Is a heat wave literally burning the giant piles of lobbyist money that they get to pretend climate change isn’t happening, along with their children? No.
Here’s what politicians do, because it’s what they’ve been paid to do:
But the government quickly began to back down after a meeting in June with officials in the oil-rich province of Alberta…
The task for the government is to make it appear that as much progress as possible is being made (to appease the fifth of Canadians too worried to have children) while causing as few political problems as possible with the industry.
…politicians want to be seen doing a lot about climate change, but not so much that it lands them in any kind of real trouble with the industry.
Finally, this:
But this moment feels as if it calls for something larger—comparable to the Earth Day demonstrations of a half century ago, which brought ten per cent of the American population into the streets. It’s eruptions on that scale that change the political reality.
The only way to get them to do something meaningful is to have enough constituents screaming in their faces to do something or get replaced by someone who will. If you’re not screaming at the people who represent you in government to make real change (including restricting fossil fuel companies), then you’re wasting your time doing anything else to “fight” climate change.
Also, because I have more to complain about, I see we’re still doing headlines that comply with Betteridge’s law.
Also, a sizeable percentage of the population simply doesn’t either believe in or care about climate change, partially due to active disinformation campaigns by eg. oil companies, and partially just due to being - in a word - idiots.
It’s now looking probable that we’ll go over the mythical 1.5C limit in the next year or two. This will most probably lead to absolutely no action, except maybe some speeches about how “we care about then environment” and some new carbon compensation schemes that’ll ultimately do nothing except raise prices even more. It’s become clear that nothing will be actually done until it’s far too late if even then, there’s far too much money and power dependent on the status quo. I’ll be surprised if mass scale industrial society lasts a further 100 years
I’m represented by Joe Manchin. So no. Never.
My condolences.
Can’t wait to vote against him in a primary (assuming some even DINOer candidate isn’t the opposition)
That’s the wrong question to ask, the right one would be: “Are there already enough politicians, capable of making any meaningful changes, who have a life expectancy long enough and enough grandchildren, that the money they’re making won’t let them ensure a HVAC based life for the ones they care about?”
And the answer is no, there aren’t.
By the time most politicians reach the stage of being able to do something, they either don’t have enough life expectancy left to care, or do have enough money to ensure their families will survive in the eco-domes of the future while everyone else suffers.
It’s been like that for nearly 100 years already, and unless we find some way to extend life expectancies indefinitely, it’s going to be like that for the foreseeable future.
Or, and hear me out here, we don’t actually need the politicians to act in order to make change. We can do it ourselves.
At the end of the day, existing government institutions are ways of organizing people, resources, and power. They are structured in such a way that a few are able to hold power over many, forcing all of us to go along with what the richest want out of us. There is no reason to believe these institutions are the only viable means of enacting change. In fact, the long history of inaction by those in power is strong evidence that necessary change cannot come from any existing State apparatus. If the only way to make lasting social change really were through existing institutional channels, then we would be doomed.
But we are not doomed. We can organize ourselves, in ways that do not introduce perverse incentives for a few who control all. We can topple this crumbling order, and replace it with the chaos of things actually changing. None of this will be easy, and revolution is inherently a dangerous process, but is doing nothing any less dangerous?
If you believe a different world is possible, you can be part of creating it. There are multiple points of struggle which have revolutionary potential, housing, systemic racism, youth liberation, maybe you can think of one in your community. A problem that, for it to be truly solved, requires radical change beyond what governments can offer, combined with an oppressed population that has the will to make that change. Get involved with a struggle like this if you know of one, expand your conception of what is humanely possible, or just try to get some friends together to do something. Doesn’t have to be a lot, maybe learn about your local wildflowers together, make some garden beds from pallets, just work to form and strengthen the sorts of social bonds we’ll need to survive the coming storm.
Start making real change today: learn about tenants unions then try to organize one. We don’t need politicians to live longer, we need to take control of our own power.
The thing is, I live in Spain, and we already did that 12 years ago (15-M Movement).
Housing, equality, liberation and so on, are part of our Constitution… and yet, those rights got trampled to a point that a large civil movement arose. First as a sort of “hippie” movement, then people started to form groups, started to organize, until a political party was formed, which got voted into government, to rule along the already existing much larger socialist party.
Then party leaders started behaving like party leaders do, the original smaller groups, while still present, started splintering and falling apart, while the right wing used every shortcoming to criticize and sow discord, with a far right populist party coming up and gaining more and more popularity over the years… to the point that in the recent municipal and regional elections the left has been pushed aside, and in most places the right is ruling along with the far right, already destroying years of advances in gender equality, tolerance, and social policies.
In slightly over a week’s time, we have national elections, with the right + far-right looking as likely candidates to take over the whole country.
So while I sympathize with all what you said, in practice what I see is that any system based on representatives gaining and amassing power, is still inherently doomed to have them save themselves, while leaving everyone else behind. Or like they say, “democracy is the worst kind of government, except for all the other kinds”.
What we really need, is to either for the representatives to have to endure the same fate as everyone else, or to be able to un-vote them as soon as they stop representing our interests (which is where technology could step in, but it isn’t all that clear whether it will be able to step in quickly enough).
We need ranked choice voting. Leftist parties dividing shouldn’t mean that pseudo-fascists win every election. This only happens because we use first-past-the-post voting systems.
