Right! She is so amazing!
Honestly, I think he’s still way too optimistic. Consider this:
Here’s what gives me hope: Conventional economic wisdom has changed dramatically in the last few years. It used to be the case that economists would say the impacts of climate change would be relatively small and that taking action would be very expensive, but that’s no longer what you hear. The economic incentives are now aligned with climate action, and that’s a big deal in terms of motivating actual change.
I really don’t know what the basis is for this. I have been following this issue in one way or another my whole life, and I can’t recall a single serious economic argument, ever, against adapting for climate change. It has always been the case that the cost of inaction is vast and incomprehensible, and the cost of effective action relatively modest. I think what this shows is that he’s still looking for hopeful signs.
The problem is, sure, you can cherry pick something and say, AOC’s Green New deal is great. And it is! I’m a fan! It’s leagues better than what the Democrats had in the past. In a rational world, one based on the science, it would have been the policy since the 1980s and we would have no problem now.
But for every AOC there’s a Bolsonaro, for every bunch of courageous but powerless kids there’s a bunch of gutless but powerful old men.
Meanwhile the CO2 keeps going up, temperature keeps going up, floods keep rising, forests keep burning, horses drop dead, insects disappear, and the people, oh, the people! Their homes keep disappearing and they keep moving, looking for a better life. When climate refugees number in the hundreds of millions, what are we going to do then?
And as long as there’s a debate on whether climate change is real, they win. It’s all just a furphy, a distraction, to keep us talking while the architects of apocalypse build their futures as lords of the wasteland.
Loathe though I am to admit it, they are asking, in their own twisted way, the right question: how are we to live in this world that we have made?