Bad Moon Rising

The combination of looming recession, international conflict and a hollowed out politics does not bode well for positive climate action. Instead of consensus around a radical re-ordering of energy and investment in new infrastructure, we will see the forces of reaction cling ever more desperately to an imaginary "way of life" and chauvinist economic nationalism. Post-modernism and socialism will be the perfect scapegoats, thinly veiled references to "the Jew". The combination of inflation and cuts to social services will throw increasing numbers out on to the already teeming streets, make-shift camps and over-whelmed shelters. Still they will wave their flags, support the police, fear the government, flock to churches. The reverbations from the war in Ukraine will multiply. The infatuation with Zelinski and his tight t shirts will wear off as bread lines grow and yet another US failure will embolden China to push buttons. The US electoral freak show will give us the same worn out slogans and rent will consume more and more of the average paycheck. Still the free market will retain its sacred status for the average worker, even as the fires rage and hurricanes swamp cities. As the repo man comes for that brand new eightcylindar pickup truck, you can wave your Gadsen flag. Stop the steal. Harvard trained economists will recognize all this misery as the "business cycle", the thing capitalism does every so often to self correct. These people in their tents are "creative destruction", the necessary destruction of over-capacity, those being foreclosed and evicted are the re-set, and government can't interfere in the perfect mechanism of The Market. So sorry. This too shall pass. The ruling elite know this destruction only lasts so long and so they will hunker down, hang on to their portfolio, maybe buy the dip and come out better than before. History tells us so. Except for this one annoying little glitch around climate pricing. For some wacky reason the perfect market isn't factoring in the ecological destruction of the very basis for all the value, all the surplus, all the wealth waiting at the end of the rainbow. That's a qualitatively different kind of bubble.