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| Neoliberals Use Tradesmens Entrance |
Paris can’t carry the weight of Trumpist outrage—or progressive optimism. The accords were unenforceable by design, a cobbled-together set of national aspirations to cut greenhouse-gas emissions by enough to slow global warming (but not, in the best of scenarios, avoid major climate disruptions). The United States, even under Obama, was the reason for the weakness of Paris: anything stronger, with actual obligations, would have required Senate approval. The Senate would have killed it. So Paris was, basically, a hope-chest of good intentions, an optimistic gloss on business as usual...
The major hazard of mainstream outrage about Trump is the tendency to overestimate how much of his catastrophic administration is unique to him, and so to exaggerate how close the country was to doing the right thing before he took power. The best potential of the same outrage is that it might alert people to how bad things are, and to how much has to happen to change them.
...we need politics at many scales and in many forms, advancing both a widespread sense of urgency and a vital program for a green world that is egalitarian, democratic, and finds a way to make human and natural flourishing compatible. One barrier to that politics is any notion that we are not in an emergency,
