Newsletter

Humanity as a for-profit business but instead of getting fired for bad performance you just die

Maria Sibylla Merian, Plate 70 (from “Dissertation in Insect Generations and Metamorphosis in Surinam”, second edition), 1719.

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This has been a big week for climate change news, not in the usual smoke blotting out the sun way, although smoke did blot out the sun in some places. But mainly I’m referring to a bunch of new international commitments and big speeches that came out of the United Nations General Assembly, and some multibillion-dollar philanthropic pledges too. There was also that weird thing with the late night talk show hosts doing climate change jokes and even This American Life had a climate change episode, at least I think it did, I turned it off when it literally started with Ira Glass saying, “It’s been the kind of summer that makes it seem like the alarmists were right about everything … so yeah, climate change is real.” Come on man are you kidding me.

These kinds of developments should, and I guess they do on some level, feel like progress or maybe like products and byproducts of progress. But lately as we move closer to a place where big action on climate becomes an inevitability, my concern is shifting from fear over inaction to fear of taking the wrong actions. This was illustrated quite vividly when the NYT broke news that Joe Manchin, who once shot a climate bill with a gun and who meets weekly with the oil and gas industry and made half a million dollars last year off of coal production, is in the process of rewriting the Biden administration’s climate legislation to make it friendlier to the fossil fuel industry.

Which gives you this chilling feeling that, yeah of course America will do something, but of course it will be all the wrong things. Or it will sound a lot like the right thing, but with a couple of caveats that ensure maximum wrongness. All of this has made the section from last week’s newsletter on the way corporations co-opt the idea of just transition feel extremely resonant right now. You remember it was the section with the guy in the hot dog suit. Two points in particular, and I know I just sent it last week but it was kind of far down and I know you all are busy people so here is that bit again:

Moussu describes the rhetorical flourishes businesses use in their mission statements and goals that may include just transition, but in the same breath as other goals that are very likely in contradiction to it. Using language like “while,” “at the same time,” and “without sacrificing,” corporate just transition plans describe only win-win situations, which are never likely, and lack specifics on what happens when someone actually has to give something up or pay for something (spoiler, it is not them). In other words, they offer the promise of actions that may not serve their bottom line, on the condition that such actions serve their bottom line.

Another main insight is recognizing that corporations have folded the idea of just transition into a long-running industry CSR strategy, the “business in transition” narrative. In short, industry presents a narrative that 1) things were going along business as usual, 2) something alarming happened that requires urgent action, 3) business is already working on the solution but more needs to be done, and 4) if business’s hands are not tied by regulations, they can lead the way forward. But the trick is, this is a never-ending story. It is always a work in progress, wherein corporate actors must adapt to the latest challenge to continue their tireless work of ensuring a healthy and sustainable world when, in reality, their underlying objectives of profit, growth and power are undermining that world.

In other words, the following narratives are secret weapons to undermining progress toward a more just world:

1. We can do the same basic things we have always done in pursuit of the priorities we have always pursued, [while ensuring/at the same time prioritizing/without sacrificing] racial and economic justice; and
2. We know there is a problem, but we the people who benefit most from the system as it currently stands are working on it and have it under control, so please don’t interfere.

The author here is specifically talking about narratives that corporations use when paying lip service to just transition during climate change. But this week I kept thinking, you know what, that is basically what, everyone says, all the time. By everyone I mean everyone in a position of power within a neoliberal regime. And the message is, we can continue our recurring pattern of extraction, depletion and exploitation in the pursuit of never-ending growth of GWP and wealth accumulation—but just, you know, do it a little better. Tighten a few screws.

That is the direction that, as we get more quote unquote serious about climate change, I am terrified we will end up pursuing. (And I use “we” in kind of weird sense, because I know it’s not the thing I will be pursuing or lots of communities and groups of people will be pursuing, but it’s what we, like the Big We will do.)

I’m beginning to think more and more that the fundamental question that faces all of us as we careen toward this catastrophe is—to what extent do you think the current system is equipped to handle this problem, so long as it is recalibrated to work better. Or, to what extent do you think some central architecture of society needs to be torn down and rebuilt (or rebuilt after it collapses on its own). You might think of this as a throwing the baby out with the bathwater question, but instead of a baby it’s like a tiny little rich old man with a top hat and a monocle who is all pruned up and won’t stop crying and pooping in the bathwater.

I don’t know that it’s necessarily a strict one or the other decision, maybe more like a sliding scale, but from that baby metaphor alone, it is probably clear that I am pretty solidly toward the latter camp these days. Although I guess I think of the tear down/rebuild as more of an adaptive reuse project, hacking off all the good parts and making something new and better out of them. Either way, I am afraid that to keep things mostly as they are puts us on a path to a maybe somewhat lower-carbon but still unsustainable future, and cleaves society further in two—those vulnerable to disaster and those extremely vulnerable to disaster.

One of the reasons that I and I think a lot of people (especially younger people) are feeling this way is this sense of being in a recurring bad dream where we just keep saying we are going to do things better this time around and—whether it’s police reform, housing, economic redevelopment, drilling and mining, agriculture, water use—it always ends the same way. Bad.

I’ve been listening to this podcast miniseries about the state’s COVID-19 recovery called Mass Reboot, produced by the MassINC Polling Group, which I think was really well done and explored the challenges of recovery in different sectors. But there’s this sickening drumbeat that emerges across the episodes in which they point out over and over the ways the pandemic disproportionately impacted a subset of people, lower-income and people of color, and including people working service jobs, renters, gig workers, the growing section of the population that is made vulnerable.

But it’s not just that COVID has had disparate impacts. COVID recovery has had disparate impacts too. The same patterns that made the pandemic so destructive toward some and not others replicated themselves in recovery efforts. So the BIPOC restaurant owners who had to close or barely get by thanks to community support were the least likely to secure PPP loans, while big chains scooped up funds. The arts collectives that have few or zero staff and often are not even incorporated were least likely to secure grant support. The students whose caregivers were most likely to have died in the pandemic are getting the least attention as schools panic about reading and math performance and test scores. Transit agencies react to budget deficits from reduced ridership by cutting service for cost savings, harming low income riders most. Even with moratoria in place, there were still evictions, some 70% people of color, all while the housing market continued to balloon. And on and on and on.

And keep in mind, all of this is happening at a time when we are shoveling billions to help people in need, a historic societal response to a crisis. And yet, it still always favors the wealthy. When you hear facts like that over and over again, delivered in a bloodless tone, “as we all know, there were many disparities…” it becomes impossible for me to think: well this is just a series of unrelated fuckups but we’ll be sure to get it right next time. It becomes impossible to ignore the fact that cruelty is baked deep into this economic system, and things are only getting worse, with a larger and larger number of people in its teeth.

I know this is more of an angry gutbucket kind of post than usual (or I don’t know maybe not), but it’s the way I and I suspect a lot of people can’t help but feel lately. Frustrated, fed up, dare I say radicalized. But I don’t think the take home message here is that things never get any better. It’s that, for things to get better, we have to stop thinking of the sum of humanity as a for-profit business, only instead of getting fired for bad performance you just fucking die.

That also means no longer assuming that such a thing is merely human nature. One of the characteristics of capitalism is not just that it is inherently unequal, it is that its participants must accept that violent treatment of huge swaths of society is natural, it’s just the way we are, sorry we don’t make the rules. Of course we make the rules.

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Links

• Boston City Council mandated big emission reductions for large buildings, one of only a few such ordinances in the country. It’s a major win, especially for climate justice advocates, because no offsets will be allowed and a board of community groups will oversee the process.
• Big news from UNGA, with China pledging to stop building coal plants abroad, and Biden pledging to double foreign climate aid, although tbh I have no idea how he expects to make that happen.
• Meanwhile, Biden’s domestic climate agenda is imploding and Joe Manchin who is more or less on oil and gas industry payroll wants to rewrite it.
• Biden is doing a horrible job on immigration and Border Patrol is a rotten institution.
• Remember that article about how there’s never been any federal rules on heat exposure in the workplace? Well OSHA says it’s finally going to do it.
• Bill Gates continues to use his money and influence to steer Africa toward GM seeds, industrialized agriculture, pesticide use, petroleum based machinery instead of agroecology.
• More than half of young people think humanity is doomed.
• Baby poop has ten times as much microplastic in it as adult poop.
• A billionaire wants to build the city of the future in the Southwest, called “Telosa.” What could possibly go wrong.
• Cars are horrible they killed 42,060 people last year. There are however some straightforward solutions.
• Hundreds of refugees, mostly from Africa, live in an abandoned factory in the Paris suburbs, and painted a 40-foot mural on the building to bring positive visibility to the residents.
• More ghost forests on the East Coast, trees turned pale white by encroaching saltwater from sea level rise.
• Cities and counties in Colorado are suing the oil industry for the costs of climate mitigation and adaptation. In this palace we stan lawsuits against the oil industry.
• Cool story of a queer collective in Seattle turning a big 12-bedroom property into affordable housing and community space.
• I don’t know why Jon Stewart has to be such an asshole.
• I once read a profile of the founders of Genius that described them as “real-life John Ralphios.” Media buffoon Chris Cillizza called them “the future of journalism.” Sasha Frere-Jones quit the New Yorker to go work for them. And now, as we all could have predicted, the rap lyric annotation company turned media disruptor is headed for the shitcan.

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Podcasts

I was a big fan of the Slowdown with Tracy K Smith, who stepped down from hosting after a great run. But now the Slowdown is back! And it’s hosted by one of my favorite poets Ada Limón.

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Listening

This new Low record Hey What is amazing. Like last week’s pick Injury Reserve, it is the soundtrack to the apocalypse.

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Boy oh boy angry post lookout someone needs a nap. On the upside of things, we are entering scented candle season again so I can look forward to our home being enveloped in the bourgeois comforts of scents like cardamom, toasted pumpkin, and leather jacket. Do yourself a favor and buy yourself a nice scented candle this weekend, maybe apple cider or Montana forest or fern and moss. You deserve it.

Tate

‘Transition is inevitable. Justice is not.’

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In the past five years, the term “just transition” has become, maybe not a household term, but certainly pervasive throughout climate discourse. You see it in environmental justice groups’ missions, academic papers, government policy, NGO campaigns, philanthropic strategies, corporate PR, even chamber of commerce talking points.

Rooted in the labor movement, in its current, simplest form, just transition means moving to a low-carbon economy in such a way that workers and communities that were once reliant on the fossil fuel economy for their livelihoods are not left behind. The classic example is, when a coal plant shuts down, making sure the workers have things like severance or early retirement funds, job training, comparable-wage jobs in other industries, etc. Because the change is going to happen, but the question is, at whose cost—or as Climate Justice Alliance puts it, “Transition is inevitable. Justice is not.”

The term catapulted into the mainstream when, through no small struggle, labor and justice advocates managed to get one little baby clause into the preamble of the 2015 Paris Agreement, calling for a “just transition of the workforce and the creation of decent work and quality jobs in accordance with nationally defined development priorities…” Three years later, it was a central topic in COP24 in Katowice, Poland.

As with the spread of terminology like climate justice, sustainability before that, and even the word “green” before that, it’s an indicator of the concept’s power and a testament to the work of the people who elevated it. A victory, in other words. But just transition’s widespread adoption also threatens to undermine that power, splintering it into new meanings, watering it down, hijacking and steering it away from its original purpose. At the same time, how just transition plays out in the real world can vary enormously based on the communities, governments and economies putting it into action.

That’s the premise of Just Transitions: Social Justice in the Shift Towards a Low-Carbon World, a 2019 collection of essays by scholars and activists edited by Dimitris Stevis, Edouard Morena, and Dunja Krause. (I’m a longtime fan of Morena’s work, particularly his book The Price of Climate Action, and last year we co-authored an article for the French publication AOC on Bloomberg’s presidential candidacy. You can read about it here.) Through a look at the history of just transition and several case studies from around the world, the book seeks to answer the question: What is at the heart of the concept, and how can it be put into action in ways that honor its true intention?

The editors set out to challenge the frequent lip service paid to the concept, starting with discussion of COP24, which was known as the “Just Transition COP,” but seemed to mostly miss the point (it was also sponsored by coal companies). The Katowice COP, “rather than providing a clear sense of how a just transition can be achieved, exposed the gap between climate policy makers’ narrow understandings of just transition, and the complex and multifaceted reality of a ‘living concept’ whose origins and meanings lie deep in the everyday experiences of workers and frontline communities.”

Aside from blatant hypocrisies surrounding the use of the term, it’s also been diluted, tossed into every platform and strategy document with little commitment to its meaning. The editors quote NAACP’s Jacqueline Patterson saying, “It’s a concern when Big Greens and others are using the term and getting funded for using the term. It’s become the term du jour for foundations, and those front-line communities become objectified.”

The evolution of the term hasn’t been all bad, however. For example, grassroots climate justice groups in the United States have broadened the ambitions of just transition, calling not just for a move to new and dignified jobs, but to “build economic and political power to shift from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy,” as the Climate Justice Alliance describes it.

In fact, though it may have drifted from its distinct labor union origins, we have the just transition concept largely to thank for the way the modern climate movement is laced with labor and social justice goals, from the Green New Deal to global climate strikes. And though there may be a battle underway for just transition’s meaning, the authors suggest that the idea has plenty of juice left, if its practitioners remain rooted in its history and the needs of workers and communities.

Origin in unions

Just Transitions emphasizes that to understand the concept, you must understand its origin in trade unions. The editors describe how just transition long predates the climate movement, starting in the 1970s and 1980s to allow workers a path out of jobs with dangerous environmental and health hazards, or to provide support when such industries were shut down or shipped overseas.

Just transition eventually became the animating force that would allow labor and environmental movements to unite around common goals. Anabella Rosemberg, of Greenpeace International and formerly of the International Trade Union Confederation, chronicles how the labor movement went from ambivalence and sometimes animosity toward the environmental movement (and vice versa) to becoming a central actor in climate negotiations.

Still today, American unions sometimes fight environmental regulations and the transition to renewables, mainly because new energy jobs in the US are often not union jobs, but the 1990s were a time of much greater tension between the movements (in large part because of the influence of the AFL-CIO). The two camps were divided by the industry narrative that jobs and environmental regulation were inherently at odds. But in the 2000s, the labor movement, especially international unions, went from a mainly defensive stance, to a proactive one on climate and the environment. Labor fought for a role within cliquey and elitist global climate negotiations, met with suspicion and even disbelief that they would be sincerely dedicated to the issue. But eventually the UNFCCC granted unions official “constituency” status, alongside business, research, and nonprofit organizations.

It was their added power, in part, that managed to get just transition into the Paris Agreement and by extension into mainstream discourse. But, as Rosemberg concludes, the inclusion of just transition language became seen as too much of an end in itself. The real power of the concept is as a means to build organizing power between workers and climate advocates “and in the process, re-place the values of international solidarity and social justice at the heart of both the union and climate agendas.”

The never-ending story

One of my favorite chapters in the book is an essay by Nils Moussu of the University of Lausanne, who critiques the way corporations co-opt just transition to retain power and perpetuate business as usual. As Moussu points out, businesses have done a remarkable job of positioning themselves as climate heroes, despite being the largest emitters of carbon dioxide and often powerful forces blocking government action on climate. The goal in framing themselves as climate leaders is to retain their hegemony and increase their power to define climate change solutions as mainly technological and market-based, such that they can protect profits and prevent new regulations.

This is done in large part through powerful messaging campaigns that have allowed corporate actors to “present themselves as the main architects of a ‘safe and prosperous future,'” thereby avoiding criticism, setting limits on what is permissible within climate action, and shutting out more radical or transformative alternatives that would undermine their power:

As the main character of the narrative, unsurprisingly, business describes itself as a ‘frustrated hero’ willing to do more, provided that the ‘right regulations’ are put in place (e.g. regulations that favour price signals through carbon pricing over command-and-control policies). Through this self-description, business is able to escape the role of the villain and to promote the view that climate talks should not be about business, but conducted in dialogue with business, and that these talks should produce regulation for business instead of regulation of business.

The best way I can think of to illustrate this is through a sketch in Tim Robinson’s I Think You Should Leave, which is honestly my primary way of engaging with the world lately. In the sketch, someone driving a hot dog-shaped car crashes into a business storefront, and as the people inside are trying to figure out what happened, one guy in particular is super eager to find the culprit.

Moussu describes the rhetorical flourishes businesses use in their mission statements and goals that may include just transition, but in the same breath as other goals that are very likely in contradiction to it. Using language like “while,” “at the same time,” and “without sacrificing,” corporate just transition plans describe only win-win situations, which are never likely, and lack specifics on what happens when someone actually has to give something up or pay for something (spoiler, it is not them). In other words, they offer the promise of actions that may not serve their bottom line, on the condition that such actions serve their bottom line.

Another main insight is recognizing that corporations have folded the idea of just transition into a long-running industry CSR strategy, the “business in transition” narrative. In short, industry presents a narrative that 1) things were going along business as usual, 2) something alarming happened that requires urgent action, 3) business is already working on the solution but more needs to be done, and 4) if business’s hands are not tied by regulations, they can lead the way forward. But the trick is, this is a never-ending story. It is always a work in progress, wherein corporate actors must adapt to the latest challenge to continue their tireless work of ensuring a healthy and sustainable world when, in reality, their underlying objectives of profit, growth and power are undermining that world.

Reading this chapter, the inescapable “climate pledge” comes to mind. Every industry, every business, every government has issued some ambitious, say, 30-year climate pledge. Lots of long-term ambition, far too little short-term action to get there. But you have our pledge. We are working on it. Check back in 2050 and we’ll give you an update.

A revolutionary political project

The remaining bulk of the book is case studies, from the American South, South Africa, Germany, Argentina, Australia, and Canada, presenting a drumbeat of reminders that local culture, systems and economies shape how climate action unfolds. There’s no one solution. Places with tremendous advantages often disappoint, while seemingly hopeless political environments yield inspiring success.

The best example of the latter comes from Jackson, Mississippi, written by Kali Akuno, executive director of Cooperation Jackson, a Black-led network of worker-owned cooperatives and supporting institutions that is blossoming within a highly conservative political regime that is holding back communities of color. “As Peter Moskowitz wrote, ‘The idea is essentially this: since Jackson’s current economy isn’t working for its residents, and its current political system isn’t doing much to help, why not create a new economic and political system right alongside the old one?’”

Cooperation Jackson is similar to networks like PUSH Buffalo in New York or Boston Ujima Project, which carve out small, alternative economies within the husk of the old economy, but do so with the intention of building power and changing society outside of its own immediate scope. So Cooperation Jackson consists of an urban farming collective, a cafe and catering service, and a landscaping and composting service, operating from a community center and 20 parcels of land it owns. The network is also building an “eco-village” pilot project, a live-work community on a protected land trust, with solar-thermal energy and permaculture landscaping.

But Cooperation Jackson also educates its members on organizing and political principles, advocates for changes to municipal regulations, and through participation in networks like the It Takes Roots Alliance, advocates for national policy change. All of this is undergirded by a commitment to nothing short of societal transformation.

“It is about simultaneously and inextricably transitioning the self, the community, the city and the world. In this sense, it differs from more common understandings of just transition that centre on the energy sector and workers, and that do not carry a broader, emancipatory and revolutionary political project.”

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Other examples are downright depressing, like Australia’s corporate capture and redefining of just transition. The example in Canada is a rare, top-down government effort that does a pretty good job of supporting workers, but it’s all in service of transitioning the country’s coal plants to natural gas plants, which undermines the necessary emissions reductions. Also Canada doesn’t even burn very much coal so whomp whomp. It reminds me, not of the US government’s efforts of course don’t be silly, but our liberal philanthropic (Bloomberg) and market-led coal shutdown that enabled a ton of new gas infrastructure whomp whomp.

So on one level, I guess I came away from this book, which overall I highly recommend, somewhat depressed by the state of just transition. It serves a little like a pair of those sunglasses in Rowdy Roddy Piper masterpiece They Live, but you put them on and instead of seeing the words “just transition” you might see the words “quarterly earnings” or “corporate partnerships.”

But that’s definitely not always the case, as the Jackson example shows, and above all else the editors and authors plumb the complexity and challenges of true just transition. Also the reality that it’s not an end state; it’s a pursuit. Much like electing a new president who does not have a gold toilet or a wave of racial justice protests, just transition is a portal to something better. And it can be an extremely powerful one, as it not only offers a distant view of a shiny new post-carbon future, but also leads us to many real-world paths to getting there.

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Listening

I can’t stop listening to this brand new record By the Time I Get to Phoenix, from Tempe, Arizona rap group Injury Reserve, which sounds like listening to the apocalypse but in a good way. There’s actually a really sad story behind it because Jordan Groggs one of the MCs died at 32 last year, so this is the last thing he recorded. But it is very good and has haunting lines like “The smoke never clear / strap up your own boots it’s all uphill from here” and “You better run and hide / take your ass inside/ If you don’t go breathe the air you might stay alive” and “But let’s be honest here / This don’t end with agree to disagree, it ain’t possible.”

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Going to keep it simple today folks. I would like to dedicate this issue to the older gentleman who lived next door to us, who I would regularly pass while walking the dogs and he would be sitting on a stool in his open garage next to his Lincoln sedan smoking a cigar and I would wave to him and say how’s it going and he’d wave and say howaahhya every time. Or sometimes I’d see him from a distance and he’d just put a hand up to wave and I’d put a hand up to wave. Today a fire truck and an ambulance pulled up to the curb and it turned out that his family came to visit and he had passed away in his home.

I never got his name, and it always seemed like that wave and hello was really the extent of the socialization he was looking for, but I do regret that I never talked to him at any length. I left him a note during the pandemic to call if he needed anything but never heard from him. Anyway, he was getting up there, and it happens when you live in an old neighborhood, but I’ll be sad to not see him in his garage smoking his cigars, always eager to wave hello. It was a nice moment, I hope, in both of our days, and I will miss it.

Tate

Pragmatism takes no chances and always protects the status of the pragmatist

Tortoises, terrapins, and turtles. H. Sotheran, J. Baer & co.,1872

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There is this line in the 2017 article in New York Magazine that would become David Wallace-Wells’ The Uninhabitable Earth, in which he’s listing off the many reasons humanity has been in denial about climate change for so many years, including “the fact that the country is dominated by a group of technocrats who believe any problem can be solved and an opposing culture that doesn’t even see warming as a problem worth addressing.”

That latter category has been a big concern for obvious reasons. But the former speaks to a troubling, nip and tuck optimism of climate moderates or what some are calling soft denialists, who express concern for climate change, but generally believe this is something that can be fixed with some tech and market-based solutions that will ultimately not rock the boat too much—i.e., we might drive electric cars or something, but we’re not going to stop exporting oil are you crazy.

It’s a perspective that sort of rhymes with a lot of other takes that come up on all sorts of issues, from trans rights to policing reform. I’ve always had a hard time completely wrapping my head around what this thing is, exactly. Maybe it’s just centrism or incrementalism or what Annie Lowery calls “facts man,” but I feel like it’s a broader phenomenon than that. One way I’ve been thinking about it is a certain kind of pragmatism, an affinity for all things that seem reasonable and an aversion to things that seem outside the realm of likelihood, or maybe comfort.

I guess the actual definition if I take a second to google it is “dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations.” And there is a whole school of philosophy called pragmatism but I’m not really getting that technical here let’s just stick with the google definition today. It’s basically a person who considers a problem, looks around, and chooses the response that just seems reasonable.

Well, that certainly seems reasonable, and I guess I don’t think of this as some horrible trait in a person (though there are horrible examples of it to come), and the pragmatist is very often well-intentioned and a potential ally even. In some sense, by necessity, we all start from a place of pragmatism when encountering a new problem, before we’ve pushed ourselves beyond the knee-jerk response to take in a larger or longer view. So this is kind of a tricky thing to write about because I don’t really want to be like, ah god here’s why I hate all these guys (did I mention pragmatists are pretty much always white guys?).

But I do think they are often wrong. And I am trying to wrap my head around why this kind of pragmatism bothers me so much, and why it’s a problem, and why it’s so, so prevalent in the face of problems that demand more than mere common sense. So I decided to write down some things that I think define this type of pragmatism and why I consider it to be such a misguided outlook.

Pragmatism is a version of lacking empathy

One problem with pragmatism, is within the definition, words like “practical,” “realistic,” and “sensible” are doing an enormous amount of heavy lifting. And frequently, the judgment about whether something qualifies is based on the limited data within immediate reach of the pragmatist making the judgment. The very idea of common sense implies a kind of wisdom that lies in the near vicinity.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that pragmatism is always based in folk wisdom that everyone has access to, as frequently the pragmatist has some strain of specialized knowledge, but it’s knowledge from a fixed perspective. Too often, pragmatism is used as a tool to avoid understanding the perspectives of other people with different life experiences, for whom what is practical and reasonable may be radically different.

An example I use a lot is that for a whole set of people, ceasing air travel would not seem like a realistic course of action, unless you consider that only like 10% of the world ever flies in in airplane. Carbon offset programs may seem like a very pragmatic climate solution, unless you’re living in a neighborhood where such a program is allowing a nearby factory to pollute your air and make your family sick. What is practical to that person will be very different, and a problem like climate change requires us to, not become a climate change expert, exactly, but to listen and learn.

I sometimes think of this profile of Joe Rogan, maybe the worst example of a pragmatist, spawning an army of supplement-loving pragmatists who are sick and tired of being told they need to think about things differently. For Slate, Justin Peters writes of Rogan’s following, “The common thread is the privileging of ‘common sense’ over all other inputs in the struggle to forge a life philosophy, and the idealization of one’s own life experience over that of other people.”

This is why pragmatism so often directs outrage at irrational upstarts with their new pronouns, new racial terminology, calls for diversity, and yes, their cancel culture—a response Osita Nwanevu calls reactionary liberalism. It represents a human impulse we are all prone to, but hopefully push past: This is something different than the reality I have come to rely upon, and it feels wrong, not reasonable. Peters continues, “Because Rogan and his guests do not take identitarian critiques seriously, they just naturally assume that no one should take them seriously.”

Pragmatism favors what is convenient over what is necessary

This is probably the biggest problem when it comes to climate change pragmatism, the way that it demands that we make decisions from a position of what seems achievable, instead of beginning with what is necessary and moving backward to figure out how we get there. In some cases, the former is a strategic approach; in fact, strategic might be another term that could be used for what I’m calling pragmatic. Strategic meaning only taking action if there is a known path for how it will move you toward where you want to go. There’s something admirable about doing what you can with what you have.

The problem is that it frequently sandbags your efforts, doling out action in tiny doses that will not bother most people, and may feel like steps in the right direction, but ultimately will never get you to a destination that, in the case of a problem like climate change, is non-negotiable. This happens all the time in philanthropy and nonprofits, as some huge, difficult campaign or piece of legislation comes up, but stoic leadership steps in to say, why take this on when there’s a good chance we will have nothing to show for it, and instead can just do this smaller campaign that is a more popular, less offensive to those in power, and ends in demonstrable progress. But in some cases, demonstrable progress is, in execution, indistinguishable from failure.

Pragmatism takes no chances, in service of protecting the status of the pragmatist. Again, let’s look at another terrible example of pragmatism, which is Joe Manchin who I will never reference without also pointing out that he literally shot a piece of climate legislation with a gun. Manchin, also infamously, recently said to a utility trade group when discussing the Biden administration’s pledge to cut carbon emissions in half by 2030, “I know there’s a change coming, OK? But I’ve always been very, very cautious about this. … I’m concerned that they’re setting a very aggressive timetable.”

Now, this is giving Manchin way too much credit for being a good faith actor, which he’s certainly not as a senator who has weekly meetings with oil and gas lobbyists, but he’s essentially saying the timeline that scientific consensus says is needed to avoid catastrophe is too fast for comfort. It’s just not reasonable. Emily Atkin in Heated called this a “new iteration of climate denial” that’s being embraced beyond the GOP, insisting on a slower timetable for action. “Spoiler alert: we all want a less aggressive timeline,” she tweeted. “Climate change doesn’t give a shit about what we want.”

Pragmatism relies on a linear theory of change

The theory of change behind pragmatism, and one that may seem beyond critique, is that A+B=C. There is an isolated, distinct problem, there is a set of solutions, and if you pick the right one you will solve it. If you pick the wrong one, or you try to take into account too many other tangential, unrelated problems, you are only working against your own cause. But this is an oversimplified view of social change.

Maybe the king of this brand of pragmatism is Matt Yglesias, who has made the most lucrative career out of being wrong about everything since Chris Cillizza. Yglesias vilifies climate activists who view climate change as a justice issue that overlaps and shares the same root causes with many other social problems. He particularly hates the Sunrise Movement, mainly because they consider broader issues of inequality and racial and economic justice to be inseparable from climate change (a stance that not only appreciates the systemic nature of climate change, but also allows people to engage with an otherwise abstract problem).

Amy Westervelt and Georgia Wright wrote a great opinion piece on Yglesias’s bad climate takes for Hot Take (Emily Atkin also took on the topic). Here’s a key part:

His persistent cries for Sunrise to “be reasonable!” and impassioned pleas for pragmatism are part of an overall argument to keep the climate movement focused only on technology and energy sources, not the root causes of the problem, which all really boil down to injustice and inequality. This fundamental ignorance of intersectionality is nothing new – it’s the same tired critique used by white moderates throughout the decades to maintain power and silence the powerless, and yet he parrots it like it’s revolutionary. (If climate change was really as simplistic and siloed as Matty would have us think, wouldn’t it be solved by now?)

Pragmatism is only ever right for a brief window and then it is always wrong

OK maybe not always wrong, but usually. And the reason is that pragmatism is time delimited, meaning pragmatic judgments involve an assessment of facts based on what makes sense, right now. And crucially, it underestimates how much that reality might change not that long from now. Thus, pragmatists are destined to be wrong, because the passage of time means the preposterous becomes commonplace and the commonplace becomes preposterous. This is really easy to see in topics like our understanding of gender fluidity, which has changed what we consider to be common sense.

One example I can think of locally is our mayoral frontrunner in Boston, Michelle Wu, who as a city councillor in 2019, when the MBTA was considering public transit fare hikes, ran an editorial in the Boston Globe rejecting the fare hikes, but also calling for public transit to instead be free. This was a ridiculous, pie-in-the-sky notion to many pragmatic commentators and political opponents, a stunt that Wu couldn’t possibly be serious about. Just two years later, nearly every mayoral candidate in a packed field is running on some form of transit fare elimination, and the state just started a three-month pilot to make a high-ridership bus route free to all.

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All of these complaints basically boil down to one critical flaw—pragmatism bases what is possible on what is right here, right now. Call it a lack of imagination, which pragmatism does not put much stock into. But if everyone is making judgments by looking at the current reality, then success is measured against only what has already been done. And things more or less stay the same.

That gets to another, more sinister side of pragmatism. On one hand, it may have admirable goals, but merely fails at achieving them. On the other, pragmatism often provides cover for those intentionally holding back change, because the way things are now actually serves many pragmatists quite well.

There’s a reason the ideas pragmatists puts forward are remarkably similar to the ideas reactionaries put forward. One day, cancel culture is the concern of the pragmatic liberal, the next it’s the battle cry at CPAC. Carbon capture is the realistic solution of the climate moderate, then it’s the solution of choice for ExxonMobil. Whether they share the same intentions or not, they yield the same outcomes, or lack of outcomes. Pragmatism really wishes it could make the world a better place, we all do obviously we are all on the same team here, but pragmatism just can’t do it. Pragmatism has to be reasonable. Pragmatism always has a lot to lose.

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Links

• When I first got back into journalism about 10 years ago, one of the first stories I covered regularly was the Divest Harvard campaign, which was run by highly impressive 20 year olds who would go on to become leaders in the movement (and one state senator!). Just last night, Harvard announced it would fully divest its $41 billion endowment. It’s a big victory.
• Doreen St. Félix on Michael K. Williams.
• California’s carbon offset program is full of loopholes, including allowing polluters to take credit for forests that have already burned down and forests that have been protected for years. “We have documented over $400 million worth of credits issued that we think don’t help the climate.”
• About half of Americans planning to move say natural disasters were a factor in their decision.
• A Boston startup wants to launch a bunch of small satellites to improve radar storm detection which sounds useful and also like a Bond villain’s cover story.
• Texas’s voting restriction laws and abortion laws are working in tandem to secure GOP minority rule.
• Jia Tolentino on SB8.
• Adam Serwer on the Supreme Court’s use of the shadow docket. “…an ideal arrangement for a party that has not won a majority of the votes in a presidential election since Tobey Maguire was Spider-Man, and that sees the popular majorities that vote against it as composed of illegitimate semi-citizens who have no right to govern.”
• This reality show where activists compete on TV to secure funding for their work is disgusting and everyone hates it and it should never see the light of day and also it’s kind of how most philanthropy works.
• Harvard now owns ONE THIRD of the Boston neighborhood of Allston, and residents don’t entirely know what they’re going to do with it. But it will probably become “a playground for folks who are mostly white people who have a lot of money” and/or “a neighborhood populated entirely by pharma bros.”
• Stories from New York restaurant workers on 9/11. “Someone suggested the owners might not approve. ‘I was like, ‘Fuck off! I don’t care.””

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Watching

The Night Manager. I’m on a mini-series kick lately and boy did I sleep on this one.

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Listening

Eso Que Tu Haces, Lido Pimienta

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Thursday was ~*my wife*~ Jamie’s birthday and for the second year in a pandemic-era tradition I made a charcuterie board so elaborate that it strains the bounds of pragmatism. One day I will do a complete wild card and write a newsletter on how to make your dream charcuterie board and it will be the most popular thing I’ve ever written. A teaser, the secret is the Three Vs: variety, visual impact, and a very large bill at Whole Foods.

I think this year’s may have surpassed last year’s in terms of presentation, and there were some new finds in the mix like this chocolate vinegar which was very good. I’m comforted to know that I have two backup careers, which are charcuterie board making and dog photography. You can hire me to do both but my rates are exorbitant. For a VIP like you, I will give a discount.

Tate

PS last night I had a dream I was moving into an apartment with Phil Collins

The air conditioning dilemma hammers home the almost-comical limits of individual action to solve this global problem

Oceanic birds of South America. v.1. c1936.

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One thing that is getting difficult that I didn’t anticipate but probably should have when writing a newsletter about how people live during global crisis is the fact that there would be a large number of crises to write about and it would become more difficult to know what to focus on when. That’s especially true because I never wanted to mail out just a list of horrible things happening that eventually becomes this droning white noise of disaster. But that does mean I periodically feel like I have to start the newsletter by saying, well here’s a bunch of horrible stuff happening like right this very second, and then afterwards we can talk about air conditioning for a while. But I guess that is kind of what living amid crisis is like.

So this week, there is the overall peril that the people of Afghanistan are facing punctuated by the recent bombing that resulted from a totally botched U.S. withdrawal from the country and an insufficient to non-existent plan for supporting refugees. And the lesson we seem to be taking away from it is “we will seek retribution” which is what started this whole endless war that killed 47,245 Afghan civilians in the first place, but you know what we will put a boot up your ass it’s the American way as Toby Keith once said and that continues to be a fucking awesome way that works every single time.

Also there is a hurricane barreling toward Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama that is rapidly intensifying so the ninth named storm of the season could be a bad one.

And finally, SB 8 is taking effect soon in Texas, which effectively bans abortion in the state, but in a sadistic twist, allows anyone living in Texas to sue anyone else that they believe is assisting a person in obtaining an abortion, including just giving them a ride somewhere (you can donate to NNAF’s fundraiser to support Texas abortion funds here). That bill is actually one of 666 new laws (I am not making that number up) going into effect in Texas on September first, including one that makes so anyone can carry a gun around without a license, one that makes it a felony to block a roadway during a protest, and one that requires the Star Spangled Banner to play before all sports games. To me, nothing signals a state that truly appreciates liberty like the passage of over 600 new laws restricting the lives of its citizenry, fuck yeah Texas is truly putting the boots in everyone’s asses keep it up.

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But speaking of the droning white noise of disaster, I really do want to talk about air conditioning, which has been on my mind a lot lately after a trip to Phoenix, but also as I sit next to my own window unit cranking its way through Boston’s fourth heat wave of the summer. Not so much about how air conditioning works or how we can decarbonize it or make it more efficient, but more like what it means to use air conditioning, and how we should feel about it, and also fair warning, I don’t really have a very clear point on this one, just some things that have been bothering me.

Recently we got in the car to go pick up some ice cream and started talking about things we are going to miss as climate change keeps getting worse, and I said I wasn’t sure but one thing that I really worry about the most is power outages, including during extreme heat waves. During the depths of the COVID pandemic I would sometimes think, god what if we didn’t have electricity in the house right now? And the answer is we would have been completely fucked.

A big part of that danger, even more so in places outside of Massachusetts, is the loss of air conditioning, which makes day-to-day life possible in huge parts of the world, at least life as we’ve come to expect it. Air conditioning is a complicated presence in our lives, because on one hand it can be a luxury, even a frivolity, the cliche of the Californian driving around with the convertible top down and AC blasting comes to mind. From time to time I shudder to think about Chase Field in Phoenix where the Diamondbacks play, which has a retractable dome and a massive HVAC unit that runs even when the dome is open, cooling the 50,000 seat park to 78 degrees in the summer, or the equivalent of cooling 2,500 homes (the stadium has pool and a hot tub too). Some of the richest parts of the Middle East have begun air conditioning the outdoors, including Qatar—one of the fastest-warming places in the world AND the largest exporter of liquefied natural gas—where an open air soccer stadium pipes in cool air through vents at ankle-level and similar systems cool outdoor malls and markets.

In many places around the world, however, air-conditioning is something of a necessity (keeping in mind there’s a sliding scale for what one needs) or at least is in very high demand, and that list of places is growing. According to the Department of Energy, three-quarters of all homes in the United States have air-conditioning, which uses 12% of the country’s residential electricity use. Air conditioning has become more efficient since it became widespread in the 1950s, and various studies have shown that it pays for itself by increasing productivity (lol) and even preventing fights. But its use is also feeding its own booming demand as climate change worsens. In the U.S., where we already use a ton of AC, that demand is projected to increase by 59% by 2050. One estimate projects global energy demand from air conditioning to triple by 2050. As you can imagine, who gets to use air conditioning is vastly unequal, and the growing demand will only increase the financial burden on lower-income households, or leave them to swelter.

Air conditioning is also a vivid example of the way that cheap and abundant fossil fuel energy has allowed our quality of life and urban development to surge based on the falsehood that we could continue to burn that fuel indefinitely without consequence. It has supplemented growth of cities in the Southwest and South in the U.S. and megacities in the Tropics.

In addition to growing demand, climate change threatens to make it so that more places are becoming literally unlivable without air conditioning. We’re learning more about the increased frequency of extreme heat and humidity combining to the point that the body shuts down, with so-called wet bulb temperatures above 86 degrees Fahrenheit becoming deadly and then pushing past the body’s capacity to survive when it hits 96 degrees.

So on one hand, air conditioning is this luxury that is used without restraint by the wealthiest cities and countries, increasingly so, and that has allowed unsustainable expansion. It’s also a resource that will allow us to adapt to climate change, but will likely cleave society into those who can afford it and those who can’t. And finally, you have air conditioning as a necessity. An emergency tool for survival. One of the reasons I’ve been thinking about air conditioning is that I’m reading Ministry for the Future, in which there is a haunting scene depicted in the near future that I will only partially spoil, involving an act of violence over an air conditioner running on a generator during an extreme heatwave.

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For all of these reasons, air conditioning makes for a potent example of the strained relationship between our individual lifestyles and the global reality of climate change. Specifically, it’s a reminder of the way our actions both feed climate change, but also how our individual behavior cannot stop it. But even worse than that, it demonstrates how climate change makes it impossible to even make responsible or “climate friendly” individual choices.

I would guess maybe 7 years ago, after we had moved into a new apartment that had no air conditioning, we heard about a friend of a friend who was getting rid of a window unit, so we jumped at it. I worked from home long before everyone worked from home, and there was always at least one annual heat wave in Boston when it became impossible to do anything in the house without some kind of cooler. I can’t remember exactly why the guy was giving it away, but he was like a middle-aged dude in a bougie neighborhood of Boston, and he was definitely doing so as a lifestyle choice. Like he was quitting AC. I’ve known plenty of people who intentionally avoided getting air conditioning in places where it doesn’t get super hot, sometimes to save money, but other times feeling guilty about it or like it was in indulgence, an impulse I completely share.

It’s true that many of us don’t really need air conditioning. There is growing research that your body will adjust to heat if you allow it to. And I’ve definitely lived in places where I didn’t have air conditioning and it was fine except for like a few days out of the year and then you just sort of sweated it out and it wasn’t bad. There are many places like this, in California, parts of the East Coast, that are kind of on the brink of needing it. In Portland in the 2000s, I used to inflate an air mattress and sleep on our balcony during the annual heat wave, although I don’t think that will cut it anymore.

Around the same time we got that window unit, like the mid to late 20teens, there was this glut of think pieces about how air conditioning was awful and we had to quit it, like smoking or eating red meat. Consider the Guardian’s “Ditch your air conditioning. You’ll be fine,” which declared, “A hot room won’t usually kill you, but a hot planet will. If you feel sweaty, just imagine how your grandchildren are going to feel.” Or the baldly self-congratulatory, “I don’t need air conditioning, and neither do you,” in the Post, which deems Americans (or presumably Americans who are not the author) “greedy and silly” for their reliance on it.

What seems silly to me now, however, after the past couple of years that have shattered heat records all over the world and killed hundreds of people in the recent Pacific Northwest heat wave alone, is the idea of giving up AC back in 2015 as a way to fight climate change. This is sample size myself, but I know several people who completely understandably have started using air conditioning for the first time this summer. We’ve used our window unit by far more than we ever have, with three heat emergencies and four heat advisories in Boston in 2021. So what did all of that AC abandonment get us, other than the temporary balm of feeling like we were sacrificing something for a good reason?

This part is a tough for me because Americans totally do use too much AC, and too much electricity, we are hogs and it’s ridiculous. The impulse to use less is a good and noble one, the right thing to do even. And readers will know that I am actually a believer that individual change is a necessary part of confronting climate change. Solar panels, ditching the SUV, going electric, all for it, for a variety of reasons. I’m also a big believer that local change can add up and cascade into global change.

But the air conditioning dilemma hammers home the almost-comical limits of individual action to solve this global problem. Consider the cruel absurdity of a well-intentioned middle-class person in the Global North having a revelation in 2015 that they had to get rid of air conditioning because of climate change, and then industry and government perpetuates fossil fuel use for another five years, and now air conditioning use is going to spike all over the world because temperatures are becoming increasingly miserable if not dangerous.

In other words, even as more people became aware of climate change and realized they could live without air conditioning, the lack of systemic change has meant that a lot of those people probably have to start using AC once again, along with many more people who never have. It’s not just that individual choices alone don’t work, when not translated to transformative change, it actually makes it so that responsible consumer choices become impossible.

This gets back to what I was saying about deciding where to live during climate change. We can try to do the right thing, make the right decisions that make us part of the solution and not part of the problem—and you know what we fucking should—but the brutal fact is, our individual lives may very well be simply engulfed by the failure of institutions and the cruelty of industry.

And that’s what I’ve got for today, goodbye!

Just kidding, but kind of not kidding. I don’t really have a take-home point on this one. It’s very confusing and upsetting and one of the most difficult parts about being a person who likes to feel in control in a world where we are all losing control. But maybe one point here is the reminder that so many of us are still thinking we can deal with this problem in the margins. And even those of us who know that’s not going to cut it can still only really do things that are in the margins. But the changes ahead are not marginal.

Nobody should feel bad about giving up air conditioning and then feeling like it’s pointless, and nobody should feel bad about wanting to live in comfort, but it’s hard to avoid either. One of the toughest lessons about living with climate change is that, though it may not be your fault, and the solution may not be within your personal grasp, how you are currently living is most certainly causing it, and how you are currently living is going to radically change because of it.

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Watching

Speaking of helplessness in the face of failing systems, I just finished the third and final season of The Deuce from David Simon and crime writer George Pelecanos, and I liked it maybe just as much as The Wire. If you haven’t seen it, whatever you think the show is, I can almost guarantee it is much more. It might not be for everyone, mainly because it’s largely about sex work and is a bit on the naked side at times, but like The Wire, it’s about the failure of institutions, even when they are made up of well-intentioned people. And on the much more fun side, it’s about the completely bonkers world of New York nightlife in the 1970s and early 80s, from the tiny punk bars to giant disco clubs.

It’s also very Crisis Palacey, in that just as it is about how futile it is to try to change systems, it’s also about always fighting and how change does in fact happen, just in ways we don’t expect, and how people always take care of each other and find joy even in the worst conditions.

Me when you ask me the point of this week’s newsletter

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Reading and Listening

I read this cool little book that I picked up in Tucson called Rez Metal: Inside the Navajo Nation Heavy Metal Scene, which is actually a companion to a documentary by the same name that I haven’t been able to track down to watch yet. So it’s not exactly a book, more like an oral history told through transcribed interviews they conducted for the documentary. But it focuses on this one band I Don’t Konform, which recorded an album with this guy who produced a bunch of Metallica’s records so it was a real breakthrough for a metal band from the reservation.

But the best part of it all is the just raw energy and love that all of the bands and their fans have for the music, which is hugely popular among Diné youth. Their shows are in tiny DIY rock clubs and sometimes fairgrounds, but they also do these Rez house concerts where they literally just set up and shred in people’s living rooms. My favorite little detail is that there is a popular band called Testify, and the drummer is Edmund Yazzie, who is the singer’s dad and also a member of the Navajo Council. It is such an awesome fucking scene that provides a much needed outlet for people. As the DJ at one Gallup radio station says, “What does metal mean to me? Metal is justice.”

I figured I would link a song by I Don’t Konform from their album Sagebrush Rejects, which has an incredible album cover (below), and has some great songs including the title track and “Hungry for War” and the Andrew W.K.-like anthem “WE R I.D.K.” But the most appropriate song for Crisis Palace is hands down “Environmental Punk Asses (E.P.A.)” Enjoy.

You can stream IDK on all platforms and they have a Facebook account that’s updated with dates and clips, they play around Phoenix for AZ readers. You can also donate to the Native American Music Fund, which is featured in Rez Metal.

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No links today got a late start and have run out of steam. I guess I would be curious to know what you all think about air conditioning. Do you use it? Do you feel guilty about it? Do you feel guilty about not feeling guilty about it? Are you reading this from inside of an air conditioned baseball stadium’s hot tub and couldn’t give a shit?

I do have an update on our senile dog, aka my elderly son. And that is, he is doing much better. Some time with the grandparents really helped his schedule and we’ve managed to keep him on track so much better sleep at night. But then he did have to go to the emergency vet last week because he had blood in his pee and then turned out he needed an enema it was this whole thing. He’s better now.

Jamie also had to go to a dermatologist and the one she picked was named I’m not making this up Doctor Doktor and I thought Jamie should walk in and sing Doctor Doktor give me the news I got a bad case of allergic reaction to sunscreen! But I don’t know she’s probably heard all the jokes so better to just be respectful of Dr Dr.

And now I’m basically just typing a bunch of stuff about doctor visits which is probably some kind of HIPAA violation so I will stop. I hope you and your dogs are staying healthy out there and that this newsletter is like a refreshing breeze.

Tate

The desert in the summer is above all an environment of extremes

Thistle cholla cactus at Saguaro National Park. Photo by me.

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Spending time in Arizona during the summer is a good reminder that weather can kill you.

Jamie and I recently returned from a two-week stay in Phoenix and Tucson, a long-overdue trip to visit family and good friends that would normally happen in cooler seasons, but because we hadn’t been back since 2019 we made sure to schedule a trip during the window of light COVID danger, which unfortunately basically closed while we were there.

We managed to avoid COVID during our travels, but we did get an ever-so-gentle reminder that the desert is always willing and eager to swallow you up if you offer it an invitation. While in Tucson we made a visit to Saguaro National Park, a forest of century old cactuses just east of Tucson that has a bunch of scenic picnic areas and trails of varying lengths. On the way there, we were caught in a downpour, one of many the area had been experiencing this monsoon season, and it cooled the desert all the way down to the 80s and offered some precious lingering cloud cover.

We ate sandwiches at a trailhead and took in desert views that were greener than I have ever seen them, from a distance more the shade of a golf course or prairie grass than the usual shrubby dirt floor. Twice we saw raptors perched on towering saguaros, probably hoping to pick off a rabbit or a ground squirrel enjoying the morning rain. Every lizard was out.

You normally avoid a desert hike midday in the summer, but it was so cool we figured we could do a couple of miles pretty easily. We had probably a liter and a half of water, not a ton but not bad, and hats, sunscreen etc. The first three-quarters or so very peaceful, cool, beautiful. But about the time we thought we should be closing the loop and getting back to the car, we hit a marker that said we were still a mile away. As it turned out, some hasty map reading meant the chain of trails we picked was more like three and a half miles total. Not only that but the sun had burned right through the morning storm and it was hot once again. And our water was about gone.

To be clear, we were entirely safe. Mostly. The park is never too far from a road and we had cell phone service the whole time. So worst-case scenario we were at risk of humiliation, two hikers, one born and raised in Arizona having to be carted off of a remedial trail by park rangers, like the East Coast tourists and transplants I grew up talking shit about.

So we were safe, but still. Even though I have been on summer hikes several miles longer as a kid, you never forget that creeping feeling of sharp teeth nearby. That you might be in trouble, not now, but maybe soonish, a mix of paranoia and regret at any carelessness, made worse when you’re generally an anxious person. Also made worse when you know better than to be out in the desert in the summer without an overabundance of water—you never bring just enough—and you don’t start a hike in the middle of the day either. I also know that shit can so sideways extremely quickly, even just a stone’s throw from civilization. Just a week earlier, a young woman visiting Phoenix from Massachusetts died on an city hike I’ve done a hundred times, collapsed right next to a home off the mountain trail (that story is very sad and kind of suspect, also a cautionary tale about trusting a cop, it turned out).

When you know you’re starting to push it heat-wise, you get that awful feeling of your body working hard to stay cool, heart pounding, soaked in sweat, your cheeks bright red as your blood vessels open up to release heat at the skin. All signs that the body’s cooling system is doing its job, but also early signs of potential heat exhaustion and eventually heat stroke. But we kept trudging through this sandy wash that was completely dry already of course, me asking Jamie if she was OK every 30 seconds (she was totally fine). Checking the GPS nervously, 0.8 miles from the car. 0.5 miles from the car…

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The desert in the summer is above all an environment of extremes, and those extremes are getting more extreme as a result of climate change. So last summer was the hottest ever recorded in Phoenix, and the region broke many heat records in 2020, including the most days in a year with high temperatures at or above 100 degrees, 145 days.

This August while we were there was markedly cooler than 2020—I think the hottest it got during our visit was 111, usually more like 100, which is manageable when the air is dry—but as we are increasingly learning, climate change is far weirder than just a linear increase in average temperatures. So 2021 has been unusually wet for the region, but not just wet, experiencing deluges that have been overwhelming roads, washes, backyards. The kind of rain that does provide temporary relief during drought, but not the kind of relief you necessarily want, or that you can rely on to quench the region’s thirst.

That kind of precipitation is also dangerous. This year’s monsoon has brought charcoal grey walls of cloud veined with crackling lightning, dust storms, flash flooding, even rare tornado warnings. The day we arrived in Phoenix, search parties found the body of a 16-year-old girl who died in Northern Arizona, swept away by floodwaters. A 4-year-old girl and a 13-year-old boy also died in flash floods just in the same week or so.

So it’s the extremes, but also the extreme swings that are really frightening.

Underscoring those extremes, the International Panel on Climate Change released its latest big report while we were in Arizona. It’s another bleak assessment based on an analysis of 14,000 studies, full of similar warnings we’ve become accustomed to hearing, but this round there’s more precision, more certainty, and even more “holy shit this is really really bad” than the last major assessment in 2014, which was more of a red alert than any previous communications from the IPCC.

Among the take-home points include that even if we take urgent, radical action, the world has already warmed about 1.1 degrees since the 19th century, and the carbon emissions we have already released will keep warming the globe for at least another 30 years. So the drought, heat waves, extreme precipitation, storms, and flooding we are experiencing more regularly will keep getting worse, no matter what, until at least around mid-century. Some impacts like global sea level rise will continue for thousands of years. Just sit with that for a minute, that the pollution we have created since industrialization (and in large part even since the 1990s) is such that it’s causing global shifts that will continue for millennia.

The assessment also outlines changes to expect broken down by region, which in North America we know will include rising sea levels in most places, more severe tropical storms and cyclones, more deadly wildfires, more drought, and more extreme precipitation and flooding.

I had the surreal experience of reading the report (or at least the summary of the report) while flying on the plane back to Boston from Arizona, which spewed out into the surrounding skies a large portion of my own annual carbon emissions. The round trip generated about 521 kg of carbon dioxide. That is more CO2 than the average person in 41 other countries will generate in an entire year. A routine trip for me, but also an experience of gross privilege considering only 11% of people worldwide fly in a typical year. I don’t think it’s useful to blame individuals for their actions as the cause of climate change—save your blame for the fossil fuel industry and the GOP—but flying is a difficult reminder that whether I like it or not I am a participant in an economic system and a way of life that are cooking us alive.

Being in an enormous city in the middle of the desert in the summer is another one of those reminders. Not that I think that humans shouldn’t be able to live in the desert. I actually love being there, particularly Southern Arizona and Tucson, I happen to love a great many of the people who live there, people who have caring hearts and want to protect the desert and make the state and its cities better, saner places. There is a lot of important work being done by elected leaders, planners, activists, researchers, and just ordinary people in the Southwest to figure out how communities there can reduce emissions, save water, and otherwise co-exist with the ecosystem as the planet warms.

But it is a tall order. The City of Phoenix—which is actually only a third or so of the metropolitan area that is made up mostly of endless sprawling suburbs—is working to become carbon neutral by 2050. Collective city level reductions in the United States are, in fact, having a small but meaningful impact on national carbon emissions. But for some perspective, Phoenix reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 0.5% between 2012 and 2018, and over the same time period, the city’s population grew by 12%.

Shuttling around the Valley in our rental Mazda down 12-lane freeways and also just normal-ass city roads where people drive 70mph, you can see that growth everywhere. New subdivisions always going up, or more often, out, further and further into former farm and desert land, anchored by parking lots the size of neighborhoods that offer cavernous restaurants air-conditioned to a chilly 40 degrees cooler than the outside air. There are many fighters and pockets of progress in the Valley, but broadly it remains a city that is aggressive in its commitment to eternal growth and water and energy use mostly in the name of comfort and freedom from restraint.

Again, this isn’t to shame all the people who live in places like Phoenix, see above. But it’s these extremes in consumption juxtaposed with extremes in the surroundings that are so jarring. Like flipping channels between HGTV and Mad Max: Fury Road.

Talking to friends and family who live there, who have lived there for their entire lives and are fully aware of and concerned about climate change, there is this shared sense even in idle conversation that things are changing. That there are going to be more problems. Whether that’s flooding, drought, or just shittier summers year after year. Conversations regularly drift back to things people are seeing that they never saw before. How it was never like this, how we all know something is wrong.

During our trip, Arizonans were anticipating the first federal declaration of water shortage on the Colorado River, which triggers 20% reductions in Arizona’s water supply from the river. The shortage was officially announced on Monday. While this first round of cuts will affect mostly farmers, more are likely on the way and will impact more of the millions of people who rely on the river for at least a portion of their water supply.

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Spoiler, we did make it back to the car just fine, crawled into the trusty Mazda and pumped the AC. Made light and looked at the map to figure out where that extra mile and half came from, ah shit there it is. Picked a few cactus spines out of the soles of our shoes and talked about all the wildlife we saw. Waited for our skin to fade closer to its normal pale Bostonian shade before heading to the visitors center to refill our bottles and drink ice cold water courtesy of the Department of the Interior.

Just off the trailhead where we parked the car, there’s a place called Signal Hill, a little mound made of rock that rises about 50 feet above the desert floor. It’s got beautiful views, but is famous for ancient petroglyphs carved into the rocks at the top, made by the Hohokam, who lived in the region between 200 and 1450 CE. It’s drawings of animals mostly, a lot of spirals, and the mind kind of malfunctions when you look at them all just sitting there in the open, made by other people hundreds of years ago, just a half hour drive from a modern city.

There’s a sign on the trail pointing out that people have lived in the Tucson Basin for more than 10,000 years, with a very long historical timeline that only at the very end marks the era of colonialism that would kill, forcibly remove, and assimilate civilizations that have thrived there for centuries, clearing the way for resource extraction. Ruled by the Spanish starting in 1692, then Mexican control in the mid-19th century, and finally, at the very tippy tip of the timeline, America takes over starting in 1853. A blink of an eye, really.

Taking that kind of broad perspective sometimes helps when things feel like they are going off the rails, historically speaking. You can see the big picture and things seem maybe not so bad. Then again, another of the IPCC’s findings is that levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are higher today than at any time in the past 2 million years. The planet is warmer than it has been in the past 125,000 years. It is hard to wrap our heads around these kinds of numbers, the damage on a geological scale that this relatively newborn incarnation of humanity is causing.

If deep history can have any comforting effect, maybe it comes from the idea that this country—a culture that is not fully, but in very large part responsible for this profound impact—is a relative blip in human history. That this period of conquest and extraction, stripping, drilling, and burning that got us here is not everything we have been.

The IPCC report, while grim, still points out pathways that are open to avert the worst-case scenario, better and safer trails. Who reigns can and does change and so do ways of life, meaning maybe we can become something better and humbler in the face of this desert and its sharp teeth. And if not, maybe the civilizations who replace us will be better, or at least better suited to what is coming next.

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Links

• July 2021 was the hottest month ever recorded.
• Workers die from heat exposure every year, but there is no OSHA standard to safeguard them, despite efforts to establish rules since the 1970s. Some companies have had multiple workers die from heat, with negligible consequence.
• Wells are drying up in California, and it’s happening in more parts of the state than during the last drought.
• Let’s say it without flinching: The fossil fuel industry is destroying our future.
• Toyota used to be a leader in reducing car emissions, but now it is actively fighting electrification and pushing large trucks and SUVs for a higher profit margin.
• Climate scientists refer casually to one future scenario as “Trump World,” in which nationalist governments protect their own needs instead of contributing to emissions reductions. Emissions double and temperatures rise by 3.6 degrees.
• The stated goal of the Afghanistan war was to remove the Taliban from power. Now after 20 years of U.S. occupation the Taliban is in power again but it has an $83 billion army that the U.S. built and trained.
• In this sad tale of woe from a landlord upset about the eviction moratorium, he says that he is losing a whole 15% in profit so he has stopped making any improvements to his properties but also he is very rich and doesn’t actually need the income and it has not impacted him at all.
• The Rock, Kendall Jenner, Michael Jordan and many more celebrities have their own tequila brands. “Personally I find it very sad when thousands of years of history are reduced to a marketing campaign from a very famous individual.”
• “I Think You Should Leave” quotes are a love language. After the club go to Truffoni’s for sloppy steaks. They’d say no sloppy steaks but they can’t stop you from ordering a steak and a glass of water.

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Listening

You do see a lot of weird things in Phoenix like there’s an ad for a personal injury lawyer who rips the sleeves off of his suit to show that he’s no ordinary lawyer. And we were driving one time in some traffic and on a farm on the side of the road there was this big water tank and the brand had a logo of gun crosshairs on it just for no reason and the car in front of us had vanity plates that said BRBI GRL or something like that and Gasoline Dreams by Outkast came on from Stankonia which is an album I used to listen to a lot in the early 2000s when I lived in AZ and it felt like a very appropriate soundtrack to that particular traffic jam.

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Watching

Speaking of colonialism, maybe everyone has seen The White Lotus by now but it is such a savage critique of wealth and shitty white people and patriarchy but also tourism and philanthropy and nonprofits and journalism and probably a lot of other things and it pulls zero punches. There are also some critiques of the show that are important to engage with and Mike White engages with them pretty openly and thoughtfully in this interview, which I also recommend.

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OK that is the thing this week. I know I was gone a week longer than I said I was going to be, but we had to go get the dogs from the grandparents last Friday and also I was fuckin tired as hell so it just wasn’t going to happen.

I also want to say that I know this vacation recap sounds like I just worried about climate change and got really hot the whole time but you get it that is just the Crisis Palace way.

In addition to all of that, I had a wonderful time seeing my mom and dad and stepmom and my sister Amanda for the first time in over two years I couldn’t believe I was there with them talking and hugging and sometimes arguing in person. We ate very good food, sat on my mom’s couch watching movies with her little chihuahuas, watched the family of doves that live on her back patio, got a mani/pedi, went to a minor league soccer game, stared in amazement at Arizona skies, sat on a back patio with lifelong friends watching a summer downpour, visited some breweries and a winery, bought a few new Western shirts at Saba’s, stayed up late talking with Swedlund in our made-for-Instagram Airbnb, and so on. Restorative and long overdue.

But now I am back and I am also very happy to see you all again. You can now expect a return to the weekly bloviation and crankification from me you are welcome goodbye.

Tate

A list of 15 things you can do about climate change, ranging from easy to illegal

Dodo in a Landscape with Animals, c. 1629, Roelant Savery

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In last issue’s link extravaganza, one of the more popular articles was a post by Emily Atkin, from her awesome climate newsletter Heated, titled, “What can I do?” Anything. I totally get why that grabbed a lot of interest and it made me think that there must be an enormous hunger right now for clear actions people can take in a moment when we are all feeling increasingly helpless in the face of cascading climate impacts. I imagine more people are starting to come around to the severity and urgency of the problem, others have maybe always been concerned but are feeling more compelled to act, and still others have been doing a lot already, but are feeling like there has got to be more.

Emily Atkin’s post is really good and I definitely recommend reading it if you haven’t, but it also got me thinking maybe there is something similar I could offer, as someone who thinks about this topic all the time and who has written about and worked in the climate movement to some extent for like 15 years.

But there is just no linear path to finding your way into this party, and all paths are valid and necessary. I also don’t have any claim to the right answers here because after all, the shit that I and others have been doing for all these years clearly hasn’t been working all that great! ~laughing and crying emoji~ This is also an enormously complex problem that is always changing, and the right policy goal or organizing strategy 15 years ago is very likely the wrong one now. Which is to say that I am constantly trying to figure out what tf I should be doing at any given time myself. So I thought this could be a good exercise for me as much as you to kind of map out the items on the menu.

And I guess before I get started in earnest, there is something else I wanted to say on this topic and that is, please don’t give up on us. By us I mean like, all of us. You don’t have to be optimistic, I know things look pretty bad, but climate despair and withdrawal is really spiking out there in time with this drumbeat of terrible news. I especially feel like a lot of people who are really engaging with the issue for the first time have skipped directly from denial to, welp this is out of my hands, I hope that government/industry/whoever can get their shit together and figure it out. Some of this is a legitimate and understandable emotional response that needs to be felt and worked through. But it’s also often a position of luxury, held by a lot of contrarian white guys (takes one to know one) who feel like they suddenly need to have a tough, terse cocktail party line on climate change that usually sounds like “it’s really a technology problem,” or “time to get serious about nuclear” both of which are just not useful.

The reality is that virtually every aspect of the economy and our infrastructure and many aspects of our daily lives are going to change, either voluntarily or by force of nature, and the sooner more of the good changes happen, the less suffering and death humanity will experience along a sliding scale of potential, and the better our odds of preventing the very worst of it. Nothing you do alone can stop climate change, but everything all of us do is like a vote for a future, which given voter turnout is maybe not a great analogy to be using. Even if you’ve done absolutely nothing at all to date, honestly, who fucking cares you don’t have to do hail marys on the rosary or whatever. It’s the perfect time to start. Welcome. You made it. It’s good.

Here is my list of actions that individuals can do to fight climate change, roughly ranked from easiest to most difficult, which I would emphasize is not the same as ranking by importance or priority. And also to be perfectly clear, I absolutely do not do all of these things myself, not even close. I am right here with you figuring this out.

1. Talk about climate change

This is one that I think might seem like the dumbest, but I actually think is low key maybe the most important. The reason is that there is strong evidence that our individual decision-making is much more a product of social phenomena than we would often like to admit, contributing to what Robert H. Frank calls behavioral contagion. As Favianna Rodriguez says, culture moves faster than policy, often a precursor to rapid systemic changes. She’s referring to culture in terms of art and other forms of narrative, but the same can be said about our day-to-day interactions and social connections.

Think about it – how often do you have a random conversation with someone about climate change? Probably not that often, even though it is the biggest problem we all face. We have to normalize talking about it. Recommend an article, ask people what they think, acknowledge your own anxiety.

2. Keep learning about climate change

It can feel like a constant challenge to stay on top of the issue, even as someone who does it as part of his job. Fortunately, there is more user friendly information out there than ever before, in any form you could ever want. So many great nonfiction books (a plug for All We Can Save). And increasingly a lot of fiction on the topic (I’m currently enjoying Ministry for the Future). Lots of great newsletters! Another thing I would recommend is podcasts if that’s your thing. I actually think this might be the best way to learn about climate change, and there are tons of them maybe I’ll do a list at some point let me know if that would be useful.

3. Get to know your neighbors

In areas of New York like Red Hook that were hit hard by Superstorm Sandy, the residents who had the strongest social connections and networks fared better in reacting, responding and recovering from the storm. Research on the deadly Chicago heat wave of 1995 found that among demographically similar areas, those with thriving community organizations and civic engagement had drastically reduced mortality rates. We learn this lesson over and over again. When we find ourselves at greater risk of disruption and disaster, it’s our social networks that save us.

4. Make strategic changes to your lifestyle

This one may be a little controversial, because it is currently fashionable among climate activists to say that the need for individual action is a lie, which is an important correction after years of awful neoliberal messaging that said all we needed to do was change our lightbulbs and shame on us for leaving the lights on. When in fact, we need to dismantle the most powerful industry in the world, rebuild our entire energy infrastructure, and pass public policy that will impact everyone in the world.

So all that is true, but I think there’s been an overcorrection and that message has turned into, “because systems need to change, there’s no point in individuals making changes” and people disengage. You see this all the time in memes that are like oh look at these fires good thing you aren’t using straws you stupid idiot. But there’s no reason individual and systemic change should be at odds, and separating the two overlooks the fact that individual change contributes to systems change.

For one, this is another matter of behavioral contagion, where signaling genuine concern and action can spark others to do the same, and that translates to not just changing lightbulbs or putting up solar panels, but going to demonstrations, voting, etc. All of this builds personal connections to climate change, and shifts cultural norms in ways that set the table for more radical change. I also tend to think of this as a form of prefigurative politics, in which we live the values we want to see reflected in the world as a virtue in itself.

Another techier argument for this one comes from Saul Griffith, who encourages us to focus on individual action in terms of transforming our own personal infrastructure, meaning pivotal decisions we make around things like cars, utilities, housing. There are certain lifestyle changes that actually do have long-lasting effects because they alter the way we will live for years to come.

5. Vote for and otherwise support elected officials taking climate change seriously. Do not vote for candidates who aren’t. Like fucking ever I’m serious.

This is the only one where I get real judgey so skip it if you want. The counterpoint to the individual lifestyle change point is that the really big climate change solutions ultimately have to come from government. Community action has to build to large scale policy. Governments are not only needed to take the right actions, but the wrong governments will also actively block action from happening.

Voting for elected officials who are unsupportive of action on climate change is frankly the single worst thing you can do as an individual when it comes to climate change. And to be honest that means Republicans I am sorry but it’s true. You don’t have to like Democrats I don’t even like most Democrats but you just can’t vote for Republicans if you care about climate change. This one goes far beyond big elections on the national stage though—city councils, state legislatures, vote, canvass, donate, phone bank, yard sign, whatever is your thing you like to do.

6. Tell your elected officials you care about climate change

You got someone in office now remind them via email, twitter, phone call, office hours that climate change is one of the most important issues for you. I can do a lot better on this I find myself reaching out to my electeds mainly in like crisis moments or when big votes come up but I’ve rarely just written to say hey this is the most important thing I need from you.

7. Donate to organizing, advocacy and direct action groups

A classic. Even small donations add up and fuel the most powerful organizations pooling collective power. I prefer automatic monthly donations so I don’t have to keep track of what I’m giving to and currently donate to Sunrise, Climate Justice Alliance, and ACE (a Boston climate justice group). Others I periodically give to include Native Renewables, Green Roots (another local group), Indigenous Environmental Network. But honestly, there are so many you can support, particularly if you have an interest like outdoorsy stuff, birds, hunting/fishing, even skiing, you can find groups that work on climate these days. I’ve done a couple annual giving guides if you’re looking for ideas.

8. Move your investments away from the fossil fuels

This one helps reinforce the stigma around the fossil fuel industry and actually does build up to financial consequences. The flip side of divestment is that you can also invest in high-performing funds that support renewables and other climate friendly enterprises. This is another one I need to do I have a humble IRA that I created in a panic a while back when I had a huge tax bill and I am long overdue in moving it to an ESG fund.

9. Participate in climate change marches and mass demonstrations

One of my faves! For some people this is a no go because of various anxiety issues or some people feel understandably unsafe if there’s a risk of interaction with police or sometimes counterprotestors. But mass demonstrations are overwhelmingly safe, reaffirming, and yes, impactful. Protests signal latent political power to decision-makers, contribute to cultural change, and form bonds and commitments that reverberate well beyond any one event. All you gotta do is show up!

10. Start a climate change discussion group

This is like “talk about climate change” but the advanced version. It has the same effects, but also creates those important social bonds, and helps deal with the emotional trauma of climate change. It’s another one I’ve never done but have considered doing. One easy way to do it would be a climate change book club. The All We Can Save project has a feature called Circles, created by Dr. Katharine Wilkinson, which is a kind of template for a climate change support and discussion group structured around the book. Sounds amazing.

11. Take up a climate friendly hobby

Urban farming, climate victory gardens, building green infrastructure in empty lots, water conservation projects, planting trees, starting a blog or newsletter. I guess I have this thing but I would love to find the right get your hands dirty climate hobby.

12. Volunteer with organizing, advocacy, and direct action groups

One great thing about giving to a local organization is that it opens to door to participating directly in their work. That could involve outreach or lobbying efforts or rallies, but if you have a skill or interest, there are grassroots organizations that could use your help, whether that’s communications, design, legal expertise, helping with events, stapling shit, whatever. If you’re not sure where to start, groups like Sunrise and 350.org and XR have active chapters in many cities, or check out any of CJA’s local member groups.

13. Organize where you have influence

OK now things are starting to get a little more complicated, but consider that whatever stuff you do, like your work, your hobbies, your kids’ schools, etc, chances are there are things you could do to organize other people toward some climate action that is bigger than just you. That could include inviting an expert to come and give a talk or setting up a panel for a work or some other event. Maybe you get your office or local school district to install solar panels, or reduce your company’s corporate flights. Or get whatever community organization you might be involved with to sign on or partner on something with another group that works on climate. Hold a fundraiser. Everyone has some people who will listen to them so get those people to do stuff and they they will get their people to do stuff. This is another one that I feel like I do a little but I could do a lot more if I got creative.

14. Intentionally get arrested in a direct action

OK shit is starting to get real now. Groups like Sunrise and Extinction Rebellion have used sit-ins and blocking of roads resulting in arrest to great effect, forcing profound shifts in climate discourse as a result. And you may be familiar with civil resistance’s other greatest hits like the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-apartheid movement, the Iranian revolution, and so on. This is another one that is not on the table for everyone (I’ve never been arrested myself), particularly for people of color who face far greater risk at the hands of police. But aside from fiery young activists, people with some level of privilege or perceived societal status, like seniors or those involved in faith organizations, often turn to this strategy. The groups mentioned above hold regular trainings and direct actions, and the Ruckus Society is another organization that specializes in teaching nonviolent resistance.

15. Use your body to block the construction of fossil fuel infrastructure

This is kind of an offshoot of the last one, but the impressive feat of dramatically lowering the cost of renewables has not actually reduced carbon emissions because we just keep drilling for and burning fossil fuels. The supply, not just the demand for fossil fuels, has to be stopped. Indigenous activists and otheres who are leading efforts to block fossil fuel infrastructure are climate heroes, and it often works. It has very real personal consequences, but is one of the most profound things someone can do to fight climate change.

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So there is my list, work in progress, one that will definitely be ever expanding. Not all of them will be right for you, not all of them are right for me. Maybe think of it more like a menu than a checklist but the waiter is coming so come on try to decide soon.

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Links

• “The extremes that would have been newsworthy a couple of years ago aren’t, because they pale in comparison to the astonishing rises a few weeks ago.”
• Hundreds of active wildfires led British Columbia to declare a state of emergency.
• “The idea that you could possibly die from weather is completely alien. … There’s not even a realization that adaptation is something we have to do right now. We have to save peoples lives.”
• A summer camp in New Hampshire, the “Fyre Fest” of overnight camps had to shut down early because it was such a disaster. One kid punched a counselor.
• The compromise infrastructure bill that scrapped all meaningful climate provisions is being blocked by Republicans because bipartisanship is merely a fairy tale to comfort small children.
• Speaking of bipartisanship, Kyrsten Sinema’s devotion to the filibuster has made her very unpopular among Arizona voters.
• A great interview with Favianna Rodriguez on the power of culture in the climate crisis.
• Cape Cod is having an off the charts summer tourism season and it’s caused a huge surge in COVID cases.
• There’s been a startling rise in “unruly” passengers on US airlines, a result of drinking and drug use and mental illness, but also 3/4 of the cases are related to people refusing to wear masks.
• Meanwhile, customers at overworked and understaffed restaurants are treating the staff like shit.
• Oscar (Zeta) Acosta never got the credit or the compensation he was due for his role in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
• A look back at an amazing season for the Phoenix Suns.

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Listening

I Don’t Want to Die, by Waltzer

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Watching

I’ve been watching The Deuce which is really good, but I would like to highlight this amazing 2016 anime I watched over the weekend called Your Name, directed by Makoto Shinkai. It is one of the most beautiful animated movies I’ve ever seen, and it’s very emotional and sweet and funny too. Loved it, want to watch it again.

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Well I am about to head to Arizona to visit family and friends for the first time in over two years and looks like I timed it perfectly just as the delta variant is poppin off. I think it will be fine I will be careful you please be careful too but man I find it really hard to know what we should be doing right now other than getting vaccinated obviously jfc people.

But that also means that the newsletter will be taking a little summer vacation for the next two weeks but don’t worry I will be back before you know it. I will miss you all, individually. Take care of yourselves please water the plants in the palace while I am gone I will bring you all souvenirs back from Arizona how about a paperweight with a scorpion inside or a tequila candy with a worm in it OK you got it.

Tate

PS I know a lot of readers have been at this thing a lot longer than I have – what is on your list of climate actions that you take and other people can take? What are you planning to add?

Enjoy this extensive list of articles that are mostly pretty depressing to be honest

Anton Zwengauer, Landscape with Deer at Sunset, 1847

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Hey everyone this has been a packed week and I have no good words left so we’re doing a links only roundup issue today. My email plugin’s server was busted yesterday too so it is both a day late and a dollar short but that’s how you know this is a true DIY operation this thing is stapled together I hope that is part of the charm. Have some of these other people’s words instead of my words and I will talk to you next week peace and love.

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Links

• Devastating flooding in Germany in Belgium. More than 120 dead, 1300 missing, washed out roads and bridges, collapsed homes. Horrible images. “With climate change we do expect all hydro-meteorological extremes to become more extreme. What we have seen in Germany is broadly consistent with this trend.”
• Harvard has still not divested its $42 billion endowment from fossil fuels.
• Companies are resuming donations to Republicans after stopping them in response to the deadly attack on the Capitol.
• Tech workers said they were all leaving the Bay Area but now it looks like they are all moving back.
• Pandemic is ancient history and landlords want their money now. Also rent prices are soaring. Maybe we can all move to Worcester.
• A University of Arizona study found that millions of aging Americans won’t be able to sell their homes as a nest egg, because younger people won’t want them or won’t be able to afford them.
• The Brazilian Amazon used to a be a carbon sink, sucking up massive amounts of CO2 in its dense greenery but a new study found that it has flipped to a net source of carbon emissions because of fires.
• The European Union proposed an effective ban on gas and diesel burning cars by 2035.
• Drought is making Lake Mead unrecognizable. “I could have sworn I was here just six weeks ago catching smallmouth and bigmouth bass. Now it looks like a lawn.”
• “Vegas has done great things such as ripping out the grass, but we’ve lost 20% of the flow of the Colorado River since 2000 and another 10% loss by 2050 is completely possible. I worry it could be even more than that, and that should frighten everyone.”
• Nature editorial: Cities must do a better job of mitigating urban heat, including requiring the construction industry to incorporate heat reducing measures into their building projects.
• Researchers made a fabric that can cool the wearer down by 5 degrees C. Unfortunately it is a “snug fitting vest” so that doesn’t sound that nice to be honest.
• This tool at the NYT allows you to see how much hotter your hometown is than when you were born. For me, Mesa, Arizona used to have 155 days above 90. Now it’s 172 and heading toward 200.
• One my less popular opinions is that most documentaries are fake and unethical. Adding to my case is the fact that this Anthony Bourdain documentary used AI to recreate his voice saying certain lines the director wanted in the film which is disgusting.
• In a true victory for freedom of expression, teachers in Arizona can lose their teaching certifications if they talk about racism in class. Read about more totalitarian nightmares created by CRT panic laws here.
• A study of 175 American cities found that in 97% of them, communities of color were hotter than predominantly white neighborhoods.
• Cool interview with Boston illustrator Raul the Third who is killing it I have one of his prints on my office wall.
• What can you do about climate change? Anything.

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Comics

Way back in an earlier issue I featured work by a Boston-based cartoonist Dave Ortega, who has been creating a meticulous family memoir comic about the life of his grandmother, set against the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution. Now Radiator Comics is running a Kickstarter to publish the collected edition of Días de Consuelo, which you are going to love. I backed and you should too! See more detail at the link.

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Listening

Rhymes like Dimes. Doom forever RIP.

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That’s it for me today I hope you are all spending time with your people and having some fun this summer all things considered. Speaking of Links I’m thinking about storming Hyrule Castle this weekend I’ve been stalling because I haven’t been ready to say goodbye to Breath of the Wild but I know that I have a job to do. Also Suns on Saturday game 5 fingers crossed it’s getting tense!

Tate

‘You could be in trouble if you get caught in the wrong place at the wrong time’

The Birds of California, 1923.

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For 22 years or so I lived in Arizona, where the summers sear into you the childhood memories of chlorine-stained hair, blistered skin, scorched feet, drinking out of neighbors’ hoses to fight off dehydration. It’s hotter there now on average, but when I was a kid we did break a record at 121 degrees in Phoenix and I remember I went for a bike ride that day because I was a dumb kid and I guess I wanted to see what it was like. You never really get used to living in that kind of heat and it always sucks in different ways, but it also becomes just part of life. 

When I first moved away I went to Portland, Oregon, not because I wanted to get out of the heat, but not not because I wanted to get out of the heat. The irony is not lost on me that the first place I escaped to ended up being ground zero for one of the worst and most eye-opening climate change-fueled heatwaves on record. That was a good reminder that when it comes to extreme weather, it’s the deviation that kills you. People can live in all kinds of fucked up places if we’re ready for it, but the one-teens when you’ve barely even felt 100 is a special kind of hell. It’s the change more than the climate.  

I kept moving after Portland and have now made a home in five cities. If my count is right that has included 15 different apartments and houses as an adult. I currently have family in five different states and friends in many more not to brag but I have friends. All of which is to say, even though I’ve been in Boston for some time now, I’ve lived a kind of rootless adulthood, largely at ease with packing up and going to new places. 

Even so, as I spend more and more time thinking about climate change, one of the things that I worry about the most, at least as it relates to my own personal experience, is where I should be living as things continue to get worse. It’s been bothering me for years, this feeling like if I make the wrong move or don’t make the right move I’ll get stuck somewhere I shouldn’t be. I’ve been thinking about this maybe a little more urgently ever since we got the news that the owner of the house where we rent an apartment is about to sell it. (#16 here I come!)

I don’t think I’m alone in this anxiety, and I feel like the pull between staying in a place and leaving a place is a deeply human one. The modern version of humanity was built around agriculture, a practice that requires a commitment to a place in order to gain a return on investment for the time you spent there. At the same time, few things define being a person than our sheer inability to sit fucking still. I’ve written before about a favorite passage from Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction, where she describes our “Faustian restlessness.” 

I also think that when we are experiencing trauma, chaos, or uncertainty, that inner conflict strains us more than usual, like a macro version of fight or flight. When things get tough, something screams at us, should I dig in or should I take off? Marc Maron once said you can’t always run away from your problems, but sometimes you can. 

We saw this during COVID, when tons of people made cross-country moves at the most difficult time imaginable for a variety of reasons, but also, really, because they just had to get the fuck out of Dodge. I wonder how much of that will continue after the hellish June we had, flooding on the East Coast and in the Midwest, and the epic season of drought and wildfire it seems like we’re headed toward in the West. I wonder how many people, if not being forced to move, are just feeling like maybe it’s time to skip town. 

Control 

At the core of this urge I suspect is a way to feel a sense of control in times when we’re losing it. I think that was part of it during the pandemic. It led us to find something to grab on to and hold tight, whether that was where we were or where we went. 

During COVID and climate change alike, that sense of control is largely an illusion, of course. On some level, the decision of whether we should be going somewhere else is an arbitrary one, because in one way or another, we are all going to lose our home. Not necessarily the loss of literal brick-and-mortar or the loss of a hometown, but we are all losing the world we were born into, and with it the things that we associate with home, things that give us a sense of comfort and normalcy. The change of seasons we grew up with, the birds we used to see, the places we used to go swimming, the lobster in a vacation town. Even the sky will take on different colors than it used to, whether from wildfire smoke or sulfates we spray into the air.

Wallace-Wells writes about how what we’re entering is worse than a new normal, it’s “the end of normal; never normal again.” I often think of this part in the cli-fi novel The Wind-Up Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, which is set in Thailand and describes spirits getting stuck in place because there is nowhere better for them to reincarnate: 

“Mediums all speak of how crazy with frustration the Phii are, how they cannot reincarnate and thus linger, like a great mass of people at Hualamphong Station hoping for a train down to the beaches. All of them waiting for a reincarnation that they cannot have because none of them deserve the suffering of this particular world.”

For climate refugees, the choice of where to go will not exist, because it will be made for them, with climate impacts making homes literally uninhabitable and economic insecurity forcing them to go wherever they can. There is a refrain among people working in climate change that there is no escape from it, that all of our lives will be disrupted so it’s in all of our interests to take action. That is absolutely true, and the failure to effectively communicate that early on was one of our worst missteps, as people in wealthy regions long assumed they would be insulated from harm. But we also know that, even if it will harm us all, it won’t harm all of us equally.

For example, even in places that are making a planned retreat, and even when that planned retreat is funded through buyouts, lower-income people experience worse levels of disruption. A recent study of flood relocation in Houston found that non-white and lower-income residents were more likely to be displaced, and they ended up moving three times farther from home on average, removing them from their social bonds and networks of support. “Neighborly bonds built over time can help with daily needs such as errands and child care; they can also help with community resilience when residents have to prepare for and rebound from the next disaster.”

What we’re likely going to end up with is a cleaving into two classes of mobility—those who can decide where they want to be (whether that’s staying or moving) and those are forced into the decision. 

Staying 

All of that is why, even as a person who has spent his adult life leaving places and going to other places, there’s something about the idea of an elective relocation in retreat from climate change that makes me feel queasy.  

I think like a lot of people with some amount of privilege, there is this kind of tug in the back of my head that says, just get away, run. Sell all your stuff and go as far north as you possibly can, find a little piece of land on high ground and clutch onto it like a lifeboat for as long as possible. It’s an occasional impulse that I feel ashamed of, the same way I feel ashamed of the white liberal urge to leave the country when it lurches in disturbing political directions. 

There’s something so childish about it, an abandonment, but also an impractical one. I once told my therapist that I occasionally get depressed and fantasize about running away to a cabin somewhere and just chopping wood or whatever. He said, do you honestly believe that if you did that, you would be happy. That you would be proud and satisfied with your decision? Of course, the answer is no. Even if you could, by some miracle, find a place to live that is safe from climate impacts, you’re still a part of what is happening. 

So over the past few years, I’ve come to this conclusion that the right strategy in terms of location and relocation during climate change is not trying to live in a place with the fewest climate consequences, but trying to find and/or build a community that has the capability to take what is going to hit it, and care for its people as it’s happening. I think of it as a form of staying and fighting, although for people like me that could very well mean moving somewhere different, just not doing so in retreat. It’s not really about moving or not moving. It’s about finding and devoting yourself to a place and people that you claim as your home. 

I know this might sound real hippie dippy doo, but one thing about climate change, whether in mitigation or adaptation, is that it kills by degrees. I did not mean that as a pun or a double meaning or whatever, but everything we do, every step we take to stop burning carbon and to make our communities more able to take the impacts of burning too much carbon, can reduce suffering. 

We’re seeing versions of this kind of social resilience I’m talking about in island nations, where after multiple hurricanes, people build networks of mutual aid through text or phone trees that allow people to help each other after storms before official services can respond.

When it comes to city heat, we are learning a lot more about how much it can vary. Vivek Shandas, a climate researcher at Portland State University who studies these variations, found that during the recent heatwave, the temperatures he recorded on the exteriors of buildings varied by up to 40 degrees. The heat island effect in cities is an oversimplification, he says, because some places within cities are 15 or 20 degrees cooler than others. Some of the factors that make the difference are within our control.

In areas of extreme flooding, green infrastructure, which refers to different forms of permeable landscapes, can cool temperatures in the summer and provide places for surges of stormwater to go instead of overwhelming streets and sewer systems. As landscape architecture professor Mary Pat McGuire writes about green infrastructure: 

By thinking interdependently with water, climate-adaptive rainwater design employs broad knowledge of regional ecology, soils, the seasons, and the land itself as a natural-systems infrastructure that centers community and ecological health.

Different than large-scale gray infrastructure—which is often planned top-down by wastewater authorities—communities are directly involved in determining where green infrastructure should be designed and implemented based on local needs and cultural preferences.

That extends to all kinds of local solutions, like renewable mini-grids, tree canopies, aggressive water conservation in deserts. There is actually quite a lot that’s in our power when it comes to livability during extremes. But it requires changing the way we live with and think about our surroundings. 

The huge problem looming over all of this is that none of these solutions is enough to “solve” climate change, of course, and without massive changes to our systems, we’ll cross certain thresholds that will make large sections of the globe practically impossible to live in. And some places are further along that path than others. That’s the part that’s so terrifying, and the part that always makes me reconsider my peace and love theory. At some point, you can adapt, you can build social bonds, but then a place can just literally run out of water. It can fall into the ocean. It can burn to the ground. 

So I don’t know. There’s no easy answers here fam. But it feels right to me that chasing a safe place is the wrong move, and a better one, a safer one even, is to find the people and places that are yours and fighting for them, and fighting against the forces that would one day make them uninhabitable. It won’t guarantee that we’ll stay out of harm’s way, but nothing will, and it might be a saner way to find control in a future where we are increasingly losing it.

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Links

• New York was hit with severe, dangerous flash flooding. “You could be in trouble if you get caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
• That heatwave was “virtually impossible” without climate change.
• That was the hottest June on record in North America, the second-hottest in Europe, and fourth-hottest globally (after 2016, 2019 and 2020).
• Suburban living generates the worst carbon emissions, urban the least, rural in the middle.
• Firefighters have a bad feeling about this year.
• A marine biologist estimates one billion animals marine creatures cooked to death in their shells off the coast of Vancouver during the heat wave.
• A court upheld the first ban on natural gas hookups in new buildings. Utilities likely bankrolled the suit against the ban. Love that bridge fuel!
• There’s no labor shortage. “It’s a wage shortage.” Restaurant workers speak out.
• A vacant dirt lot in Brooklyn is now a thriving aquaponics farm (farming without soil).

—

I don’t want to put the person who tweeted this on blast but this kind of shit is the most deranged climate change hero worship and it would probably make Greta Thunberg herself super mad. That is Captain Planet. What you are describing is literally Captain Planet and the Planeteers please grow up. #NoHero

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Listening

The eternal construction in the neighborhood has put Constructive Summer by The Hold Steady in my head for some time now.

—

Speaking of Arizona, the last time the Phoenix Suns were in the NBA Finals was in 1993 and I was 15 years old and I wore this Suns hat that was like cream colored with the 90s logo and a purple suede bill and I bet I could get a lot of money for that if I could find it now. Which is to say that even though I haven’t been a big NBA fan in a while, I am very much enjoying watching the Suns in the Finals and between you and me I think they are going to win. I love Chris Paul and Devin Booker and Deandre Ayton and I know Phoenix has some problems but it has the Suns so please support them for me if nothing else. I ordered a new hat it should get here soon.

Tate

Because what’s a superhero story without a sequel

Tiger in a Tropical Storm, Henri Rousseau, 1891

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A few weeks ago I talked about the perils of America’s fixation with fictional and real-life superheroes, this class of people who stand above the rest, acting with impunity and admiration and almost always in the defense of the status quo.

The title of that issue was No Hero, which was a reference to a dark indie comic of the same name by Warren Ellis and Juan Jose Ryp, about a group of radical superheroes called The Levellers, who formed in Haight Ashbury in 1966 and gained their powers by taking drugs. Their first act in the comic, which was published in 2008, is to stomp a bunch of San Francisco police who are attacking a kid because he stole a can of paint. Of course, as you might imagine, The Levellers eventually go horribly wrong, morphing into a kind of deformed world police force themselves, called The Front Line, and misery and chaos ensues.

I was going to write about Warren Ellis in that earlier issue so that’s why I named it No Hero, but I didn’t have enough time and also writing about the sexual misconduct scandal of a British comic book writer seemed a little far afield. I kept the title because it sounded good. But you know what, I’m going to go ahead and write about it now, because it is timely again and it is my newsletter and because Ellis’s fall and the recent faint pulse of his redemption has been informing a lot of my thinking lately about our relationship with heroes, and how we can hold them and ourselves accountable when they inevitably let us down.

So bear with me and even if you have no interest in comics, I’m sure you can just mentally swap in the name of someone you admired who did something terrible and you’ve had a hard time coming to terms with it. You know you have one in mind. And as always it will become relevant to bigger stuff so sit tight.

A good chunk of Ellis’s work is cut from similar cloth as No Hero, and he’s maybe best known for a series called The Authority, in which a group of superheroes get fed up with the state of the world and decide to turn against the corporate and political powers that be (the opposite of the kind of tool-of-the-state superhero story Ted Chiang was lamenting). But I first began to really love Ellis’s work when, as a college journalist in the 90s, I read Transmetropolitan, a book about a gonzo reporter in a dystopian future America who takes down crooked presidents, his only weapons a newspaper column and a bowel disruptor gun that well you can probably figure out what it does. It’s a deranged, technicolor, ultimately deeply moral story and ever since I found it, I’ve read just about everything Ellis has done and loved most of it.

Every now and then you find a writer who for whatever reason their perspective just clicks with you. For me, a lot of that is his sense of humor and staggering talent for gathering up and sharing cool ideas. But like a lot of my favorite genre fiction writers, much of his work is ultimately about power. What it takes to acquire it and what it takes to tear it down.

The other thing to know about Warren Ellis is that over the years, he developed a somewhat ironic, but also kind of not at all ironic, cult-like internet following, especially in the Wild West days of early 2000s web. He was always starting new email newsletters, message boards, webcomics, blogs, websites, and every time he did, a thriving online colony of creative counterculture types would follow in swarms.

I never got very deep into the forums, just an occasional lurker, but I did always subscribe to his newsletters and for years his weekly email was the one I always looked forward to the most. Because of this, his fans really feel like they know him personally, and to some extent they do. His work and his persona fused together over the years, and often his weekly online bulletins were as rewarding as whatever he was publishing at the time.

With all of this, Ellis accumulated a certain amount of power himself, at least in certain circles. And it was generally perceived that he used it for good. He developed a reputation for helping out young artists and writers, particularly women coming up in a male-dominated art form. A good number of today’s leaders in the field got there in part because of Warren’s help, including Kelly Sue DeConnick, who became a prominent figure in mainstream comics and championed feminist storylines within a genre steeped in toxic masculinity—she created the basis for the MCU version of Captain Marvel. (DeConnick met her now husband, another esteemed comics writer Matt Fraction, in a Warren Ellis online forum.)

Ellis also became known as an online figure who never suffered fools. He never minced words, and his online communities had strict rules that booted anyone displaying misogyny, harassment, or other bad behavior. There are stories of men being sexist or abusive and Warren would more or less publicly thrash them and ban them for life.

But, and you probably saw this coming, it turned out there was a very dark side to all of this that people were aware or unaware of to varying degrees. About a year ago, a flood of accounts of sexual misconduct by Ellis emerged, eventually documented on a website called So Many of Us. It came out that Ellis had been cultivating sexual relationships online with fans and proteges, as many as 20 at a time for a while, grooming young women in very similar ways in each case, and eventually ghosting them when it suited him. It’s similar to the kind of abuse of power we’ve now seen from so many men in creative fields, using their position in the industry to manipulate people who admired and trusted them. It sent a shockwave through the comics community, prompting long overdue conversations about toxic environments and gatekeeping.

I first heard about this when I got an email from Ellis, but this one at a weird time, a random weekday afternoon. And it was nothing like his other emails. I would be surprised if it was written by him, as it was a stilted, tone deaf, lawyer-up-style non-apology. One last betrayal in the form of a bunch of bullshit, the one thing you thought Warren Ellis would never subject you to. It’s hard to describe just how upsetting and infuriating it was, and I hesitate to try, knowing that what I had to contend with was one-one-millionth of what the dozens of women and non-binary people he mistreated had to go through. And yet here I am, a dude on the very distant outskirts of the shockwave of hurt this guy created. I spent that Saturday reading through many of the testimonials, of which there are now 37 online (over 60 signatories overall), feeling an unshakeable queasiness at the similarities across their stories.

It was like finding out someone I knew and trusted, like a admired relative or teacher, was in fact not a person but an alligator or a rhinoceros. An entirely different kind of creature than what you thought. But he isn’t that of course. He’s just a person, an insecure man in a position of power. Not a hero and certainly not a superhero. Another reminder that, even in groups on the margins, even in circles of people railing against power in their own way, there will always be men who do awful things.

And that leaves us with the terrible question. What do we do with these people, not always (JK Rowling) but let’s face it almost always men, who we once looked up to but have let us down? It’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about in the year since, but I guess, really, since November 2016. It’s the question underlying my earlier email, and its conclusion that we should challenge the way we valorize our billionaires, our politicians, the people we too often expect will show us the way or save us from ourselves. We might also apply that same precautionary principle to our sense of fandom or intellectual admiration.

Sometimes the answer is easy just goodbye move on. But sometimes it’s not so easy. The discourse would have us believe that there are only two ways to handle the problem. The first is the much-feared, mostly mythological cancellation—the removal of the person and their work from the public sphere. The second is giving the proverbial pass, under the banner of “separating the art from the artist.” The idea that well, nobody is perfect, we can’t demand moral purity from creative people, therefore we should just tolerate the pain they’ve caused others as the price of a good movie or book or whatever. Most of us, I suspect, end up stuck somewhere in between.

In 2017, Amanda Hess wrote one of the best essays I’ve read on this topic, titled, “How the Myth of the Artistic Genius Excuses the Abuse of Women.” “Can we now do away with the idea of ‘separating the art from the artist’?” she asks, arguing that it’s the very elevation of these men as something special, this creative class separate from the rest of us, that allows them to harm other people (often destroying other people’s equally valid art) and then insulates them from consequences. She challenges the taboo commonly enforced by male critics that says we must never consider an artist’s work in the context of their lives and misdeeds. More often than not, however, the deeds of the artist live and breathe in their work and cannot in good faith be ignored. She writes:

It seems uncontroversial that offenders who remain in positions of power ought to be unseated to prevent further abuses. As for the art, we can begin to consider how the work is made in our assessment of it. This conversation is often framed, unhelpfully, as an either-or: Whose work do we support, and whose do we discard forever? …

Drawing connections between art and abuse can actually help us see the works more clearly, to understand them in all of their complexity, and to connect them to our real lives and experiences — even if those experiences are negative. … If a piece of art is truly spoiled by an understanding of the conditions under which it is made, then perhaps the artist was not quite as exceptional as we had thought.

I would add that it also seems uncontroversial to stop giving our money to offenders, but I think Hess’s suggestion that we intentionally conflate the art with the artist is a useful one, as a means of removing them from their pedestal. Sometimes, as Hess suggests, this will reveal the emptiness of the art (Ryan Adams comes to mind). Other times it might change the way we interact with certain art or ideas. But, critically, this does not mean absolving people of what they’ve done. We hold people accountable, feel the anger and betrayal, and then we sit with it. With all of it.

There’s another important benefit to this approach, which is, if we allow ourselves to look head on at the entire picture, instead of closing one eye or turning away when we don’t like what we see, we leave a door open for repair—and maybe even forgiveness.

When the people who publicized their accounts of Ellis’s abuses came forward, one thing they made clear is that this wasn’t meant as a campaign to take him down. Instead, they invited him to take part in a process of “openness, accountability, and growth, extending an offer of working with Ellis on some form of transformative justice.”

At the time, he ignored the invitation and basically dodged any responsibility. But recently, upon some unexpected news that he would be returning to comics, the backlash started up again, almost as intense. And so, I got another email, the first one in a year. And this one was a little better. Longer, sounded more like him. And it started by saying he’s been silent for too long and he has accepted the invitation to be part of a mediated dialogue. People will say that he only did it when he basically had no other options, that he was forced, and it certainly looks that way. But I don’t know that I really care either way. Ellis has got a long way to go before many people, myself included, will be ready to forgive him, but maybe it’s a start.

For a long time, I’ve had a kind of “special bookshelf” that holds like a half dozen of the books that I go back to over and over again. Some of Ellis’s books were on that shelf, but last year I took them down. I didn’t throw all my Warren Ellis books in the trash, but I did put them on a regular old shelf with all the rest of my books. That special shelf was starting to feel too much like a pedestal, and it’s one I’m not sure I want to have anymore.

I like to think that we’re going through a period of accelerated change and heightened accountability, whether that’s related to police brutality, sexual abuse, structural racism, misogyny, abuse of each other, abuse of the land, abuse of entire cultures. Some of that greater accountability is a result of hard fought progress, changing the norms of what we are willing to tolerate. Some of it because we’ve simply reached a point where people who have spent generations taking and taking now have a bill to pay in money or blood, through flood or fire.

With that change will come this recurring question of who caused harm, who must be held accountable, and how much we can forgive. Sometimes the subject will be a clear villain. But other times it will be people once held in high esteem or people we maybe even thought of as heroes. I think we’re capable of a lot of forgiveness, but that’s not possible without a truthful accounting of what damage has been done, and the only way to get a proper look is by bringing them down from that special shelf, down here with the rest of us.

—

Links

• The West is bracing for “a heat wave for the ages that could absolutely destroy all-time records from Washington to California as well as parts of Canada.”
• Much of the Southwest is in a “megadrought” which is the “driest 20 year period since the last megadrought in the late 1500s, and the second-driest since the 800s.”
• Heat islands in Boston are cooking lower-income neighborhoods, sometimes as a result of poorly planned city projects. The difference in temperature can be as much as 10 degrees.
• I like how the pandemic caused this spiritual awakening in which people realize they don’t want to waste their lives in horrible jobs and the discourse is basically “this could be bad for inflation how can we get people to go back to their horrible jobs.”
• People are wilding out on South Boston’s beaches, including roving packs of marijuana smoking teens and people ordering alcohol delivery directly to the beach.
• We all know the hysteria about critical race theory is not really about critical race theory.
• There was a “Redneck Rave” in Kentucky that ended with 30 criminal charges, someone’s throat being cut, and another person getting impaled on a log.

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Watching

I know I am the last person to watch Succession, but I always thought it was going to be this intense drama like Mad Men or something but making all these super rich people looking cool and smart. But it is actually like Veep for super rich people. Or like a British satire of corporate America. It is so funny and everyone is stupid and awful just like real life.

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Listening

New Slothrust song this might be a Crisis Palace record I think this is the third song featured by this band.

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I endorse

Razorcake. My friend Theresa introduced me to Razorcake, which is a Los Angeles-based zine dedicated to “DIY punk, independent culture, and amplifying unheard voices” and it is great. A lot of fun band interviews but interviews with all kinds of people like this month’s cover feature is a founding member of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles for example. They are running a subscription drive for just a few more days so go subscribe 10 issues for $17 or you can even just donate go do it you love independent media you are obsessed with it.

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Well this weekend I am getting a haircut and going to a Red Sox game so that will be a real big thing. And today I went to a coffee shop to do some work, another first. My longtime barista said welcome back oh by the way here’s the wifi password it’s not the same, and I said oh Joe, none of us are the same anymore are we, and we had a good laugh and then I sat down and wrote this for a few hours.

Jacoby is doing OK ups and downs but we are having to get increasingly creative to get him to take his pills because he keeps catching on and spitting them out. Jamie is like the Anthony Bourdain of getting dogs to take pills the other day she coated it in coconut oil and put it inside a piece of brie with sprinkles of venison on top. Michelin starred dog pills.

I like to think that this newsletter is much like a dog pill wrapped in brie and coconut oil, sprinkled with venison, irresistible to you but it also serves an important purpose. Please don’t spit it out it took a long time to prepare.

Tate

What gets built has little to do with the interests of the community and everything to do with what builds more wealth

Illustrations of the nests and eggs of birds of Ohio. v.1. 1886

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The sun is shining, the masks are off, and the sounds of gentrification are ringing in the air.

In any given direction from where I am sitting in my frankly uncomfortably humid apartment office in one of Boston’s outlying neighborhoods I can hear nail guns, power drills, table saws, all grinding away during every waking hour. The hot smell of overpriced lumber is strong, and the streets are lined with blue toilet boxes and dumpsters overflowing with the guts of century-old homes.

People are done with the pandemic and we are in the short window of prime outdoor labor weather and the housing market is reaching peaks that rival the 2000s bubble, so it seems as though every other address in the city is being redeveloped, every triple-decker remodeled, every eyesore being razed and rebuilt.

The housing market is scorching nationwide, although it is particularly out of control in Boston. In April, the median price of a single-family home in the city hit $765,000, and the price of a condo hit $622,000. Remember that one neighborhood close to me where there was the condo with an “open concept” bathroom? Well in that neighborhood right now there is burned out husk of house that’s on the market for half a million dollars. Even in nearby Providence, which has long been one of those mid-sized towns that can provide an escape for East Coasters fed up with the worsening exclusivity of our larger cities, prices are rising and supply is tighter than ever.

Way back in one of the early issues, I wrote about a house a couple of doors down in our half-fancy/half-not-fancy neighborhood that was scheduled for demolition. For years this was a rental property home to lower income tenants and owned by a slumlord who lives out in the suburbs and generally left it in disrepair. Apparently, Jerry, his name is Jerry, maybe got tired of dealing with tenants and saw what they call in real estate “an opportunity” so he decided to tear it down, rebuild, and sell.

I got a note in the mail a couple years back about it because we live nearby and were invited to some meetings to discuss the project, during which there was a lot of talk about mostly code variances and also a group of neighbors who were very worried about a big tree on the property far more than they were worried about people who lived there. “We’re all here about the tree” one of them said, the fuck we are some of us said back, because a handful of housing justice gadflies like myself (at what age do you go from activist to gadfly?) attended to yell at the city about displacement and lack of affordable housing.

In Boston, new projects only need to include a percentage of affordable housing if they have 10 or more units, the kind of project that’s impossible in many neighborhoods. The affordable housing is also not even that affordable, and the developer’s requirement can even be punted out of the neighborhood to be built offsite in some unsightly part of town. Those are some of the many factors that are contributing to the city’s problem—that even as Boston scrambles to create more stock and meet housing demand, people are constantly getting kicked out and priced out and the new units that go in are totally inaccessible to most Bostonians.

Anyway, that project near us of which there are many just like it got put on hold because there was a pandemic you may be aware, but it’s back on now, 100% displacement, torn down in a day or two, currently a construction site and soon the units will sell for god knows how much.

There used to be a house here.

Housing is an important issue for a lot of reasons, obviously, including that it determines everyone’s wellbeing and dignity and quality of life, but also because what we build where determines our energy use, with buildings accounting for some 40% of energy consumption and also dictating how we travel. It’s also a very frustrating issue for many reasons. For one, there are some very clear (clear to me!) policy solutions that seem to never be able to pass due to deeply rooted power structures. That is why, for example, some 75% of land in major cities in the United States is zoned for single-family housing, a form of exclusionary zoning that effectively bans poor people and people of color from living in most neighborhoods, while institutionalizing sprawl and excessive energy consumption.

Housing is also frustrating because decisions are often oversimplified into some very unhelpful binaries that rarely represent the reality on the ground. The big divide is YIMBY vs NIMBY, people who either shout “yes!” or “no!” to the prospect of things being done in their proverbial backyards. A NIMBY, as it goes is a rich, often liberal homeowner who doesn’t want to see new housing built because they want to protect their neighborhood. A YIMBY is usually a very nicely dressed professional who says all development is good due to their shrewd understanding of markets, this is a simple supply and demand problem you see. And these are the two sides.

You know I hate to do a both sides, but honestly, this is a both sides kind of thing, because sometimes the right answer is NIMBY and others times it’s YIMBY. And sometimes YIMBYs and/or NIMBYs are part of the problem.

For example, as someone who sometimes goes to community meetings to yell at the city about new condos, you might gather that I am a NIMBY. But I am totally not! I love new housing. I basically wish every structure in the city had new housing units built on top of it. I come from a family of builders as does ~*my wife*~ and I even wanted to be an architect for much of my young adulthood until I realized it was way too hard which in retrospect was probably a bad career decision. So, pro-building over here.

In fact, as I was getting riled up about Jerry’s raze and rebuild job, I was also getting all red ass about people in the neighborhood who were opposing a new mixed-income housing project just down the street. The city wanted to develop a piece of public property into affordable housing, and townies and business owners came out in full force to stop the plan. We went to this packed information session in a beer hall in which the city tried to clear up misconceptions and defuse the anger over the project and there were people literally just screaming at these poor city planners, about how people were going to get murdered and people in the new apartments would spy on us through their windows and all of the thriving businesses in the square would actually just close and be boarded up and then things would start catching on fire. And they did it they killed the project!

And now it is happening once again, just down the road in Jamaica Plain, one neighborhood over you know where the open air toilet condo is. There is a stretch of road that’s been under heavy development, with market rate condos shooting up alongside either end of the street in recent years. But a low income housing development was slated to go in, and a neighboring property owner decided to SUE to stop it from happening because he says it will hurt his business. The business, in case you were wondering is a beer garden. (In fact the same craft brewery from the beer garden where we attended that city information session. You know the kind of place, where you drink beer on an old barrel as a table and young dudes in tight clothing get drunk and talk about soccer while their toddlers run around and bug perfectly nice couples just trying to get a buzz on.)

So at the time, it was just the landlord suing (his name is no joke Montgomery Gold), and the brewery owner tried to stay out of it. But he made some guarded comment that made it clear he was definitely against the housing project. And now there is another affordable housing project in the works, this time for very low income seniors for Christ’s sake, and the landlord is suing once again, and this time so is the brewery owner!

As you can imagine, they are getting a lot of backlash, but there are also a ton of people in local facebook groups etc, as always, doing endless mental gymnastics to find reasons to oppose affordable housing. While there is indeed a lot of complexity in housing, honestly sometimes people just don’t like the idea of poor people moving in. In any case where a developer is trying to build a project that serves lower and middle income people, there are always concerns about variances, concerns about parking, concerns about traffic, concerns about building height, concerns about the color of the building, concerns about the type of siding that will be used, concerns about landscaping, concerns about disruption to business, concerns about safety, concerns about privacy, concerns about “who this will bring to the neighborhood.” The objections are numerous and the accommodations are never enough. It is always the wrong project in the wrong place at the wrong time. They never oppose affordable housing, they just oppose THIS affordable housing project.

So I guess my point is, there are good reasons to fight for new development and there are good reasons to fight against new development. Sometimes a project is a great idea and sometimes it’s shit, and the decision about whether it gets built or not always seems to have nothing to do with the best interests of the community and everything to do with what will build more wealth, with the final call always made amidst and in spite of a cacophony of neighbors screaming at each other from folding chairs in the basement of some community center.

So not only do we have a frustrating problem of special interests preventing good policy that would make things on balance better for everyone, we also have a problem in which we seem to have no good way for communities to effectively make planning decisions. On the latter point, I truly do not know what the solution is. Often my go-to answer to these kinds of decision-making problems is more participation, more democracy. But to be honest, deliberative processes on housing and land use are often total disasters and end up either derailing good projects for bad reasons, or creating an irrelevant side show.

In some parts of the country, the housing problem has become so bad that they’ve resorted to just railroading local opposition. For example, in Santa Rosa, when the combination of wildfires and the pandemic brought the area’s homelessness problem to new levels of severity, elected officials charged ahead with a plan to build a tent city to house 140 people at a local community center. During a public meeting, hundreds of residents screamed at politicians for hours, trying to stop to the plan.

But they did it anyway, as outlined in a recent article in Next City. “Go ahead and vote me out,” one city councilor said. “You want to shout at me and get angry? Go ahead.” And once it was built, people in the community actually ended up embracing the project, dropping off donations and spending more time at the center. As a county supervisor put it, they just had to take the risk. “We can’t just keep saying no. That’s been the failed housing policy of the last 30 to 40 years. Everybody wants a solution, but they don’t want to see that solution in their neighborhoods.”

While not a housing policy exactly, in my neighborhood there was a nightmarish traffic problem in a major two-lane thoroughfare, so the city wanted to take out a lane of parking and make it a bus priority lane. Had they gone through the usual series of meetings, people would have lost their minds. People love parking so, so much. But the city just did it. First, with a bunch of cones to try it out and then eventually with paint. And when people complained, the city would point out that traffic is now moving way faster and a large percentage of the people parking in those spots it turned out were commuters coming in from outside the neighborhood.

On one hand, I love these sorts of guerrilla projects that either involve taking political risks or making temporary improvements that can prove themselves before they become permanent. There’s a good case to be made for giving local leaders some latitude to make these moves.

But I don’t know, it also feels like that’s not really it either, you know? Like there has to be a way for communities to chart these paths, and we can do better than leaving it entirely up to representatives or municipal staff, who often defer to developers anyway. Part of me has to believe that the problem isn’t the participation itself, but how the participation is done, and whose voices are being heard when these projects come up. Because let’s be honest, most of the time what we’re seeing here is not just neighbors screaming at neighbors; it’s privileged neighbors screaming at other privileged neighbors, over the best way to protect their own chunk of wealth, which is not really much of a community meeting.

It’s something we need to get better at, because these changes end up affecting us all; even gentrifiers are getting gentrified these days. I should know—a few days ago, our landlord came knocking on our door saying he’d like to come by in a few days and take some photos of the house. A new opportunity has come his way, it seems. If he can get the right price point that is.

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Reading

Related, Sam J. Miller, who wrote a fantastic climate sci fi book Blackfish City, recently came out with an excellent new book, The Blade Between, which he calls a “gentrification horror novel.” I love Miller’s books because while there are clear protagonists, for the most part there are no clear good guys and bad guys. Along with being a fiction writer, Miller spent much of his career as a community organizer working on housing, and while that gives his writing a clear sense of justice and empathy, it also gives it a clear sense of complexity. As he writes in Blackfish City, “Every city is a war. A thousand fights being fought between a hundred groups.”

That message lives on in The Blade Between, which is about a young artist returning to his fast-gentrifying hometown of Hudson, New York, and the turmoil that follows, made worse by the ghosts of slaughtered whales and other angry spirits. The book is about the internal conflict we all feel about the places we are from. “It’s OK to love something that you hate, just like it’s OK to hate something that you love,” one character concludes.

But it’s also about the way these places are changing, often becoming unrecognizable and at the great cost of people who live in them. The people of Hudson are all shattered at varying levels, often as a result of an economy that has left them behind or chewed them up, and the resulting addiction, eviction, fire. But the book is also not unsympathetic toward gentrifiers themselves, recognizing the guilt, pain, and frustration in not wanting to be complicit in what is happening in our cities. It direct its anger mostly at the cycles and systems that need to be torn down and rebuilt.

As Miller writes about his book, in a recent essay for Tor.com:

“…my prime directive was crafting an ending that raised up the possibility of a third path forward being forged, through dialogue and hard work on both sides. In the modern-day housing market, there are no ghosts. No monsters. Only people. And if we want the future to look less like the horror story of hate and violence that is our history, we all have to make peace with trauma, and our role in it, and the privilege and pain we possess in relationship to it. And our power to create change.”

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I don’t know about you guys, but lately I have been feeling like all of the debate and discussion and progress and polling that we’ve all been watching in a bunch of different areas since January might be totally meaningless in the end because there’s a machine working nonstop in the background to dismantle democracy and our next federal government will basically be interminable Trumpism elected against the wishes of a large majority of the country. And now some movie and music picks.

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Listening

A while back I shared a song from Soft Sounds From Another Planet, but just today there is a brand new album from Japanese Breakfast so here is a single from it that I have been listening to.

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Watching

Still watching movies only, including currently slogging through The Master which I’m considering bailing on because it’s very boring but let me know if I should stick with it. One good movie I watched recently was Train to Busan which is a zombie movie that is very intense and emotional, in part just imagining what it must be like having intercity high speed rail.

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A fast one this week, old school CP, fast and furious which is another movie I just watched, Tokyo Drift, to be exact. Do not worry about our house, we will be fine either way. It is just a wild time right now in these leafy streets, you know what I’m saying?

In other news, our old little dog Jacoby, you know the one who was having trouble sleeping, it turns out the poor little guy does have dementia, doggy dementia they call it. Apparently in old age, dogs sometimes get confused as to what time it is and they have a hard time following a normal schedule. So we’re trying all kinds of medication to help him sleep and let him relax in his golden years.

I hope you readers are able to relax too, whether you are in your golden years or not. And I hope you can get there without eating half a gabapentin and half a trazodone squished into a piece of hot dog every night. But even if you do, that’s cool with me I support it.

Tate