Green Dream Spectre

Now that I have a Medicare gym membership, besides eavesdropping, I get to listen to FOX News while treadmilling my way to fitness. This week they are giddy over the Dems being invaded by socialists and Trump's red-baiting in his State of the Union. They see a big split coming, much like the Tea Party did the Repubs. As I have long argued, the issue that animates the right, their "master signifier", is capitalism. All the guns and abortion and immigration stuff is click-bait for the rubes; real conservatives know the battle is over private ownership of the means of production. And having had zero ideological challenge for sixty years, their only response to a resurgent Left-left is amusement. So that when the guillotines start being sharpened there is going to be some real bewilderment.

Unfortunately, the democratic socialists are a little ambivalent about capitalism as well. The newest high profile "spokesperson",DSA member and newly elected Congresswoman AOC has expressed the notion they can co-exist, that rather than taking power it means workers having more say. Like a big union. Bernie has always hedged when it comes to long-term goals. But this issue which AOC has chosen to highlight, global warming, forces the question front and center. As Naomi Klein perceptively pointed out, the Right understands that it is capitalism itself that is threatened because it has finally found a barrier it cannot overcome. Their plan, Thelma and Louise style ecocide on a global scale, is obvious. From a piece by Carolyn Kormann in the New Yorker:

If emissions are an accelerator on the climate, Schmidt said during his presentation, “We still collectively have our foot on that accelerator. While there are some indications in some parts of the world that people are working quite hard to reduce those emissions, collectively, we are not doing so.”

Or this from an article in The Economist:

"ExxonMobil, the giant that rivals admire and green activists love to hate. As our briefing explains, it plans to pump 25% more oil and gas in 2025 than in 2017. If the rest of the industry pursues even modest growth, the consequence for the climate could be disastrous."

The trepidation is there but the dots can't be connected. The most any mainstream pundit can propose, is that the US somehow achieve "the goals of the Paris Accord", which in themselves are a terrifying example of global inertia. Voluntary reduction targets, right?. Our Montana legislature is considering a bill to put a $10 a ton tax on emissions, so much worse than a joke and it stands no chance whatsoever. All of it a huge waste of time and effort, designed to be such. The only way the shit will be left in the ground is if the machine is dismantled.