fix the underlying issues and every stop the bleeding project has a strong potential of causing more problems than it fixes. I did not make this up as a theory, it is classic Deming
Gosh I love Ruy's columns.
We know that energy drives growth. So really, it should start there, yes?
Here in Maryland, our electricity costs (like everywhere else) are thru the roof. We know demand is surging, and we know we have no realistic plan to address this.
If I were running from Governor, I'd say I don't want to build a nuclear reactor here, I want to build two dozen power plants. Let's make our energy costs so low that people and companies will want to set up shop here because our energy is so damn cheap.
Nationally? Maybe we have the federal government incentivise states to do the same. Each state that can create the same number of nuclear plants as they have representatives gets a 10% reduction in their citizen's income tax for the next decade. Or 2% off each plant above 3.
Or maybe we keep doing the same short sighted shit that doesn't work. But man, it would be fun to have some national goals that everyone could get behind.
Yes energy is a prerequisite for economic growth. So if we had started with economic growth as an objective and developed realistic energy needs ( amount, where, cost et) and we did this 25 years ago we would be in a completely different place. This is a crucial strategic need. We just messed it up by placing the constraint as an objective. I don’t even have to debate the issue of carbon dioxide limits as they would have been taken care of by setting appropriate constraints. This would have led us to reducing coal, utilizing natural gas and going after nuclear energy.
Everytime I think about nuclear power, I think about asparagus. It takes 3 to 5 years to grow to a harvestable state. I've wanted to grow it for the past 15 years. But each year I never did, because, attention span.
I keep reading nuclear plants take up to two decades to build and so nobody wants to. But, I'll bet you in two decades, we'll be sitting around wishing we started building them 20 years ago.
You are right about this! Plant Vogtle went fully online in Georgia in about 2024. (largest nuclear power plant in the US). Planning began in the 1970s.
https://www.southernnuclear.com/our-plants/plant-vogtle.html
I think AI is going to jump start us into nuclear. My daughter in law told me she heard that some of the AI companies are starting to talk about building nuclear plants. Does not surprise me
It is also the case that the new green strategy doesn't focus enough on the most important part of reducing emissions, which is making green technologies naturally profitable to the private sector. The long-term solution involves a pipeline whereby government investment in R&D (alongside infrastructure) develops new, more energy-efficient, less emissions-heavy tech and transfers it to the private sector, so that producers in the private sector will refine its development, and then propagate and distribute it to consumers. Trying to have the government do it all by itself, or through negative rather than positive incentives, will never work in the long term. (and trying to get the private sector to do it all by itself, as the right desires, will also never work in the long term)
You don't know a single thing about the subject, and boy does it ever show. Are you a Democratic consultant?
It is evident in the facts of American economic history, a subject about which I know plenty. Such a pipeline connecting public R&D into new technologies to private industry has been a central part of every technological wave in U.S. (and arguably Western) history. Railroads were nurtured via public-private partnerships to plan and build tracks and other infrastructure, and government investments implemented via organizations like the Army Corps of Engineers (whose research into bridge design, route surveying, and construction techniques influenced early rail lines); so it went for automobiles, steamships, and airplanes. Government-supported R&D at a handful of public universities created the first packet-switching network, which is the basis for the internet. Anyone who says more efficient energy technologies will spring freely from the private sector without the support of government R&D is betting against the shape of economic history—and anyone who says the government can do the development, refining, and distribution of such technology all on its own needs to review the history of Soviet communism, and the roots of its failure.
Solar "works" in some applications, but wind turbines are a Ponzi scheme. Perfect for "progressives," who don't actually bother to know anything other than how to pick the pockets of the walking wallets who they target.
Excellent timing Ruy. A day or two after Nature Magazine retracted a major study predicting the impending Climate Apocalypse. It will be decades before anyone can calculate the real human costs of the Climate overreaction/con, depending on one's perspective. Worldwide, a political reckoning will likely arrive sooner.
Historically, the German Economic Miracle, has produced nearly 25% of the 27 member EU GDP. Germans have long acted as EU's rich Uncle, backstopping the EU's most challenging economic times, while providing an enviable lifestyle for Germans. 3 years into an economic downturn caused by soaring energy prices, that is over. The fallout will not be pretty. Between the Open Border and Climate policy, Merkel will eventually go down in German history as the person to harm the nation most, without ever sporting a Nazi uniform.
In the US, the notion EVs, along with expensive poor performing appliances, could be shoved down the throat of every American, has collapsed. It was always lunacy for Dems to insist every US family, regardless of location, size and lifestyle would one day embrace small EVs, that require a half hour to charge. Only the notions of saving planet via private jet to Davos and the world's wealthiest investing in 8 and 9 figure mansions steps from oceans, supposedly rising so fast they would soon consume the massive estates, made less sense.
Much of US governance the past 1/4 century, has been conducted in a state of panic and overreaction. From 9/11, to Climate and Covid, the adults seem to have left the building. The initial reaction is always, cost does not matter. (Hence our $38 trillion dollar debt.) Treasury printing presses running full tilt, are always followed by mass government edicts that produce a loss of liberty and lower living standards, as DC plays fast and loose with our inalienable rights. All, as Dem hypocrisy soars to new heights. The pendulum is swiftly swinging back, Right. It is more than a little ironic, that a Dem political party that fails to realize their 15 minutes of Climate fame is over, risks extinction.
Maybe I should have read more comments prior to posting mine. But then two saying the same thing might carry more weight towards the LP's new position on man made climate change.
In other words, Democrats need to adopt the MAGA Republican agenda.
It is sort of proved by what is happening in much of Europe. The liberals noting the right growing in popularity have pivoted to adopt the agenda of the right only so those left politicians can retain their gravy-train producing power.
Here in WA State, the "progressives" haven't gotten the memo. They get crazier every year.
Energy Realism, The left's definition of the science of climate change has never been about science or correct in any way. Climate change predictions are based on models. The base model used for years and favored by the IPCC was labeled RCP 8.5. It was never a scientific model and way overestimated the extremes of doomsday scenarios. We know that now because the IPCC is searching for a new model to replace RCP 8.5, in part because their past is now shown to be corrupt and not reliable in any sense of the word.
In any case, climate science is a corrupted "science". Most scientific journals have been taken over by the climate change industry and corrupt scientists. How do we know about this corruption? Because they spend more time denying discussions are needed or wanted and other scientific results, papers, from being published. The essence of science is constant questioning of current understandings of science and trying to duplicate past results or new strategies to test the old results of science and newer results being published all the time.
And now we have this: From Roger Pielke jr.
"A Huge Retraction, the Usual Playbook, and Reason for Optimism
The collapse of Kotz et al. was followed by predictable climate spin but also signs of a return to scientific integrity"
For years the IPCC and other climate zealots have relied on a base report that was flawed from the beginning but was used anyway for all the catastrophic predictions of climate change and what needed to be done to correct it, until they couldn't get away with it any more. All current science that they say supports the world's claim of climate change being real by man made gases is not true. https://substack.com/inbox/post/180627951
The AP's reaction to this devastating news about how they view climate change, "Some responses to the retraction follow the longstanding admit-no-error-nothing-to-see here approach to scientific integrity that has become normalized among climate activists in the media and in academia.
For instance, the AP tells its readers — incorrectly — that the retraction is a nothingburger and instructs them to move along:
The authors of a study that examined climate change’s potential effect on the global economy said Wednesday that data errors led them to slightly overstate an expected drop in income over the next 25 years."
No doubt, the Dems will have the same reaction. Because they never take personal responsibility for the wrong they have wrought. And they just don't have it in them to pivot to the truth.
I believe that the facts will bear out that the Dems will die on the hill of man made climate change as real even though it is not near the top of any voters concern list. Younger voters still care, but as the truth comes out, and they see their lives have been greatly harmed, by policies based on bogus science, there will be a price to pay. Even in this article current science is not mention. Will it ever be? As gas prices come down and home energy costs come down, actually, my gas bill is $93 dollars per month and elect is $104 for a 3,000 sqft house, such costs have never been an issue for me. Even though a few miles away, every big tech company is now building data centers in our state. The current public electricity company is building gas powered smaller electricity generating plants to supplement the renewable energy those companies require. I believe the majority of the middle of the country have the same attitude. As long as the Dems rabid climate change base denies reality and won't change their approach to lower electrical bills, people will notice. The Dems are the party of bad science and exorbitant energy prices.
When the whole picture is known, or just more of the truth, 2026 is looking very bad for the Dems. But keep using the outdated narratives being used today, they make 2026 look worse and worse for the Dems. The kitchen table is there for the Dems to join the voters who count, educated and savvy independents, disenfranchised identity voters who finally figured out the Dems have been playing them for decades, but the Dems refuse to take a seat.
Will we read about this seismic change in climate changetruth anytime soon in the LP?
Well argued and well reasoned.
However, a major barrier to a full-throated Democratic endorsement of an economic growth agenda (via productivity gains) is that many of the party's most ardent advocates have little if anything to contribute to growing our economy. They have spent their lives honing arguments in favor of government-enforced economic, social, racial, gender, and political justice/equity without having a clue as to what they personally can do to grow our economy to achieve these goals which cannot be achieved in a free and open society without higher levels of labor productivity. So I do not expect that many will be thrilled by a productivity based campaign for "affordability" when their preferred and well honed alternative is simply "tax the rich". Can you imagine Bernie and AOC firing up the crowds with calls for higher "labor productivity"? ("What do we want? Productivity! When do we want it? Now!"
Your admonitions on climate extremism are entirely valid. Some of have said essentially the same over the last 15 years in both Canada and the US. But do you think Democrats can bring themselves to fundamentally reverse themselves on climate? Airheads line Newsome, Healey, Hocul , Murphy etc would tell us otherwise.
Zero chance Dems backtrack on Climate non-sense...just like there's zero chance they are going to backtrack from any of their far left social / cultural ideologies. For Dems and their leftist supporters, these things are ingrained in their sense of self and personal character...which is why they are constantly doubling and tripling down on the wrong side of 80 / 20 issues.
Brilliant essay. Supporting and promoting growth is essential. Some may be ready to accept that Income retribution and government programs aren’t leading to enough growth. But are they ready to set aside long held other priorities and ‘‘to substantially rise living standards for the working class by more economic growth, especially higher productivity growth.’?
Time to make this big change. Even CNN is talking about the low growth blue states.
Fareed Zakaria: If America Has An Affordability Crisis, It Tends To Be In Places Democrats Govern | Video | RealClearPolitics
My sister in law is selling 30 to 50 electronic motorcycles a month in Vientiane. Turns out they cost less to build and a huge amount less to run. For folks who only take the kids to school, go to work, or the market, electric motorcycles far outsell gas powered. With no government subsidies of course. The electric production is all hydro and about 4 cents a kwh, not all green is a failure. As always we will adopt what works and what doesn't work will be a dim memory.
As for growth being the fundamental building block for a renewed Democratic Party. Hardly. Don't get me wrong, I make money on productivity increases and growth,,,,, in the stock market that is. Here in the US productivity growth has been decoupled from wages since the mid 70s. Productivity goes up, wages flatline. Trump correctly identified the huge dissatisfied working class as a potential source of votes. Unless and until productivity and growth translates into more money for normies it will do nothing for the Democratic Party electorily.
Democrats are now in the affordable Park Slope condos with loan forgiveness and au pairs for attorneys stage of denial. It's not enough. Better than Trump is an extremely low bar, it's disheartening to know we don't seem able to clear that bar.
They are decoupled only because wages as we currently conceive of them are out of sync with the way the economy functions--they are a vestige of the era when industrial machinery dominated economic production, and labor-time was what was monetized. Now it is data--personal data--that is monetized. And we don't have a wage system for that yet--so increases in production can't be as robustly recycled to labor.
Growth *is* the answer, but we need to fix the recycling mechanism. Digital rights are a start, and I think the ultimate answer lies in creating some kind of universal data payments system. This is one of the main avenues the left should pursue if it wants to help labor. (UBI is *not* the answer)
Re: productivity growth, increasing wages is only part of its importance--rising productivity is also the only way of reducing prices and the COL without raising unemployment and depressing economic activity.
I don't see how selling someone's data helps businesses with the people like me that don't buy anything. How can they make money off my data? A third of the country makes under $20 an hour. The very people who need a boost in wages don't have much monetary value in data, they spend on rent and lotto tickets. I also can't see productivity coming to housing or health care or the cost of borrowing. If phones and TVs were free most would still struggle. I'd like it if it happened, I just don't see how.
The largest, most powerful corporate entities in the world, that structure the broader economy within whose constraints your business functions--particularly the FAANGS and social media more broadly--book the lion's share of their profits by contracts with third parties (both advertising consultancies and small-to-midsize businesses) that pay for these mega-entities to direct the attention of people using their platforms to ads for these third parties' products through the use of behavioral algorithms. The reason these dominant entities can achieve this mass manipulation of people's attention through these algorithms is because as people use their platforms, the mega-companies run massive data-harvesting operations that captures those users' personal information. Only by running fancy statistics on this data does the algorithm actually do anything. Any business that uses modern advertising and SEO strategies essentially supports this system, and any business that doesn't is still shaped by the economic environment it creates, and also less likely to succeed than a business plugged into it.
Secondly, and perhaps most importantly in regards to the future, personal data is the basis for AI. Fundamentally, all AI consists of is correlative-statistical algorithms crunching massive amounts of data over and over again and producing remixes of it. Every response given by a chatbot, or an image generator, or a music generator, etc. is just a gazillion conversations/pictures/songs recombined and mashed together using a neural net algorithm. This data is produced by people--including you and I--but people aren't paid for it. It is harvested for free by the aforementioned mega-companies and the modern AI superpowers. In order to function, ChatGPT (or more accurately OpenAI) must scrape the entire internet everyday multiple times and collect massive dossiers of information produced by people to run through its neural net algorithms. As AI becomes the main profit center of society--and as everything becomes more software-mediated as a result--the fact that the AI superpowers and their services aren't paying people for the data they monetize will hollow out the middle class, because it will be stuck trying to generate its income in the old, conventional way that is quickly becoming obsolete. Or, more succinctly: data is the new form of labor and the new basis of value, and its creators aren't being compensated for their work. (This is why the idea that 'AI will replace workers' is just a silly way of redefining 'worker' so that you can get free labor)
If instead people have rights to their data, and must be paid a share of any profits that extend from its use, you can restore the natural recycling of value from capital to labor that the wage system was originally invented to sustain, and which is the basis of both capitalism and the middle class. Ultimately, that is the fight the left should lead. My fear is that it is not until things get really bad and the fake gospel of 'AI will make workers obsolete' is ascendant that they will perceive that.
The Left can and does only win through lies, manipulation and fear mongering...their Covid authoritarianism opened a lot of people's eyes to their blatant over-reaches and hypocrisy. The jig is up for the party of "science," "saving democracy," and "no one is above the law."
I would also like to hear exactly how all of what’s presented here differs from the “right populism” bogeyman in the opening paragraph. While I largely agree with the policy positions put forward by Ruy over the past couple of years, they all seem far more likely to come from a Vance or Rubio led (I.e. right populist) GOP than any Democrat.
Given that progressives have totally blown "energy realism" and "growth realism" I declare that progressives should not have political power until after they have crawled over broken glass along the Road to Canossa and begged forgiveness from Pope Don the Populist.
"That means acknowledging that, no, climate change is not an 'emergency' and does not justify an impractical rapid transition to wind and solar."
Although I agree with Mr. Teixeira the need to moderate the Democratic approach to climate change, I don't view his reasoning as responsible nor likely to persuade people who are on the left but not full-blown progressives: precisely the sector of the party whom I take him to be appealing to.
Nothing has changed with regard to the facts of climate change itself. The rate of warming has not confounded predictions except in being slightly faster than most forecasts. The effects in terms of frequency and severity of extreme events are now visible. To brush this off because of a comment made by Bill Gates is a lazy argument. No lazy argument is going to convince the people Mr. Teixeira wants to convince.
The climate has an unusually long timeline for an emergency (which is is). Economic needs and desires are immediate. Mr. Teixeira is correct that voters have demonstrated they are not going to respond to the alarm that climate advocates have sounded. The argument he should be making (and I'm not even going to add an "it seems to me" disclaimer) is that to achieve the *best available outcome* the party must downplay alarmism, accept that the phase-out of fossil fuels will be slow, foreground an electable all-of-the-above platform, and then use elective office to advance green policies to the maximum level that electoral realities makes possible, using whatever strategies work electorally for each initiative. There is a moral imperative to pursue the best available outcome rather than the best conceivable outcome.
A Democratic party that indulges in climate denialism -- which Mr. Teixeira comes very close to here -- cannot retain the active support of its progressive wing. Moving to the center can't work if it bleeds as many votes as it gains: Mr. Teixeira surely knows this. Instead of denying scientific facts and the mounting data that confirm their validity, Mr. Teixeira should be sounding the alarm that the urgency of the situation requires full commitment to sustained electoral pragmatism and unrelenting policy gradualism as a progressive strategy. In time, either technological advances will open means of acceleration or the continued worsening of climate effects will alter the electoral salience of climate-emergency platforms.
"The effects in terms of frequency and severity of extreme events are now visible."
“The observational data published by meteorological agencies in 2023 has confirmed once again that there are no upward trends in global hurricane activity since reliable records began in the 1970s.” Source: Global Warming Policy Foundation
In the decade 1891-1900, there were 21 hurricanes, of which 8 were Category 3 or above. In the decade 2011-2020, there were 19 hurricanes, of which 5 were Category 3 or above. The biggest decade for hurricanes was 1941-1950, with 24 hurricanes of which 10 were Category 3 or above. Source: National Hurricane Center
Maybe it's different with other "extreme events" like blizzards or tornadoes, but the frequency and severity of hurricanes show no evidence of increasing.
John, Category 3 hurricanes are not extreme events. Category 5 Atlantic hurricanes are extreme events. There are records of hurricane by current metrics for the past 101 seasons, Altogether there have been 45 Category 5 hurricanes. Over the past ten seasons (2016-25) there have been 9: that's 20% of the total in 10% of the time span. Wikipedia has the full list: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Category_5_Atlantic_hurricanes ; you can slice the list up in various ways to observe the increasing frequency over time: over half of all such hurricanes have occurred since 1990). The list is extensively documented but does not seem to rely on a single authoritative source.
I hope you understand that the Global Warming Policy Foundation is dedicated to making the case against climate change. I have not reviewed the Foundation's reports and since I'm not a scientist I could not measure their validity against findings of other studies. The fact that its reports support the premises of its mission does not mean that they are in error, but in noting its conclusions I think it is necessary to be aware that the Foundation (and the funders, whom it declines to disclose) may not be disinterested and are certainly not impartial.
As for other events: the annual world-average temperature has been rising at accelerating rates since 1977 (see, for example, NOAA's chart at: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/climate-at-a-glance/global/time-series).
On wildfires, NASA has a useful presentation on the rising number of high-intensity fires at: https://science.nasa.gov/earth/explore/wildfires-and-climate-change/
(In the upper Midwest, where I live, we are now accustomed to several periods each summer of health alerts because of wildfire smoke--Canada is the source. The smoke is easily visible to the naked eye.)
Naturally, as a "progressive," any source that doesn't toe your line is not disinterested and certainly not impartial -- as if your trusted sources are. You construct a hermetically sealed defense and then tell everyone ELSE to "think critically." You? Oh no. Waaaaaay too scary.
“to achieve the *best available outcome* the party must downplay alarmism, accept that the phase-out of fossil fuels will be slow, foreground an electable all-of-the-above platform, and then use elective office to advance green policies to the maximum level that electoral realities makes possible“. Just what millions of voters fear. If ‘advancing green policy to the maximum level’ is still the way democrats are thinking, they may be very disappointed.
You mean run on one thing, but govern the opposite? Voters are getting wise to this.
Bait-and-switch tactics is one of the main reasons Americans trust their government so little. In 2020, the Democrats promised to raise the minimum wage; they didn't. They promised to repeal Trump's 2017 tax cuts; they didn't. They promised a "21st Century immigration system", which turned out to mean 12 million more illegal aliens. At least, if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan. Period. No one can take it away from you. Oh, wait...
I'm sure there are millions of voters who would, indeed, oppose any sort of climate change mitigation even if it were free, just because Democrats support it and they will oppose any Democratic position or because they have been persuaded to deny climate-change science. (Of course, these go hand in hand.) If you are a Democratic politician who believes the general scientific findings on climate change and that political action is called for to respond to them, there can be no way for you to reach those people.
The more general framework of Mr. Teixeira's post is that green policies are rejected because the short-term costs are too great, both in terms of straight energy costs and in terms of disadvantages to countries adopting green policies while others seize the opportunity for globally irresponsible short-term gains and do not. (This is the thrust of the WSJ anchor to Mr. Teixeira's argument.)
For a Democrat in the US the question becomes, "What is the greatest short-term cost I can ask my electorate to pay to allow me to pursue far greater long-term benefits in their interest?" There are both electoral and governing dimensions to this question. If the answer is that the US electorate will simply not permit any mitigation of climate change, it will be disappointing indeed.
One element that will change the political dynamics at a future point is the fast-falling cost and fast-rising reliability of renewable energy sources and storage. Another is the rising cost -- in terms of climate-change weather and disaster manifestations -- of failing to respond to climate change. As the former lowers the cost of responding and the latter clarifies the cost of not responding in ever-shorter time frames, the argument for green policies will become increasingly able to stand on its own. Republicans are already working to forestall that point by ending economic incentives to adopt green technologies and economically subsidizing fossil fuel production in various ways. They have made this a culture-war identity issues as well, which may have more salience than the economic issues. Climate operates without regard for our culture wars and will have the final say.
The hubris of man. . We have reliable records of weather for what, 150, maybe longer, let's say 200 years. The average reader of the Liberal Patriot most likely believes the earth is at least one billion years old (I think the scientific secular opinion is closer to 4 billion). Let's further say that we can reliably look at weather patterns back 2 million years due to core samples (core sampling can certainly give us some info, but is by no means definitive if for no other reason then not having enough spread out core samples, let alone what data can be derived).
So, in our most generous scenario, trustworthy weather records for 2 million years / world 1 billion years old, that still yields a record of knowing the patterns of earth's climate for .002% of the time. Yet, so many are so sure, they know what's going on now is fully manmade, unique, is alarming, demands certain actions.
There is no question the climate has been getting warmer, especially in my lifetime, over the past 55 years. The typical conservative (not the negative stereotype) is saying, let's have an honest debate and come up with practical actions, keeping in mind, we don't know what we don't know (that this is or isn't a natural earth cycle, and of course a natural earth cycle can still wipe us out, but would certainly impact what prudent action is taken).
The debate reminds me of the C19 foolishness, in the sense that 'The experts' immediately knew it was a natural virus, best mitigated with isolation of all, all were vulnerable, masks were vital (unless you were sitting down at a table in a restaurant, stand up, danger!, sit down, all good, lol), natural immunity was never a thing, and the vaccine had no serious red flags.
All I'm saying is man too often, on all sides, lacks humility. God bless
Mr. Connor, I appreciate the spirit of your reply, urging humility about the limits of our knowledge. I believe we have been having debates, honest and dishonest, for several decades.
We know very little about weather in geologic time, as you say. But we know a great deal about climate, much more than your uncertainty concerning core samples suggests. And one of the things we know is that although the earth's global climate has in the past past changed dramatically, it has always changed on a far slower pace than anything we are now witnessing. As noted by NOAA: "The annual rate of increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the past 60 years is about 100 times faster than previous natural increases, such as those that occurred at the end of the last ice age 11,000-17,000 years ago." Thus, although the changes seen in your lifetime have been seen before, the natural processes of those past changes required roughly 5500 years.
It took many years for scientists who first noted the current trend to conclude that the changes we began to see in the middle of the last century could not be accounted for by any known factor other than the industrial revolution's gradual but accelerating global spread. The nature of science is such that it can never prove a positive claim, however true, to a certainty; it can only disprove an untrue claim to a certainty. To demand that we have "scientific proof" before action is tantamount to stating that there can in principle be no action. The practical application of science always involves relying on the best available evidence and shifting practice as new evidence warrants it. According to NASA (https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/faq/do-scientists-agree-on-climate-change/), about 97% of climate scientists agree that human activity is the cause of climate change. US public dialogue on the issue takes place largely in political terms, with the two parties taking opposite sides, therefore the views of the 97% of climate scientists who agree on human causation carry about the same weight in public discourse as that of the 3% who claim some different cause. It is, of course, always possible that the 3% have taken a correct position (whether for the reasons they claim or for reasons they haven't imagined), but from the standpoint of a non-scientist I regard the odds of this being true as roughly 32-1 against. The amplification of the small minority, who are treated as brave dissenters by those who find their views politically appealing may make the issue appear a toss-up, but that is a distortion.
I did not expect that comments here would devolve into an argument over whether or not climate change was the result of human activity. There is a broad consensus within the Democratic Party that it is and Mr. Teixeira wrote his post as a prescription for how the members of that party should move their agenda forward in light of their beliefs and an awareness that many Americans did not share their beliefs, and that many more shared their beliefs to some degree, but were more concerned about the short-term costs of acting upon those beliefs. I do not think there is any intellectual or ethical room in that framework for people to say that Democratic politicians should either abandon beliefs based on scientific consensus or cease to advocate for those beliefs to the degree and in forms that advocacy can be effective in advancing them.
There is no such thing as a "climate scientist," and that 97% figure is a "progressive" lie. You and your arrogant leftist friends are flogging a modern religion. But you are a "progressive," and there is an Iron Law that goes like this:
"You can always tell a 'progressive,' but you can never tell a 'progressive' a god damn thing. A 'progressive' is better and smarter than everyone else, so why listen?" How do we know? Because "progressives" are the political equivalent of vegans (which many of them are): They won't shut up about their virtue. The "progressives," in context, are the original white supremacists.
Ethics? Spare us the smug, arrogant lecture. Not that you will.
Eno wrote, "For a Democrat in the US the question becomes, "What is the greatest short-term cost I can ask my electorate to pay to allow me to pursue far greater long-term benefits in their interest?"
This assumes that you know their best interest better than they do. Your intellectual superiority is likely to be more obvious to you than to them.
Happy to spare you, Mr. James. I don't think carrying this further would reflect well on either of us.
Be well. I'm long retired too, but I hope we'll both be around to see the day when we can talk to one another like actual people.
Within the next 20 years, they will be another Civil War taking place in the streets of the United States. It will be one by the hardline conservatives. The left is dead. It is bankrupt of any ideas that are commensurate with the will of real Americans.
Chris Murphy certainly gets some things wrong, but he’s right to be worried about AI. For all the benefits it can bring, I see two severe downsides:
Relying on AI to do our moral and critical thinking for us will ruin our minds more than social media already has. AI seems to have a very conformist energy that is not conducive to original, creative thinking.
If AI really does destroy tens of millions of jobs, the homicide rate will skyrocket. A large population of people that can’t work or can’t up-skill will include a lot of young men with too much free time and a very low sense of self-worth. That’s especially dangerous in a country awash in guns.
Chris Murphy refers to narco-terrorists as sailors.
Well, look on the bright side. No longer will we be able to blame murder on black people from the ghetto.
The true "dubious crusade" is the campaign that TLP is conducting against prioritizing climate issues. Although the rhetoric needs addressing and tactics need improving, nothing is, in fact, more important than addressing climate issues, especially now that Trump is rowing backwards as fast as possible on all fronts, including coercing other countries to adopt his duplicitous and unsustainable anti-climate policies. What is needed is a reconfiguration of the rhetoric and the effort of addressing climate issues to speak to the people, and to find a way for TLP-type thinkers to offer the call to arms that is needed against this vital issue. Unlike many issues, where policy choices can, in principle, be made on the basis of polling, climate is a true, exogenous, ominous problem that won't go away and will only get worse if not addressed. It's complicated, but that's why true, effective, and thoughtful political leadership is needed. Leadership, not complacent dismissal, which seems to be what TLP is offering. Oddly, that complacency overlooks the fact that significant majorities of real people, of all economic classes, see that there is indeed a climate crisis. It's a perfect opportunity for the left, if it can find the right rhetoric, to undermine the Trumpers and contribute substantially to solving society's most pressing problem, a problem that underlies many others, including housing affordability, immigration, and many medical issues.
The biggest obstacle to getting people concerned about global warming is the failure of past predictions. Consider these lines from Matt Ridley in The Spectator:
"In his 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth, for which he jointly won a Nobel Prize, he (Al Gore) predicted a sea-level rise of up to 20 feet “in the near future” – out by around 19 feet and nine inches. In 2009, he said there was a 75 percent chance all the ice in the Arctic Ocean would disappear by 2014. In that year there was 5 million square kilometers of the stuff at its lowest point – about the same as in 2009; this year there was 4.7 million square kilometers."
You're absolutely right, Mr. Olson. Those who challenge the existence of global warming have focused relentlessly on erroneous predictions about the effects it would have, anticipating, with good reason, that those errors would discredit the actual scientific facts. They have been particularly successful in the US.
It has long been noted by many atmospheric scientists -- including some Al Gore and his co-producers relied on -- that "An Inconvenient Truth" seriously exaggerated a number of claims, such as those you cite from Mr. Ridley. That's a fault in the film, but not evidence that global warming is not occurring. I pointed to the NOAA data in a reply to you above -- the data is too plain to spin. So the issue becomes whether it matters: will the warming trend actual have major impacts?
In that earlier reply I pointed to the increase in frequency of the most severe hurricanes. Gore claimed the intensity of Hurricane Katrina was caused by global warming, and that was unwarranted -- no single weather event can be unambiguously attributed to global warming, not even a record-breaking heat wave; there are always outlier weather events. But we can now say that Katrina took place within a period of unprecedented uptick in Category 5 hurricanes that are well explained by global warming and not well explained by any other hypothesis that has so far been tested against the data.
Let's take a look at sea ice in the Arctic Ocean, which you note as another claim Mr. Gore greatly exaggerated. Obviously, he was completely wrong to predict its imminent appearance, but the data of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (a government data center) shows that the current extent is almost 11% lower than in 2014, and far below the 1981-2010 baseline norm). The case is similar with sea level rise. Gore's exaggeration was huge and regrettable, but the data is that average sea levels have risen 8-9 inches since the Industrial Revolution began and that the rate is increasing (there was an unexpectedly high increase of 0.23 inches in 2024 alone, over 30% above predictions -- if that turns out to be an indicator of acceleration trends the visible and economic effects will begin to be discernable far earlier).
The changes that are occurring are far slower than what Gore's film predicted, but they are actually occurring more rapidly than scientists studying atmospheric change predicted at the time of Gore's movie. When people like Ridley choose to focus their messages on the movie rather than the science and claim that our judgments about our future should be based on those messages, they are performing a deep disservice to the public (although I don't know whether they understand that; perhaps if they did they would change their message).
Yep, you're still drinking the Kool-Aid. That's what cultists do.
Mr. James, I'm really not sure why you feel the need to toss insults at me. I'm sure you know they don't change people's minds, and that sort of response really poisons online spaces. I'm certain that if we were together having coffee we'd be civil and get along despite disagreeing. Maybe in the future we can relate that way here.
Gosh, now the "progressives" play the Miss Manners card? Really! LOL
The "climate issues" are your "progressive" religion, unsupported by facts. But when you are a radical, who needs facts?
Calling climate issues the "new religion" is just the current right-wing substitution for thought, codified in innumerable talking points. But the issue is not belief, as in the doctrine of the Trinity, but whether you accept or not the overwhelming outcome of 40 years of well-established scientific research. The facts are indisputable: climate change is happening and is largely man-made. The scientific analysis has turned out to be largely correct, and the only major error has been that it did not anticipate how fast the problems will accrue. Of course, any scientific analysis is iterative and occasional steps may have got some details wrong, but the overall thrust is irrefutable. The Arctic ice is much diminished; mountain glaciers are shrinking; migration is already being driven by climatic factors (e.g. drought in the highlands of Ecuador); insurance companies are having to raise rates substantially for climate-related risks. Denial is a political option, alas, but it is unsupported and foolish if you care about the future of today's children. The facts are entirely on the side of finding ways to cope with the climate issue, with, one hopes, maintaining something like the current standard of living. It could have been done earlier. It's harder now. But Trumpist denial and destruction will only make the climate issue and its related problems (insurance affordability, migration, cost of food, that much more intractable).
Newcavandish, I'm in general agreement with you and quite astonished to see the denialist reactions of most of Ruy Teixeira's readership here. Given what we're seeing, I think it's important to spend the time necessary to cite specific evidence from sources readers can't easily dismiss. Some commenters, like Mr. James, don't seem ready to engage, but I think may be others who might question the narrative they've come to accept if they know where they can find objective data to measure it against.
I had expected that Mr. Teixeira's blog would become a forum where people at the center or center-left joined Mr. Teixeira in trying to persuade people on the progressive left to re-examine some of their extreme views and modify their political tactics so that excesses on the progressive left stopped undercutting the legitimate positions and popular appeal of the Democratic Party's traditional center of gravity. But it seems the blog audience has largely become simply anti-progressive, with much of it less able than I would have hoped to distinguish between the main Democratic base on the center-left and the much-caricatured "woke" left. This seems to me to have been a growing trend since I subscribed some time ago, and I hope Mr. Teixeira is noting it.
I agree entirely. We need a recentering of Democratic politics, and that's what I had hoped for from TLP, but the gist of it seems to be slipping farther and farther to the reflexive right, without a thoughtful or realistic plan for how to achieve the centrist and effective politics we need, and which the country needs to be persuaded to vote for.
When you call anyone who doesn't sign onto your global warming religion a "denialist," you are showing the "progressive" arrogance that has made the Democratic Party less popular than at any time in decades.
IRON LAW: "You can always tell a 'progressive,' but you can never tell a 'progressive' a single god damn thing. They think they are smarter and better than everyone else, so they feel no need to study anything or listen to anyone other than their co-religionists."