The Obvious Way Forward

From the WA PO: "As global temperatures spiked to their highest levels in recorded history on Monday, ambulances were screaming through the streets of Tokyo, carrying scores of people who’d collapsed amid an unrelenting heat wave. A monster typhoon was emerging from the scorching waters of the Pacific Ocean, which were several degrees warmer than normal. Thousands of vacationers fled the idyllic mountain town of Jasper, Canada ahead of a fast-moving wall of wildfire flames." At first glance you might think the Dems would just be pounding the Repubs over the head with climate change. On so many other issues conservatives have managed to triangulate and one might have imagined them finding some nuanced position on global heating, as have the Dems; "yes it is real but markets will fix it" or "we can make incremental change without hurting GDP" blah blah. But no. Having staked out a denialist position (hoax or bad science or commie plot), they now cling to it with increasing desperation, hoping it just doesn't get brought up. Which for the most part, it doesn't. I suppose putting a spotlight on the fact we are quickly approaching climate tipping points is the kind of bummer news all political parties try to avoid, especially around election time. It would also require admitting that fossil fuel production and consumption is at record levels despite all the rhetoric and investment in renewables and carbon capture and hydrogen and blah blah. Better we talk about Israel's (read Jewish) right to self-defense and tariffs on Chinese goods and Kamala's laugh and Moutain Dew. It is also liberal environmentalists that resist having too much emphasis placed on the Climatic Regime or ecocide. They too would be forced to confront their abject failure to protect much of anything. As Alberto Toscano writes in his latest book "Late Fascism" : "An ideal for the left might be to become what its enemies think it already is, namely a strategically ingenious and systematic endeavor to undermine white, Western, Christian capitalist civilization across all institutions of society”. Not just civilization, such as it is, but the whole project of progress and globalized modernity. The planet has other ideas and can no longer be ignored.