First, let's get this out of the way just so we’re absolutely clear: global warming* is real, and caused by human activity. That much is indisputable. I mean, there are right wingers who dispute it, sure: but they’re full of shit.
The more salient question to my mind is whether the Greta Thunbergs of the world are right, and it’s an existential threat we should “panic” about. To hear her, and many of her young (and even many not-so-young) devotees tell it, if you imagine it turning the planet into a lifeless wasteland like something out of The Road by the end of this century, you’re not too far off.
And that’s where, I’m sorry, we are getting into wild hyperbole. I have seen no convincing evidence that excessive CO2 will be the end of humanity or even the end of modern technological civilization. This is true even if we don’t develop brand new technologies we cannot even imagine now to reverse it or adapt to it, which seems unlikely. It would in fact remain true if technology somehow didn't advance at all from its current state, which is next to impossible. We can handle a hotter world. Sure, many aspects of it will be a pain in the ass, but we are an impressively resilient species that has not found a single corner of this planet we are unable to inhabit, and we can certainly build sea walls, resettle threatened coastal populations, and so on.
There are actually upsides to global warming, particularly for some northern cities and countries (even the NOAA grudgingly admits as much), although you would never know it from reading the mainstream media. For starters, the kinds of people who work in the news media are not naturally disposed to put out this kind of message. They are not inclined to think of it this way themselves, and even if they come across information to this effect, they are loath to publicize it for fear of “spreading the wrong message”. Just this week, though, the BBC actually slipped a little bit of balance on this front into a factsheet on climate change, and the response was predictably swift and scathing. Within a day, the article had been revised, with nary a mention of any benefits nor of the article’s alteration, to correctly reflect the party line. Talk about Orwellian!
My arguing for this taboo “let's all calm down a bit” perspective does not mean I'm all for continuing profligate burning of fossil fuels. In fact, I’m very much in favor of the transition to clean energy that has been continuing apace in recent years, even accelerating, in contrast to the doom-and-gloom picture activists like Thunberg paint. Even though I scoff at the idea that CO2 per se is toxic (it was present in far greater amounts in Earth's atmosphere at times in the past when our planet was actually more supportive than it is now of a rich, lush ecosystem teeming with life), burning fossil fuels—particularly coal—fills the air with actual, visible pollution that sends American kids to the hospital, struggling to breathe, and kills nearly a million people every year around the world, now—not in some far-off theoretical scenario.
Furthermore, the regimes enriched by fossil fuels include some of the worst actors on the planet--Russia and Saudi Arabia being prime examples. (Although Norway is a notable counterexample, being a kind of progressive paradise that also sits on a massive pile of oil and gas wealth that helps fuel their social-democratic semi-utopia.)
So the policy wonk in me would actually be in favor of Tom Friedman's proposal to replace payroll taxes with gasoline taxes and other taxes on fossil fuel use. But the political hack in me knows this would be likely to be successfully spun by the GOP in a way that would blow up in Democrats’ faces, since paying a lot at the pump is more visible to the average voter than is an increase in their take-home pay. (Historically, above-average gas prices seem to hurt presidential approval ratings, but unusually low prices don’t help—perhaps because the latter tend to be associated with economic downturns, or maybe just because people tend to be more sensitive to losing money than gaining it.) So a better approach would probably be to increase those fossil fuel taxes, but to convert the proceeds into direct checks made out to every American, like those dispensed during the pandemic. The average person would of course come out even, but those who conserved or switched to driving hybrids would come out way ahead and be pretty happy overall.
Regardless of what policy approaches we implement, I’d love to hope the media would report all the facts honestly and fully, whatever they happen to be, and let the chips fall where they may. But it’s pretty clear that such a hope is more of a pipe dream in the current landscape.
*Very few people seem to realize that the euphemism “climate change”, which has become so ascendant, was actually invented by a ruthlessly amoral Republican messaging guru named Frank Luntz to make it less scary to voters than “global warming”. Luntz is the guy who came up with the politically genius idea to replace “inheritance tax” with “death tax”, and told Terri Gross it isn’t so bad, necessarily, to be Orwellian. Yet liberals seem to have adopted his “climate change” terminology more aggressively than anyone, go figure.
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Last week, I called the longstanding staunch liberal opposition to voter ID laws “wrongheaded on the merits” as well as being “political folly”. But on this week’s PBS Newshour, Jonathan Capehart said that “you have in some states where a student can’t show their student photo I.D., but someone can just show up and show their gun permit and be able to vote”, which would obviously be egregiously unfair. Googling this question, I found that sure enough, in Texas as of 2016 you could present a concealed-carry gun permit but not student ID (and there's zero reason to think things have improved there, or that they would be the only red state with such policies). Fuck that. Such a blatantly slanted policy simply cannot be allowed to stand. By that point, you’re bordering on just flat-out declaring that Republicans’ IDs are valid and Democrats’ are not. Dems should push back with maximum ferocity against this BS, including filing lawsuits. (They should of course in doing so try to make sure the student IDs count, rather than taking the politically perilous step of trying to exclude concealed-carry licenses.) I can’t imagine the strong tide of public opinion in favor of voter ID would turn against this stance if articulated carefully and clearly, except among nakedly shameless right wing partisans who are obviously not the target audience for Democratic campaign messaging.