2020 Could Be the Worst Year for Arctic Ice Ever (and Joe Biden Won't Ban Fracking)

The Laptev Sea, part of the Arctic Ocean

by Thomas Neuburger

        "Joe Biden will not ban fracking."
        —Kamala Harris, October 7, 2020

This is your friendly, periodic reminder that while Joe Biden dithers about fracking and support for fossil fuel, the planet is changing rapidly as we speak.

How rapidly? The planet is changing so fast that Biden may still be alive when the error of his ways becomes obvious to us all.

2020 Is Looking Like the Worst Year for Arctic Sea Ice Ever

Above is a map of the Laptev Sea, a part of the Arctic Ocean. The Laptev Sea is suffering the same fate as the rest of the Arctic — it's losing its ice at an alarming rate. As you can see from the graph below, 2020 is shaping up to be an unprecedented year — even surpassing in icelessness the previous worst year, 2018, marked in yellow. (Chart courtesy of climatologist Zach Labe.)

The same things is happening in the Siberian Sea (again the previous worst year, 2012, is marked in yellow):

Nothing even comes close to 2020 in our records for sea ice along the Siberian #Arctic...

[*Note that the basin is geographically constrained (same maximum sea ice cover = flat line)] pic.twitter.com/gFelUw3xSq

— Zack Labe (@ZLabe) October 21, 2020

 

This is, of course, a natural result of record high air temperatures over the Arctic:

 

Record high temperatures in the Siberian #Arctic over the last 3 months!

(and record low sea ice https://t.co/bwHNUDYmEL) pic.twitter.com/U4PfBmO15p

— Zack Labe (@ZLabe) October 20, 2020

 

Not only is the extent of sea ice rapidly diminishing; the volume of ice — which takes into account its thickness — is also shrinking to a shadow of its former self:

 

Climate Deniers Push Biden to Stay With Fracking for "Strong Environmental" Reasons

While this is going on, Team Biden is being lobbied (or quietly encouraging others to lobby them) to stay the course on fracking because fracking "could actually help the climate." You read that right. As a recent Politico piece argues, "abruptly ending fracking today would make [the] decarbonization process harder, not easier."

The Politico piece is propaganda (of course) written by two men associated with the Breakthrough Institute, an energy company-friendly think tank founded by known climate denier — and Republican-invited witness at the most recent House science hearing — Michael Shellenberger.

A sample from Shellenberger's House testimony: "If the Greenland ice sheet were to completely disintegrate, sea levels would rise by seven meters, but over a 1,000-year period. And for that to happen, temperatures would have to rise far more than anyone imagines." 

No, Mr. Shellenberger; if the Greenland ice sheet were to completely disintegrate — and it's disappearing 600% faster than models have predicted — global sea level would rise by seven meters within a few years or less, not ten centuries. If you fill a bathtub, it doesn't take a week for new water to reach the back. Water doesn't get stuck like that — it flows.

The end of winter Arctic ice is coming. Ten bad years could do it. Joe Biden may even live to see that day, especially if he helps cause it.

 

Why Can't The Conservative Brain Grapple With Science-- And Will The Climate Crisis Destroy Us All Because Of That Flaw?

 

Audrey Denney is running for Congress in the northeast corner of California (CA-01), where the state meets Oregon and Nevada. It's a largely rural district with the most exposure to Climate Change-induced wildfires anywhere in the state. She told me yesterday that the Trumpist incumbent, Doug LaMalfa "does not believe in human induced climate change. He has recently called climate change policies 'radical.' He either has been bought and paid for by the oil and gas industry (as his FEC reports show)-- or he doesn’t have the capacity to wrap his mind around science. He has also been quoted as saying abortions cause breast cancer-- so I am leaning toward both."

Denney, whose campaign leans heavily on talking with voters about the Climate Crisis said that "Climate change is not a threat in the distant future. It is taking the lives, homes, and livelihoods of people who live in my district today. We lost 93 lives in 2018 in the Carr and Camp Fires and we lost at least 15 lives last week in the North Complex fire. In 2018 the Carr fire and Camp Fire alone emitted nine times as much CO2 as the state of California was able to reduce our emissions by that year.  Our federal forests are MASSIVE carbon sources-- but have the potential to be carbon sinks-- actually helping us turn the dial back on climate change. Forty-one percent of my district-- and fifty seven percent of the state of California-- is federal forests. And the vast majority of them are in desperate need of vegetation management work and forest restoration work to bring them back to a state of health. This is the only way we will reduce our fire risk and be able to mitigate climate change. If you do not think this work is critically important than you are not paying attention. Or perhaps live in one of the few places that is not shrouded in smoke from the West’s fires... Only by restoring our forests to health by doing the critical thinning, selective logging, and fuels-reduction work, will we be able to lessen our wildfire risk and mitigate the dangerous result of climate change. We can create economic incentives to find new industry utilization for the woody biomass removed from our forests. This will look like manufacturing sustainable building materials like cross laminated timber (CLT) and processing woody biomass into low carbon transportation fuels. We can set policies in place to support the career and technical education programs and apprenticeship programs that will be necessary to build the required local workforce. All of these opportunities mean high paying jobs and more economic opportunity for the real people of California’s first district."

Yesterday, Ron Brownstein's Atlantic column asks a simple question millions of Americans probably have asked themselves at one time or another, Why is it that Republican officials still don’t care about Climate Change?. He begins by introducing us to Mary Nichols, who's been "part of the struggle to prevent catastrophic climate change for about as long as anyone in American life. For years, she’s directed California’s pathbreaking efforts to reduce carbon emissions as the chair of the California Air Resources Board-- a position she held first in the 1970s before taking it up again in 2007. Nichols has also served at the federal level, working as the chief regulator for air pollution at the Environmental Protection Agency under President Bill Clinton in the 1990s. And yet even Nichols has never seen anything that crystallizes the dangers of climate change more clearly than the historic outbreak of wildfires scorching California and other western states this year. 'Yes, absolutely,' she told me earlier this week, when I asked her whether this year’s fires are the most tangible danger to California that she’s seen from climate change. 'It’s not suddenly going to reverse itself … to years when there’s no fire season, or it’s not going to happen until October. The changes are going to be real, and they are going to be long-lasting.'"

Then he introduced us to Carol Browner who served as the EPA administrator for both of Clinton’s presidential terms and later worked as Obama’s first White House adviser on climate. "When she looks at the confluence of extreme-weather events battering the United States in recent years-- not only the wildfires, but also the Gulf Coast hurricanes, Midwest flooding, and the Southwest’s extreme heat-- Browner likewise sees stark evidence that climate change is disrupting American life earlier and more powerfully than almost anyone expected when the debate over these issues seriously began about three decades ago. 'What we have now is the absolute environmental demonstration or evidence of just how dramatic the impact of climate change is going to be. This is not going to stop,' Browner told me. 'There is going to be something next year, and the year after, if we don’t get on it.'"

Environmental scientists and policy experts around the country agree that the massive wildfires are just the latest indicator that climate change has thrust the U.S., and the world, into a dangerous new era. But it’s far from certain that the growing recognition of that threat can break the stalemate over climate policy in Washington. The accumulating evidence about climate change’s destructive power represents an irresistible force for action. But it’s colliding with an immovable object: the unbreakable resistance to any response among both Republican voters and elected officials.

Polling shows that, overall, a growing share of Americans believe climate change is happening, that human activities are driving it, and that the threat is manifesting right now. But as on many issues, the gap on all of these questions is widening between voters in the Republican coalition and other Americans. Annual polls by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication show that although the numbers have increased markedly for Democrats, Republican partisans are no more likely than in 2008 to believe that human activity is causing climate change, and they express even less concern about its impact now than they did then. (Belief in human causation has declined somewhat among independents, but concern about the effects of climate change has increased substantially.)

These attitudes within the GOP coalition both reflect and reinforce Republican officials’ rejection of any effort to reduce carbon emissions. [The Donald], echoed by many prominent conservative commentators and congressional Republicans, continues to dismiss the evidence that climate change is even contributing to the spike in extreme-weather events. With Joe Biden offering the most aggressive climate-change agenda of any Democratic presidential nominee in history, the conditions for the long-stalled debate over the issue in Washington are becoming as combustible as the dried forest floors of California.

Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale climate program, says that in the past, even those Americans concerned about climate change tended to see it as a remote problem. “It was distant in time, [in] that the impacts won’t be felt for a generation or more,” he told me. And it was “distant in space”-- “this is about polar bears and maybe some developing countries, but not the United States … not my friends, not my family, not me.”

Seen through that lens, he said, climate “just blended in the background with 1,000 other issues out there... so we can deal with it later. That’s where more of the country was in 2007 and 2008. Now we skip forward to today, that’s not true anymore because of the [weather] events we’ve been talking about.”

In Yale’s polling, the share of Americans who say that climate change is affecting weather at least somewhat reached nearly three-fifths in 2020, up from about half in early 2013. But Leiserowitz said more disruptive weather events aren’t the only things moving attitudes on climate. Another important factor is the broad, diverse chorus of voices expressing worry about it. Ten years ago, he noted, Americans might have heard concern about the climate only from “environmentalists and liberal politicians like Al Gore”; now it’s much more common to hear concerns raised by public-health professionals, business executives, and even faith leaders, such as Pope Francis.

The result has been an undeniable, though not overwhelming, shift in public opinion. In Yale’s latest national survey this spring, slightly more than three-fifths of Americans said human activities are causing the climate to change, a new high. The share of Americans who say they are very worried about climate change’s impact is relatively modest, at 27 percent. But it’s nearly double the level it was in 2008; overall, about two-thirds of respondents are now either very or somewhat worried.

Americans’ attitudes about the imminence of the danger have changed more drastically: 45 percent in the latest survey described climate change as a threat to Americans now, a big increase from 33 percent in 2008. The share who say climate change won’t be a problem for 25 years or more is at 42 percent, down 10 points compared with 2008.

Yet, on all of these fronts, the movement has not been symmetrical. Democrats are expressing much more concern than they were a decade ago, and most independents slightly more. Republicans, meanwhile, are either no more or even less concerned. (Rigid GOP attitudes largely explain why the overall shift in public opinion on many questions hasn’t been more dramatic, despite the quickening pace of weather disruption.) Since 2008, for instance, the share of Democrats who say human activity is causing climate change has spiked from 70 percent to 85 percent; among Republicans, it’s virtually unchanged, at just 37 percent. And although nearly half of Democrats now say they are very worried about climate change (almost double the level in 2008), only about one in 14 Republicans is equally concerned. That share is essentially unchanged from 12 years ago.

This pattern of public attitudes looks very similar to opinions on racial-equity issues: Compared with a decade ago, substantially more Democrats of all races accept that systemic racism against Black Americans is a serious problem; however, many Republicans are even less likely to agree it exists compared with 10 years ago. The divergence between the parties on climate, as on race, reflects the larger resorting of the electorate along lines of culture rather than class. (Republicans, as I’ve written, increasingly rely on a coalition of older, non-college-educated, evangelical, and rural white voters, while Democrats depend heavily on young people, people of color, and college-educated white Americans.)

Just as many Republican voters have cheered GOP attacks on public-health experts during the coronavirus crisis, portraying them as “elites” who look down on and want to control ordinary people, they have embraced similar accusations against climate scientists. “Climate change is an issue... where most people don’t know that much... and in those circumstances-- especially for an abstract, seemingly far away, invisible problem like climate change-- they look to their leaders to help guide them through that incredibly complicated landscape,” Leiserowitz told me. “Republicans who began talking about climate change as if it was a ‘hoax’ had an incredible impact on other Republicans.”

Many environmentalists have hoped that more and more exposure to the furious effects of weather disruption might soften resistance among Republican voters and leaders to acting on climate change. But in dramatic polling last year from the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Washington Post even Republican voters who acknowledge that their communities are facing more extreme weather overwhelmingly reject the notion that climate change is significantly contributing to those events.

Detailed results provided to me by Kaiser underscore an astonishing gap between the parties. Among people who agree that their communities are experiencing either more hot days, more floods, or more droughts, at least three-fourths of Democrats say climate change is a “major factor” in those events; but at least seven in 10 Republicans in each case say it is only a minor factor, or does not contribute at all. Slightly more than seven in 10 Democrats living in places experiencing more wildfires consider climate change a major factor in causing them; three-fourths of Republicans see climate as little or none of the cause. Even after this summer’s searing events, an Economist/YouGov poll released yesterday found that although three-fourths of Biden supporters said “the severity of recent hurricanes and Western wildfires is most likely the result of global climate change,” fewer than one in five Trump voters agreed.

Those contrasts offer very little reason for optimism that even if Biden wins, any meaningful numbers of congressional or state-level Republicans will feel pressure to support measures to reduce carbon emissions. Among other reasons for pessimism: In both presidential and Senate elections, Republicans are more and more reliant on the states that produce the most fossil fuels, which tend to be the same states with large populations of non-college-educated, Christian, and rural white voters drawn to Trump’s message of racial and cultural backlash.

Across the 20 states that emit the most carbon per dollar of economic output-- a good proxy for states’ integration into the fossil-fuel economy-- Republicans now hold 35 of their 40 Senate seats. That’s nearly enough senators to sustain a GOP filibuster against climate action on its own. The final brick in the wall of GOP opposition is that fossil-fuel producers, once an important source of campaign funding for southern Democrats such as Lyndon B. Johnson, are all-in on bolstering Republican power. Over the past 30 years, oil and gas producers have directed more than 80 percent of their massive $711 million in total federal campaign contributions toward Republicans, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Gene Karpinski, the longtime president of the League of Conservation Voters, the environmental movement’s principal electoral arm, sees little prospect for GOP participation on climate even if Trump loses. “Because of the fossil-fuel influence on the Republican Party and the leader of the party still calling climate change a ‘hoax,’” GOP skepticism about “climate change is out of step with the rest of the country,” he says.

But others see some cracks in the resistance. Kenneth Medlock, the director of the Center for Energy Studies at the Baker Institute for Public Policy in Houston, says the terms of daily discussion in Texas and in neighboring states have changed since Houston was deluged with historic floods during Hurricane Harvey in 2017. “Even in the Gulf Coast, the conversation around extreme-weather events and the like is more the norm than it was five years ago,” he told me. “Up until Harvey happened, nobody really wanted to address the elephant in the room, which is that the climate is changing and this is a real risk.”

Even with that evolving dialogue, Medlock doesn’t expect big changes among Republican elected officials in Texas. He predicts that, to the extent that they acknowledge climate change, they would be more likely to talk about fortifying communities against its effects (an issue he considers important too) than to talk about reducing carbon emissions. But Medlock anticipates that position will become more and more untenable for Republicans over time-- not because their voters necessarily demand more action, but because the business community and institutional investors will keep moving ahead without them to cut carbon.

The dialogue among elected Republicans, he told me, “has kind of quietly shifted.” He explained that the Baker Institute, which is based at Rice University, is involved in several initiatives aimed at reducing net-carbon emissions in the region. “What’s really interesting about [those] efforts is that when we talk to state lawmakers and federal lawmakers [including Republicans], there’s no resistance,” he continued. “You open the conversation with, ‘The world is changing; consumers and investors are demanding lower carbon footprints; this is an economic opportunity for Texas...’ and immediately the conversation becomes very lively. So, in some ways, it’s about how you approach the conversation.”

Sean McElwee, the Data for Progress pollster who analyzes progressive causes, sees a similar opening. Although most Republican voters still recoil from measures presented as addressing climate change, more are open to promoting clean-energy sources, he says. (Yale’s polling has found that too.) “When we do testing … clean energies are very popular among Republican voters, and people are really interested in the jobs framework,” he told me. Just as important: Relatively few Republican voters intuitively embrace arguments from Trump and others that defending oil, gas, and coal is a culture-war statement against “elitists” promoting solar and wind energies. “I don’t think voters have an allegiance to coal and oil the way Republican politicians have,” he said.

Browner, the former EPA head, is also a voice of relative optimism. “If Biden wins and they start moving forward” with a climate agenda, she told me, “there will be Republicans calling. Maybe I’m a minority on this, but when they see you are serious and you want to do something, they want a seat at the table.”

Even if Republicans remain obdurate, unified Democratic control of Congress and the White House is more likely to produce climate action than the last Democratic trifecta in 2009 and 2010, most experts I spoke with said. At that point, the House Democratic Caucus still contained a large number of southern and rural “blue dog” members who resisted cap-and-trade climate legislation the chamber passed in 2009. (Forty-four Democrats voted no.) Now the House Democratic Caucus is overwhelmingly centered on urban and suburban districts where acting on climate is popular. As Karpinski said: “If you look at 2018, the key reason why Nancy Pelosi is now the speaker [is because] it’s mostly suburban and some of the semi-urban districts. It’s a combination of young people, communities of color, and suburban women. They are the most supportive of this issue and want action.”

If Biden wins and Democrats gain the Senate majority, he could drive a big part of his climate agenda through a coronavirus-relief stimulus package; his plan includes massive spending to promote renewable power, electric cars, and energy-efficiency upgrades for homes and businesses. Obama did the same thing in the stimulus package he signed to counter the Great Recession, tucking in huge investments in clean energy (that Biden as vice president was assigned to oversee).

But to secure Senate approval for measures that directly limit carbon emissions, Democrats would almost certainly have to end the filibuster, which empowers what I’ve called the “brown blockade” of Senate Republicans who represent the fossil-fuel-producing states. (Unable to overcome a filibuster, the Senate never considered the cap-and-trade climate bill the House passed in 2009.) And even if Democrats do end the filibuster, serious climate legislation could face a tight squeeze to reach a simple majority, with Joe Manchin, from coal-producing West Virginia, and possibly other Democratic senators having to take a very tough vote.

All of those outcomes are impossible to predict. But what’s clear is that the tension will grow between a sluggish political system locked in a partisan standoff and a climate system that is poised to generate disruption at an accelerating pace. “This is not some ‘new normal’ that we can plan around … it’s a system that continues to spiral out of control,” says Vijay Limaye, an environmental epidemiologist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “There definitely is a signal in these record-setting months that … we are heading into a new era when we will see records set, and they will fall just as quickly … It’s hard for people to wrap their heads around now, but as bad as things have been this year, unquestionably, they will get worse.”

Nichols, the veteran climate regulator, is just as stark in her warning: Even today’s extreme weather may soon seem like the (relative) calm before the storm. “The rate of change is accelerating, so it is absolutely possible that we’ll see more visible signs of bigger storms,” as well as higher temperatures and sea-level rise, she said. “All of those things could happen much faster.”





She explained that the famous apocalyptic scene from the movie The Day After Tomorrow still isn’t likely to happen, where big waves wash over the skyscrapers of New York City. “But bigger storms and more damage and loss of property and loss of life as a result absolutely is likely going to continue-- not just in a gradual slope, but at a rate of acceleration that is greater than was predicted before,” she said.

The biggest message of the California wildfires may be that not only the terms but the tense of the climate debate is changing. Climate change has evolved from something that will threaten America to something that is doing so today. “The people who used to talk about how they were trying to save the world for their grandchildren need to start thinking about their children and even themselves,” Nichols said.

Kara Eastman is the Democratic candidate running for the Omaha-based congressional seat (NE-02) occupied by Trumpist stooge, Donald Bacon. The Climate crisis is a big issue she talks with Nebraska voters about constantly promising to help lead the battle when she replaces-nothing-Bacon in Congress:

Climate change-- appropriately called climate chaos by many-- is clearly the result of human activity. The wildfires on the West Coast bring this reality into dramatic relief. In order to reverse this trend we need immediate action from policy-makers from the entire political spectrum. In the past, there was an environmental consensus. Major environmental legislation from the Clean Water Act through the Montreal Protocol Treaty were passed by huge majorities on both sides of the aisle. Unfortunately, due to the extremist takeover of the Republican party, led by Donald Trump and Don Bacon, the GOP is no longer the party of the environment. On the contrary, they continue to give voice to the fringe belief that the massive climate upheavals we are witnessing in real-time today are part of some "normal" weather cycle, moreover, that these events we can see with our eyes and choke on in our lungs aren't really even happening.

Don Bacon wants to have it both ways. In front of a Republican audience, he says the the science is "uncertain" on climate, but on the other hand he claims membership to the bipartisan but largely ineffectual climate solutions caucus when he's confronted by local voters. Meanwhile, in Nebraska's Second Congressional District, we suffered from one of the hottest and driest summers on record, a year after central Nebraska suffered from devastating floods.

When I am in Congress, I will join my colleagues in putting climate front and center of the agenda. Nebraskans will be able to count on me to push a climate agenda, not simply push greenwashed window dressing. It's no longer some distant future crisis. It's here and now and we need to get to work.

Beth Doglio is in a D v D congressional general election in Washington. She's a progressive, endorsed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus and her opponent is a ConservaDem endorsed by the Chamber of Commerce and the Wall Street owned and operated New Dems. There is no issue more important in her campaign than Climate. And Beth has a stellar record while her opponent's record is putrid and, basically, Republican. Yesterday Beth told me that "As the wildfires rage on the West Coast, lives are being lost, towns are burning to the ground, and millions of acres of land are now charred deserts. This is climate change. The stakes have never been higher and the consequences of failing to act have never been more clear. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects that we have just one decade, one last chance to act, before it’s too late." She continued:

The United States must step up and must act with the urgency this moment demands. And the reality is that beyond its dangers, climate change actually presents us with a great opportunity. We can build a clean energy economy, strengthen our middle-class, and create millions of good union jobs. But we need leaders with expertise to get us there. Leaders who have stood up to the fossil fuel industry and won. Leaders who have actually passed policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and grow jobs.

As a climate advocate, I led the effort to stop the development of 7 coal export terminals dead in their tracks, while my opponent as mayor was busy working to site the world’s largest Methanol plant in her town. While she points in part to her support for community gardens as her track record on climate issues, I point to playing a pivotal role in passing legislation that significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions-- like the nation’s best 100% Clean Electricity Bill that integrates equity and labor standards with hard deadlines to remove fossils fuels from our electric sector and grow clean energy jobs. Or my first of its kind Green Buildings Law that makes our buildings more healthy and efficient at the same time it creates jobs. I’m calling for a sector-by-sector decarbonization of our economy. I am serious about and experienced in pushing for and passing emission reduction policies that will leave a safe planet for my kids.

You can ask anyone-- I love gardening and, in fact, I helped build a robust garden program at my children's elementary school-- but gardening is not what is going to get us out of this! This issue can no longer take a backseat, play second fiddle, remain an afterthought. We must have a plan, it must be ambitious, it must go far enough. I am calling for Washington, D.C. to follow Washington state’s lead and get serious about passing legislation to address the issue at scale.

Global Warming Is Accelerating. (In Other News, Democrats Reverse Platform, Won't End Fossil Fuel Subsidies)

The three colors in the chart represent odds that a season will be perceived as cool (blue), normal (white) or hot (red). In 1950 to 1980, if represented on a six-sided dice, there were two blue sides, two red sides and two white sides. "The dice are now loaded, really loaded. ... Four sides of the die are now red (hot) and one side is deep red for extreme heat, more than three standard deviations warmer than in 1951-1980. Dark red (22%) is creeping onto another side" (James Hansen et. al.)

by Thomas Neuburger

As we contemplate the political events of the week — the Republican takeover of the Democratic Party and convention; Democratic media adjunct MSNBC lying about AOC's Party-approved nomination of Bernie Sanders (before changing their headline); Bill Clinton daring to show his face in public, and post-MeToo leadership letting him — it's nevertheless impossible not to be overwhelmed by this.

 • "Good morning. The Greenland ice sheet has past the melting point of no return"

"[I]ce that’s discharging into the ocean is far surpassing the snow that’s accumulating on the surface of the ice sheet" — Michalea King, lead author of the study and a researcher at The Ohio State University’s Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center.

"[S]tarting in 2000, you start superimposing that seasonal melt on a higher baseline—so you’re going to get even more losses,” meaning the melt-rate has permanently accelerated while the snowfall has not. 

But there's a bright side: “It’s always a positive thing to learn more about glacier environments, because we can only improve our predictions for how rapidly things will change in the future ... The more we know, the better we can prepare.”

We're learning how to learn sooner how wrong we are, "so we can better prepare." That's the bright side.

 • "Record Arctic blazes may herald new ‘fire regime’ decades sooner than anticipated"

"Something’s changed in the environment there" — Mark Parrington, senior scientist and wildfire expert at the EU’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service.

“This is the type of fire event that would be described by these worst-case modeling scenarios that were supposed to occur mid-century” — Jessica McCarty, a wildfire expert at Miami University of Ohio.

Mid-century (2050) Arctic fires now occur regularly.

 • "Global warming is accelerating. 12-month mean peaked just below prior maximum"

"[G]lobal temperature is clearly running well above the linear trend that existed for decades" — climate scientist James Hansen

"1) That jump off the linear trend ought to scare the crap out of you. 2) Who but the careful public managers of your emotions say that being batcrap-scared is a useless response to the climate?" — Yours truly

Nonetheless, not everyone is scared.

 • "Democrats Drop Demand To End Fossil Fuel Subsidies From Party Platform"

"Roughly half of all U.S. oil reserves required subsidies to generate a profit, according to a study published in the journal Nature Energy in 2017, and that was before the price of crude plunged far below $50 a barrel." — Huffington Post writer Alexander Kaufman.

“This platform is a step backwards” — Charlie Jiang, Greenpeace.

• "DNC’s Flip-Flop on Fossil Fuel Subsidies Follows Deep Ties the Industry"

"In August 2018, the DNC approved a resolution from Chair Tom Perez that reversed a DNC policy prohibiting it from accepting contributions from fossil fuel PACs. ... Shortly thereafter, donations from fossil fuel executives began flowing into DNC coffers." — Donald Shaw, money-in-politics editor and co-founder, Sludge

 • "A-a-and we're done..." — Yours truly

If the question is climate, who with any power is the answer? Certainly not Joe Biden.

The real answer, of course, is the people, but only if they know it.
 

What Theory of Change Will Win the Progressive War?

by Thomas Neuburger

When the Social contract breaks from above, it breaks from below as well.
     —Yours truly

A "theory of change" in modern progressive parlance is the method by which one gets from A to B, from a world with employer-controlled health care, for example, to Medicare for All, a universal, government-controlled program. It's the nuts and bolts by which the goal is achieved.

One theory of change, if we keep with the Medicare for All example, may be to mobilize grassroots pressure via petitions, letters and demonstrations, then couple that with the election of so many House and Senate progressives that the bill would have to pass. Another theory of change would be to elect a strongly pro-M4A president (a Sanders, say) and let him use the hammer of the Executive Branch to pass the legislation. Or both. A third might be to elect a Medicare For All "practicalist," an Elizabeth Warren, who proposed taking the M4A path in a sequence of chunks, with phase two, the real move, occurring after the midterm congressional election.

But theories of change have to be likely, or at least convincing. For the Medicare for All example, the counter-argument would be that none of the first two methods has worked (witness the Sanders campaign, who lost to Medicare For All opponent Joe Biden), or will work (just how fast to do we have to replace those House members and senators again?). As for the practicalist, you'd have to believe that phase two would actually be likely to occur.

Collapse as a Theory of Change

I recently argued, with respect to global warming, for a theory of change that essentially surrendered the field, admitted that any "practicalist" solution was doomed to fail, and opted instead for that last hope of the desperate — massive, sudden events-driven change, the kind of chaos that, admittedly dangerous, might still open the door to previously locked-out solutions. (See "Poised on the Brink: A Tale of Hope and Change" for that argument.)

Thinking more broadly (as if climate destruction wasn't broad enough), a progressive theory of change would have to be able to head off the kind of electoral revolution that brought Donald Trump to power in 2016, or worse, the kind of extra-electoral revolution that a partial or total meltdown of the economy — with no solution in sight that wasn't pro-corporate — would cause. A real, national, in-the-streets revolt, in other words.

But not a Paris Commune–type revolt with barricades. More like a rolling mashup of George Floyd-Fergusson protests cum national rent–student debt strikes, dogged by police and FBI provocateurs, with a heavy dose of Boogaloo Boy anger and nihilism thrown in. Look again at the graphic at the top and see if you don't see a potential Boogaloo Boy in one of the shots. Those people are angry too, and we're making more of them daily.

What Does the Devil Say?

Horrible to consider such a route, chaos as a theory of change. Yet the "devil's advocate" argument that this is all we have left goes something like this.

The devil asks:

What's the argument that says what progressives are doing now to change Democratic Party leadership is working?

Today we have Pelosi and Schumer. Tomorrow we'll have, post-Pelosi, some corporate vassal running things in the House, and as president (if we're "lucky") an old pro-corporate conservative Party hack, a husk these days, whose policies will be driven by young pro-corporate conservative Party hacks eager to advance their careers "advising" him. 

To make things worse, much of his base will include anti-Trump Republicans, people who actually like him, and who see him as the Jeb! they never got, thus completing the transformation of the Democratic Party into the competent wing of the Republican Party.

On the opposition side, our high-profile progressive champion, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, just bent the knee, calling Pelosi the "mama bear" of the Party, a comment widely noticed by the already disillusioned who had high hopes for her.

Looking at that landscape, where are we winning?

I'm not sure how to answer him. I'm not sure how to say, "It's working this way; it's working because of this."

I don't want to say the situation is hopeless (though others do). I just want to find a way out that actually works. Otherwise, we're left with "hope for sudden change" — a collapse that opens doors for everyone, the best and the worst — and the absolute last choice any sane person would pick as a way to fix the world.
 

Poised on the Brink: A Tale of Hope and Change

The relationship between carbon emissions and Gross World Product (human economic activity)

by Thomas Neuburger

The road to 2°C is steep; the road to 1.5°C is a cliff.
—Robbie Andrew, Center for International Climate Research

Some of my best friends are incrementalists. They see the world, accurately to be sure, as continuing step by step, one day to the next, one year to the next, from one election cycle to the next, marking an endless stream of incremental moves — some large (Obamacare), others smaller (increasing unemployment insurance under the CARES Act) — but none so big as to threaten to "end life as we know it."

Thus there's always time to build the movement from where we are to where we want it to be. Think how far the Fight for 15 has come in the past few years (though it has taken years), or the battle for LGBTQ rights (in the Bush era that seemed impossible), or the normalization of the push, at least, for Medicare for All (but not, to be sure, its implementation).

It this game of Tortoise and Hare, the Tortoise is winning, but slowly.

Never is there a thought of a final whistle, that though we're behind and gaining, we cannot win. Never is there a thought (or rarely, since these are bright people) that Time, the invisible referee, is about to step in and say to both sides, "The next free throw is the last."

Yet if humans want to remain civilized (live in cities, be fed by agriculture) and keep anything close to their current numbers intact, the time to recognize the game clock is ticking down ... is now. When it comes to a climate "solution," one which returns global temperatures to within the civilization-nurturing range we're already outside of, the final whistle is almost about to blow.

The next free throw, if indeed we have one left, may be the last.

The Sweet Seduction

Two factors work against us actual progressives, as we stand here late in the initial quarter of perhaps our last civilized century.

First is the sweet seduction of immediate reward, the drug-like high the masters of our economy (and thus of our politics) get from short-term wealth production and acquisition. The political and cultural momentum of our current governing system — 40 years of ingrained neoliberalism — works against us all.

When faced with problems like climate change, problems that challenge their wealth, the masters of our fate default to "market solutions" in their sleep. Having long forgotten why they first spoke that way (it's because, when you control the market and the government that regulates it, market solutions are always on your side), they don't know how to speak differently. It's like the language they use has even lost the words — save "communist" and its cousins — to describe either market harms or the benefits of their elimination.

As for the people soon to suffer the effects of these problems, phrases like "market solutions" wash over them like water, ingested like a tasteless, colorless food additive they would never consider removing from their daily meal because they don't even know it's been put there in the first place. That market solutions are the only ones worth offering is an idea so common it's invisible as a thought, like "men walk upright" is invisible as a thought. It's so obviously true, why would anyone spend time thinking it?

We'd have to make very big changes to reverse course at this point. And before we could reverse our course, we'd have to reverse our minds, swim against a stream we hardly know we're in. We'd also need a very strong president with World War II power to direct the economy, command the economy, to the benefit of the people — the direct opposite of a "market" (i.e., wealth coddling) solution, in which the economy is commanded only for the rich.

This, by the way, is the argument for a presidential candidate who would be willing to make the greatest possible changes in the shortest possible time. Do we have such a candidate? Not that I have noticed. Even the Bernie Sanders of our minds, the person we imagined him to be, failed to be that person when it mattered. So far, we're still looking.

The World-Historical Clock on the Wall

The second factor working against us is the clock itself, in this case the climate clock. Most of human civilization will be swept away in the tide (literally) if global temperatures reach "just" two degrees Celsius above pre-Industrial levels.

At 2°C of global warming, we'll end up with the temperature of the last interglacial warming period (the Eemian), the period before the last ice age, during which sea levels were high enough to disappear New York City. Scandinavia was an island during the Eemian. The literal tide of Eemian-size sea level rise — 20 to 30 feet at least — will wipe out every coastal city on earth and many that sit inland on low rivers. It will also take with it critical growing areas like the North China Plain, that nation's primary "breadbasket" and the key to its rapid rise, millennia ago, to a historical global power. The largest national population on earth, 1.5 billion people, lives in China. Most will starve under Eemian-like sea level rise.

Yet to keep the climate to "just" 2°C of global warming requires a cut in global carbon emissions of 6% per year — starting this year (charts courtesy Robby Andrews):

If we delay for another 10 years — just two election cycles — the cut in emissions required will be 10% per year.

A much more livable goal from a "protecting our civilization" standpoint is the IPCC's aspirational target of 1.5°C global warming. If we could hold global warming to under that level, much of what we've made on the earth could possibly be saved.

Yet the rate cuts required to reach that goal look almost like a cliff.

Three points before I close:

• Yes, this is an international problem, but U.S. leadership — real leadership, aggressive, self-sacrificing leadership — is both a requirement for success and a powerful driver of it. Were the U.S. to be run by a person who would take control, and using just the present power of the Executive Branch, turn the ship totally around the minute she took office, we may have a chance.

• That person would not only need FDR's purpose and strength, she'd need his popular mandate. Yet so far (God help us for even thinking this) we see no Great Depression, a tragedy equally shared by rich and poor, South and North, West and East alike on the near horizon. This doesn't mean one won't show up; it just means it hasn't yet.

• The coronavirus pandemic could only serve that unifying purpose under two conditions — if a cure is never found, or if the near-term social and political stress cause an irreversible break in the way Americans think about their government and each other. And even so, there's no guarantee that if that break occurs, it will benefit those seeking real solutions. It could benefit the opportunists only.

Finding Hope in the Hope for Sudden Change

I write surrounded by a world in which many who see what I see, and they are legion, privately think it's over. But since last year was much like the year before it, and 2022 will likely be much like 2021, they don't dwell on this too much and they certainly don't write about it.

Ask yourself, when was the last time a climate scientist despaired in public? Yet almost all of them, to my knowledge at least, hold little hope for answers to the greatest question of our age: How in practice do we stop this roller coaster, paused at its peak, from taking the next great plunge?

What should we, as people, do about this, our poised-on-the-brink existence? Live life; love your kids; work hard for sudden change; and pray that the next FDR, if we find him, finds a nation that puts him in power.

The alternative is despair, a diseased, unhealthy state. Hope is much better — and after all, who knows? The sudden change we work for may show up. If so, by definition, it won't come incrementally, announcing its slow arrival years in advance, but as a complete surprise — coming in a year, hopefully some year soon, when one day wasn't at all like the one before.
  

Will The Climate Crisis Be A Factor In November?

On Tuesday, Pew released a new poll on the climate crisis which shows that "a majority of Americans continue to say they see the effects of climate change in their own communities and believe that the federal government falls short in its efforts to reduce the impacts of climate change. At a time when partisanship colors most views of policy, broad majorities of the public-- including more than half of Republicans and overwhelming shares of Democrats-- say they would favor a range of initiatives to reduce the impacts of climate change, including large-scale tree planting efforts, tax credits for businesses that capture carbon emissions and tougher fuel efficiency standards for vehicles... Public concern over climate change has been growing in recent years, particularly among Democrats."

From the moment it seized control of the executive branch, the Trump Regime has been throwing out regulations on the fossil fuel industry, pushing for more drilling and coal mining and weakening vehicle fuel-efficiency standards. Meanwhile 65% of Americans say the federal government is doing too little to reduce the effects of climate change and majorities also feel the Regime isn't doing enough to protect air and water quality.

Consistent with public concerns over climate and the environment, 79% of Americans say the priority for the country’s energy supply should be developing alternative sources of energy, such as wind and solar; far fewer (20%) give priority to expanding the production of oil, coal and natural gas. To shift consumption patterns toward renewables, a majority of the public (58%) says government regulations will be necessary to encourage businesses and individuals to rely more on renewable energy; fewer (39%) think the private marketplace will ensure this change in habits.

Partisans remain far apart on several overarching questions about climate change. Much larger shares of Democrats and those who lean toward the Democratic Party than Republicans and Republican leaners say human activity is contributing a great deal to climate change (72% vs. 22%), that it is impacting their own local community (83% to 37%) and that the government is doing too little to reduce the effects of climate change (89% to 35%).

Despite these differences, there is bipartisan support for several policy options to reduce the effects of climate change. This is especially true when it comes to proposals put forth earlier this year by Republican members of Congress, such as large scale tree-plantings to help absorb carbon emissions and offering tax credits to businesses that capture carbon emissions.

...84% of U.S. adults support providing a business tax credit for carbon capture technology that can store carbon emissions before they enter the atmosphere. Large majorities of Democrats (90%) and Republicans (78%) back this proposal, which House Republicans rolled out earlier this year.

Most Americans also support tougher restrictions on power plant emissions (80%), taxing corporations based on the amount of carbon emissions they produce (73%) and tougher fuel-efficiency standards for automobiles and trucks (71%). Partisan divides are wider on these three policies, with Democrats much more supportive than Republicans. Still, about half or more of Republicans say they would favor each of these policies, including 64% who back tougher emission standards for power plants.

While partisanship remains the predominant dividing line in many views of climate and the environment, there are meaningful differences within party coalitions.

In particular, Republicans and Republican leaners who describe their political views as moderate or liberal (roughly a third of all Republicans and leaners) are much more likely than conservative Republicans to see local impacts of climate change, support policies to address it and say the federal government is doing too little in areas of environmental protection. Further, younger generations and women in the GOP tend to be more critical of government action on the environment than their older and male counterparts. Republican women also are more supportive of polices aimed at reducing the impacts of climate change than GOP men.

Differences among Democrats and Democratic leaners are more modest. Strong majorities of both moderate or conservative and liberal Democrats believe the federal government is doing too little to reduce climate change and support a range of policies to address its effects on the environment. There are not meaningful differences in these views among Democrats by either gender or generation.

...Majorities of U.S. adults favor each of the five proposals to reduce the effects of climate change included in the survey. The most popular, favored by 90% of Americans, is to plant about a trillion trees to absorb carbon emissions. President Trump announced in this year’s State of the Union that the U.S. would join the World Economic Forum’s One Trillion Trees Initiative.

Widespread public support extends to proposals to provide a tax credit to businesses for development of carbon capture and storage capacity (84%) and tougher restrictions on power plant carbon emissions (80%).

About seven-in-ten also favor taxing corporations based on their carbon emissions (73%) and adopting tougher fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks (71%).

The Trump administration has taken steps over the past year to roll back regulations on carbon emissions in areas such as fuel-efficiency standards for vehicles and power plants emissions.

Support for these policies aligns with how effective the public thinks they would be. A 2018 survey found majorities of Americans believed restrictions on power plant emissions, tax incentives to encourage businesses to reduce carbon emissions and tougher fuel-efficiency standards for cars would all make a difference at reducing climate change.

Most U.S. adults think human activity, such as the burning of fossil fuels, contributes a great deal (49%) or some (32%) to climate change. About two-in-ten (19%) say human activity contributes not too much or not at all to climate change. Views on this question are about the same as they were last fall.

Americans continue to be deeply politically divided over how much human activity contributes to climate change. About seven-in-ten Democrats (72%) say human activity contributes a great deal to climate change, compared with roughly two-in-ten Republicans (22%), a difference of 50 percentage points.

The difference is even wider among those at the ends of the ideological spectrum. A large majority of liberal Democrats (85%) say human activity contributes a great deal to climate change. Only 14% of conservative Republicans say the same-- 45% of this group says human activity contributes not too much or not at all to climate change.

Views about the role of human activity in climate change also vary by education among Democrats, but not among Republicans. Democrats who have graduated from college are more likely to say human activity contributes a great deal to climate change than Democrats without a college degree. For example, 86% of Democrats with a postgraduate degree say human activity contributes a great deal to climate change, compared with a smaller majority (58%) of Democrats with no college experience. Among Republicans, comparably small shares across level of education see human activity as contributing a great deal to climate change.

Previous Pew Research Center analyses have found a similar dynamic in views of climate change by level of science knowledge, based on an 11-item index. Among Democrats, those with higher levels of science knowledge are more likely to say human activity influences climate change a great deal than those with lower levels of science knowledge. By contrast, there is no such relationship among Republicans.

There also are significant differences in these views among Democrats by race and ethnicity. Overall, 80% of white Democrats and 70% of Hispanic Democrats say human activity contributes a great deal to climate change. By contrast, black Democrats are much less likely to take this view: 49% believe human activity contributes a great deal to climate change.

Reducing reliance on carbon-based fuels is viewed by climate advocates as a critical step to preventing the worst impacts of climate change. The survey finds a broad majority of Americans (79%) say the more important priority for the country is to develop alternative sources, such as wind and solar; far fewer (20%) say the more important energy priority is to expand the production of oil, coal and natural gas...

An overwhelming majority of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (91%) say that developing alternative sources should be the nation’s energy priority. A smaller majority of Republicans and Republican leaners (65%) also takes this view.

Among moderate and liberal Republicans, a large share (81%) say developing alternative sources should be the nation’s energy priority. The views of moderate and liberal Republicans are relatively close to those of Democrats: 88% of moderate and conservative Democrats and a near-unanimous 97% of liberal Democrats say the more important energy priority is developing alternative sources. By contrast, conservative Republicans are much more divided in their views: A narrow majority (54%) gives greater priority to developing alternative energy sources, while 45% say the priority should be expanding the production of oil, coal and natural gas.

On balance, a majority of U.S. adults see a role for government in shifting usage patterns toward renewables.

Climate Change Denier-in-Chief by Nancy Ohanian

About six-in-ten Americans (58%) say that government regulations are necessary to encourage businesses and consumers to rely more on renewable energy sources. Fewer (39%) think the private marketplace will encourage the use of renewable energy, without the need for government intervention.

Partisans hold opposing views on this question: 77% of Democrats, including those who lean to the Democratic Party, believe that government regulations are necessary to shift the country toward reliance on renewable energy, while 61% of Republicans and Republican leaners say the private marketplace will be enough.

Views on this question, and opinion dynamics among partisans, are comparable to what they were when the question was last asked in 2018.

Americans’ overall preference to prioritize alternative energy is reflected in views of specific energy source development.

Large shares say they would favor developing more solar panel farms (90%) and more wind turbine farms (83%).

There is far less support for expanding fossil fuel energy sources. Majorities oppose expanding coal mining (65%), hydraulic fracturing (60%) and offshore oil and gas drilling (58%).

A narrow majority of the public (55%) opposes more nuclear power plants in the country, while 43% are in favor.

...There is bipartisan support for expanding solar and wind power, though somewhat smaller majorities of conservative Republicans back these two policies.

By contrast, Republicans-- especially conservative Republicans-- are more supportive than Democrats of expanding fossil fuel energy sources and nuclear power.

Majorities of conservative Republicans favor expanding offshore drilling (72%), hydraulic fracturing (65%) and coal mining (63%). By contrast, about half or fewer of moderate and liberal Republicans favor expanding these forms of energy development. Democrats broadly oppose these methods, and opposition is particularly widespread among liberal Democrats... [Y]ounger Republicans give more priority to alternative energy development-- and are less supportive of expanding fossil fuel sources-- than older Republicans.

...Majorities of Americans continue to say the federal government is doing too little to protect key aspects of the environment. About two-thirds of Americans say the federal government is doing too little to protect water quality of rivers, lakes and streams (67%), protect air quality (65%) and reduce the effects of climate change (65%). About six-in-ten think the federal government is doing too little to protect animals and their habitats (62%), and a slightly smaller majority say the federal government is doing too little to protect open lands in national parks (54%).

These findings come amid a changing federal regulatory landscape. The Trump administration is reversing or seeking to change more than 100 rules and regulations related to carbon dioxide emissions, clean air, water or toxic chemicals.

...Democrats remain far more likely than Republicans to say the government is doing too little to address aspects of the environment. For instance, about nine-in-ten liberal Democrats say the federal government is doing too little to protect air quality (93%) or water quality (91%). By comparison, among conservative Republicans, just 36% say the federal government is doing too little to protect water quality and only 28% say this about air quality. Majorities of conservative Republicans say the federal government is doing the right amount in these areas.

Puerto Rico by Nancy Ohanian

Moderate and liberal Republicans are more critical of government action on the environment than conservative Republicans. Narrow majorities say the government is doing too little to protect water and air quality, wildlife and their habit and to reduce the effects of climate change. Ideological gaps among Democrats are more modest than among Republicans.

One problem with that: the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. The members of Congress from that wing-- corporate Democrats, Blue Dogs, New Dems-- they think like Republicans. I spoke to two candidates who are running for seats occupied by virulent Blue Dogs, both of whom (Kendra Horn of Oklahoma and Tom O'Halleran of Arizona) oppose meaningful climate action. Eva Putzova noted that "In four years, my opponent, Rep. Tom O'Halleran, has done nothing meaningful to address the climate crisis. He is fine with sweeping one of the largest crises that humanity faces under the rug. When I'm in Congress, I'll be the exact opposite. I'll push with other progressives for a Green New Deal to save our planet and retool our economy to be 100% green. We need bold action, not timid baby steps."

Tom Guild is also a Green New Deal advocate, one of the reasons for his candidacy. He told me he favors "bold action on climate change, including using the Green New Deal as a roadmap for future action. Kendra Horn, my primary opponent, does not. I favor planting a trillion trees to absorb carbon emissions; providing tax credits to businesses for developing carbon capture/storage; tougher restrictions on power plant carbon emissions; taxing corporations based on their carbon emissions; and tougher fuel efficiency standards for cars. I have never heard or read anything coming from Horn discussing all these great ideas or any strategy to reverse climate change. Climate change is an existential threat to our planet and humans, according to a consensus of the scientific community. America needs to develop renewable energy sources and transition to a green energy economy very soon. Scientists say that we have as a little as a decade and maybe as much as several decades to seriously deal with climate change before an irreversible decline in our environment leads to the end of planet earth as we have known it. Urgency is the key. Quick action is needed. We cannot fiddle while Rome, Georgia and Rome, Italy and everything in between burns. Of all the issues on the political and economic radar today, climate change is one of the most important, and one we must take very seriously and engage in bold action to quickly address.

Reporting on the poll and a similar one released by Kaiser, the Washington Post's Brady Dennis noted that "while Americans are increasingly worried about climate change, fewer than 4 in 10 said they believe that tackling the problem will require them to make 'major sacrifices,' ... and most are unwilling to pay for it on a personal level. For example, while nearly half of adults said they would be willing to pay a $2 monthly tax on their electricity bills to help combat climate change, just over a quarter said they are willing to pay $10 extra each month. And while two-thirds support stricter fuel-efficiency standards for the nation’s cars and trucks, increases in the gas tax remained deeply unpopular. Instead, clear majorities say they would prefer that climate initiatives be funded by increasing the taxes on wealthy households and on companies that burn fossil fuels. Whether rising concerns over climate change and its impacts on everyday life will translate to the ballot box this fall remains a question mark. Climate and the environment have emerged as a central issue for Democrats, particularly over the past decade... But for Republicans, it’s just the opposite. Concerns over climate remain among their lower priorities."

Progressive Democrat Cathy Kunkel is running for a West Virginia seat occupied by Climate Change denier and Trumpist Republican Alex Mooney. She told me today that "Impacts of the climate crisis are being felt in West Virginia, from recent deadly flooding to impacts on small farms and agriculture. West Virginia needs real political leadership that will fight for federal resources to help revitalize our economy and make sure that no worker is left behind as our country transitions away from fossil fuels and tackles the climate crisis." Needless to say Mooney has failed to provide any kind of constructive leadership, instead just spitting out lies and bullshit about "bringing back" the coal industry.

Audrey Denney is the progressive Democrat running for the largely rural district in northeast California against Climate Change Denier Doug LaMalfa. This morning, she reiterated to me that he "doesn’t believe in climate change. By profession he is a rice farmer. The Growing Climate Solutions Act will help farmers gain access to carbon markets with the carbon they sequester on their farms. That bill is in the Senate now and has broad, bi-partisan support as well as support from large ag companies (i.e. Cargill) and very traditional farming organizations (i.e. the American Farm Bureau). Other than Rep. LaMalfa the rest of the traditional agricultural industry has not only accepted that climate change is real-- but it understands our industry’s role in mitigating it. It is incomprehensible and appauling to me that we have leaders who do not believe in science. Science is not like Santa Claus. Something you can choose to believe in or not. Science is fact. If we want to have a habitable planet, climate change is far and away the most important issue the global community must be confronting."

Jesse Ventura Could Pose a Greater Threat Than Biden or the Democrats Believe

What the 2016 electoral vote would have looked if the “FU / None of the Above” electorate had turned out (source)

by Thomas Neuburger

“If I were to become President, these wars in the Middle East would end. War is a money-making scheme done by the military industrial complex. I would start a war on the climate, a war on pollution. If the oceans die, we die.”
—Jesse Ventura (September, 2019)

On April 27, Jesse Ventura announced he's testing the Green Party waters:

OK, I've decided I'm going to test the waters. IF I were going to run for president, the GREEN party would be my first choice. I've endorsed the party and I'm testing the waters. #mondaythoughts #MondayMorning #MondayMotivaton #MondayMood

— Jesse Ventura (@GovJVentura) April 27, 2020

If indeed he runs, and he keeps talking like this (9:48 in the clip below)...

If I were to become the president, let's say it that way, these wars in the Middle East would end. I take my foreign policy from Major General Smedley Butler, who wrote the book War Is a Racket, because war is that, it is a racket. It's a money-making scheme done by the military-industrial complex. Our soldiers don't fight for the United States; they fight for the corporations.

So to me, I would start a war on the climate, on pollution. I live in Mexico. I'm watching the oceans die before my very eyes. I've got news for you, ladies and gentlemen. If the oceans die, we die.

...he's going to win a lot of votes from the #NeverBiden crowd on the left.

Or if he keeps talking like this: “Wealth distribution is completely out of line today. In fact, people have talked to me about the minimum wage. What about a maximum wage?”

Sounds a lot like Sanders, doesn't he? He even has Sanders' mark of authenticity — whatever he looks and sounds like, that's who he is. Ventura's also strongly pro-marijuana; listen to the clip starting at 7:22 for the striking reason why.

The whole interview from which this quote came is interesting, by the way, and it's not terribly long. Aside from his marijuana story and the climate change quote, he discusses President Trump , the current state of the WWE, living without a cell phone, and how and when he will make up his mind about running for office again.

(His comment about Trump: "The first night of boot camp, there's one person who will break down, wet their pants, cry for their mom. That's Donald Trump.")

Ventura, a former Navy SEAL, comes from a strongly libertarian point of view, but if one looks at this compiled list of his issues I don't see much there besides his quotes on gun control to alienate many pro-Sanders but #NeverBiden voters. He'd have to update (or clean up) his past contrarian positions, but he won't be the first (for example, Joe Biden) to have to do that ahead of a presidential run.

Tarred with an Alex Jones Brush

Ventura will have problems, of course. In the past he's been on the record as a 9/11 skeptic and climate change denier, as this 2009 Guardian article shows — note the reference to his since-deleted TruTV show, “Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura” — and there's his occasional association with Alex Jones. He'll also get no press, or "what a clown" press only, so he'll get no good coverage at all that he doesn't create himself.

On the other hand, he's rather good at creating coverage for himself. Should he enter the race, Ventura would make an interesting 2020 wildcard — or a dangerous one, depending on your point of view.

Ventura Would Run Seriously

I do think if he chose to run, he'd run seriously and to win. As one Minnesota commenter put it in a thread discussing his potential 2020 candidacy (emphasis added):

I voted for Jesse [for governor of Minnesota].

In the days immediately before the election Jesse was polling at 10%. And then he won.

This is because 1) polling models only look at “likely voters,” 2) 50% of the public doesn't vote, 3) the Dem and GOP candidates were doctrinaire party stalwarts that no one really liked, and 4) the chance for a Fuck You/None of The Above from that 50% was overwhelming as the under 40 vote came out in huge numbers.

I know you said “he won't win,” but he has and he could again. Trump and Biden are that bad and the Fuck You/None Of The Above vote could be at an all time high this fall.

Now, how was Jesse as governor? I liked him. He was no-bullshit candidate and speaker. He got us light rail and treated the job seriously. Somewhere I have an article that detailed his effectiveness, where someone mentioned that it took the Dems and GOP three years to learn how to team up against him so he wouldn't be effective and they could prevent the ascendancy of the Reform Party he won on, but now that he's in the news there's so many new articles in my search that I can't find it.

But on bottom line, he did well, and was well liked, and might have won again. He just grew sick of the bullshit politics and decided four years was enough and went on with his life. And I can respect that.

I'm not calling for a vote for Jesse Ventura, just noting that in this train wreck season, another locomotive may soon be added to the track, and not a small one.