Fascist voter intimidation is a problem that will not go away by itself.

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

― Jean-Paul Sartre

It brings me no joy to say that I think this Sartre quote will be important to keep in mind over the next few years. Even without the recent rise in open antisemitism from the right, I think the general idea is important to keep in mind, when dealing with the presence of a growing fascist movement in society. That “they don’t believe in words” bit applies to pretty much all of reality. Whether this is a deep belief, or just a worldview they adopt to justify what they want to do anyway, concepts like “truth” and “reality” are about who has the power to impose their will, not about any kind of verifiable fact. They’ll say otherwise, of course, just like they’ll lie about anything else, but it’s like with Trump – the absolute truth is whatever suits their goal in the given moment.

When it comes to elections, their goal is power. That’s not the same as saying that their goal is to win an election. They do want to win the election, of course, but only so they can use that power to make it harder for anyone else to win the next election. Ultimately, their only use for elections is to provide an appearance of legitimacy, while they feel they need it. If they feel that pretense is no longer necessary, they will shed it just as quickly as they’ve shed the pretense that they’re not racist, or not transphobic.

The same holds true for so many of their so-called beliefs, that unless you happen to know how to decipher their obscurantism and lies, you often have to infer their actual goals from the effects of their actions and the direction in which they seem to be heading. They may say that they’re OK with legal immigration, and that race has nothing to do with it, but at the same time, they’re lying about what constitutes legal vs illegal immigration. They may say that they care about law and order, but they ignore or actively seek to violate laws that go against the hierarchy they believe should exist. For fascists, that hierarchy means “us” at the top, and “them” at the bottom. It’s very, very similar to this famous Frank Wilhoit quote:

Conservatism Consists of Exactly One Proposition, to Wit: There Must Be In-Groups Whom the Law Protects but Does Not Bind, Alongside Out-Groups Whom the Law Binds but Does Not Protect.

When they say “law and order”, they’re talking about a self-serving definition of natural law, and natural order, from a Social Darwinian perspective. Anything is justifiable in defense of that version of law and order in particular. Imprisonment without trial, planting evidence, perjury, torture, murder, theft – anything is justifiable.

That’s why efforts to subvert democracy are on any list of characteristics of fascism. It’s not because fascist regimes in the past were authoritarian – though they were – it’s because fascism as an ideology views the concept of “fair play” as weakness. Victory and power are all that matter, hence the Nazi slogan of “Seig heil” – hail victory. That’s also why we should expect fascists to keep trying to scare people out of voting:

Consider this: Two armed individuals – dressed in tactical gear – were spotted at a ballot drop box in Mesa on Friday night, according to Maricopa County officials. The pair left the scene when the County Sheriff’s Office arrived.

“We are deeply concerned about the safety of individuals who are exercising their constitutional right to vote and who are lawfully taking their early ballot to a drop box,” Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates and Recorder Stephen Richer said in a joint statement on Saturday.

There’s reason for concern, especially with candidates who have questioned the results of the 2020 election running as GOP nominees this year – including a full slate of them in Arizona, which became a hotspot of election denialism in the wake of Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in the state. And across the country, there’s concern about how some GOP-controlled county boards run by election deniers will oversee this year’s elections.

Read this report from CNN’s Kyung Lah. The Arizona Secretary of State’s Office has already referred to the US Department of Justice and Arizona Attorney General’s Office a separate report of voter intimidation:

The unidentified voter reported that they were approached and followed by a group of individuals when the voter was trying to drop off their ballot at an early voting drop box on Monday.

CNN on Thursday obtained from the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office the report in which the voter detailed the alleged incident. It occurred, the voter wrote, around 6:40 p.m. at the Juvenile Justice Court drop box in Mesa, within Maricopa County.
The voter wrote that a “group of people” filmed, photographed and raised accusations against them as they attempted to return their early ballots.

The voter wrote that a “group of people” filmed, photographed and raised accusations against them as they attempted to return their early ballots.

See for yourself. “There’s a group of people hanging out near the ballot dropbox filming and photographing my wife and I as we approached the dropbox and accusing us of being a mule,” the voter said, adding that the group took photographs of them, their license plate and followed them out of the parking lot.

Part of the incident was captured on surveillance video, as seen here.

Arizona has referred six cases of voter intimidation to the Department of Justice, for its current primary, but this problem goes well beyond the long-standing U.S. tradition of voter intimidation by fascist vigilantes. Florida governor Ron Desantis has already shown that he’s willing to engage in human trafficking for a PR stunt, but he’s also arresting people for “voter fraud”, because they mistakenly believed they were allowed to vote. To be clear, they voted under their own names, and most of them did so after requesting and receiving explicit permission to do so from the Florida Department of Elections:

Of the 19 people arrested by DeSantis’ Office of Election Crimes and Security, 13 were Black and 12 were registered Democrats. Most had applied to register to vote under Amendment 4, a voter-approved 2018 ballot measure meant to restore voting rights for 1.4 million former felons. The stakes transcended Florida and criminal justice reform—a botched state voter purge of purported former felons played what one federal civil rights commissioner called an “outcome determinative” role in the 2000 U.S. presidential election.

Most of the applicants who were arrested were approved by the Florida Department of Elections, which sent their voter registration cards ahead of the 2020 elections. All were charged with third-degree felony voter fraud, a crime punishable by as many as five years behind bars and up to a $5,000 fine.

“The arrests are a grotesque abuse of power by Gov. DeSantis,” ACLU of Florida continued. “Although the governor and Legislature claimed that they passed S.B. 7066 in 2019 to ‘clarify’ Voting Restoration Amendment 4, in reality, the law created an unworkable pay-to-vote system that is intentionally difficult and complex to navigate.”

Bear in mind that in the United States, being arrested and charged with a felony can have devastating affects on your life. Even if you don’t miss work because the cops took you away, many places will still fire you for having been arrested. If you have a conviction on your record, your rights are already limited in most of the country, whether or not you have a conviction on your record. I say that because while a judge has thrown out the case, the disruption to these people’s lives is still very real, as is the message it sends. It doesn’t matter if you think you’re allowed to vote – you might get arrested for doing it anyway.

This will not end here. Remember – the only limit on what they will do, is what they think they can get away with, and they will never stop pushing that boundary. This is also not something that can be solved solely by voting. I really, really wish it was, but when you have a fascist party openly working to subvert democracy (Remember when the GOP candidate successfully sued to stop a recount?), it’s hard to come to any other conclusion. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s time to grab your muskets and rise up, but it does mean that you should be considering what it would look like to participate in organized resistance that goes beyond protesting authorities who’ve already shown they’re happy to attack and maim protesters and journalists. The momentum of our political and economic system is pushing us towards fascism, and the Democratic Party as it currently exists is neither willing nor able to actually change that. The leadership of the party all benefit from the system as it is, and many of them have done so for decades. Voting is still important, in my view. It can get small improvements, like Biden’s recent pardon for federal cannabis convictions, and while that’s not nearly enough, it’s still going to make a few thousand people’s lives a bit easier going forward.

But that’s not enough to change the momentum. The reality is that democracy requires more work than most people have been putting into it. That’s also largely because of systemic problems. Most people’s childhood education doesn’t include stuff about community organizing, how to run a union, or how to form an underground resistance against an authoritarian regime. Once we’re in the work force, a lot of people barely have time to get enough sleep, let alone do more work that doesn’t even come with a paycheck. And yet, somehow, we have to find a way to do more, or at least to do differently. We have to rediscover how to build, sustain, and wield collective power, and we have to figure out what it would look like to have actual self-governance in a modern society.

If you like the content of this blog, please share it around. If you like the blog and you have the means, please consider joining my lovely patrons in paying for the work that goes into it. Due to my immigration status, I’m currently prohibited from conventional wage labor, so for the next couple years at least this is going to be my only source of income. You can sign up for as little as $1 per month (though more is obviously welcome), to help us make ends meet – every little bit counts!

 

Video: Why Didn’t “Defund the Police” Happen?

As the horrors of U.S. law enforcement continue, apparently unabated, I’ve encountered people who blame the current so-called crime wave on the defunding of the police. The problem is that as far as I can tell, nobody has defunded the police at all, anywhere. There were a couple places that made a nod in that direction, but I don’t think any of them have followed through so far. Biden’s “No, let’s fund them more” argument has won out. This video from The Renegade Cut digs into the issue, and also into some of the discussion around whether or not “Defund the Police” was a good slogan.

In particular, there’s an argument that the movement didn’t succeed (yet) because the slogan wasn’t specific enough, and was too scary. My view is that no matter what slogan was used, the propaganda against change would go just as hard, and lie just as much. For example, U.S. conservatives have consistently accused Biden and the rest of the Democratic Party of defunding the police, which – as I mentioned – is very much not the case. Trying to come up with a more innocuous or more comprehensive slogan would not help us. It’s like the way the Democrats are attacked for being socialists, despite the obvious effort they’ve made to keep even the most approachable of social democrats from getting any real power. The slogan starts conversations, and it says what we want to do. Trying to tone it down would just be seen – possibly correctly – as dishonesty, and used to further conspiracy theories. Better to let the idea become mainstream through persistent use, and through aggressive countering of misinformation from the right. That will remove the shock, and make it far easier to push the idea in the years to come.

Re-wilding is good, but research into the ecosystem roles of ancient trees shows we must preserve existing wilderness.

There are a lot of different ways to approach climate change as an issue. The primary focus is, rightly, on power generation and on ending fossil fuel use, but there’s plenty of other stuff that we can be doing at the same time. Returning cleared or developed area to some form of ecosystem – managed or otherwise – is a big part of that. For myself, I tend to focus on the more active, progressive, and left-wing angle of environmental justice. This means thinking about how to change the relationship between people and their environment, as well as eliminating the political and economic structures that, for example, prevent indigenous people the world over from managing their land, or simply pushing them off of any land that a (usually white) corporation decides it can use to make money.

A lot of environmentalism over the last century has been heavily informed by the white supremacy of the colonial powers, and has been used to justify preventing development in poor countries, as well as preventing people from living off the land. The misguided notion that humans must exist in conflict with nature let to the equally misguided notion that caring for the natural world means, mostly, keeping humans out of it, which has caused problems for a lot of people, mostly non-white. All of this is why the focus on environmental justice caught on, and the intersection between environmentalism and other subjects like racism, economics, colonialism, and so on.

That said, there are a lot of things that the environmental movement yesteryear got right, and taking care of trees is one of them. Specifically, it turns out that there are measurable benefits to having very, very old trees around:

“Ancient trees are unique habitats for the conservation of threatened species because they can resist and buffer climate warming,” write the authors, including Gianluca Piovesan (@Dendrocene) and Charles H. Cannon (@ruminatus). Some of these trees, such as bristlecone pines in the White Mountains, USA, can live up to 5,000 years and act as massive carbon storage.

Ancient trees are hotspots for mycorrhizal connectivity, the symbiotic relationship with underground fungi that supplies plants with many of the nutrients they need to survive. This symbiosis with fungi also helps reduce drought in dry environments. Ancient trees play a disproportionately large role in conservation planning and yet are being lost globally at an alarming rate.

Of course they are, and in case it wasn’t obvious, that deforestation is being driven by the greed of a small number of humans with way too much power, not by human need, or any vague bullshit about human nature. Fortunately, as with most of our environmental problems, it’s pretty clear what we should be doing, if we can get together the power to do it:

The researchers propose a two-pronged approach to protect ancient trees: first, the conservation of these trees through the propagation and preservation of the germplasm and meristematic tissue from these ancient trees, and second, a planned integration of complete protection and forest rewilding.

“Mapping and monitoring old-growth forests and ancient trees can directly assess the effectiveness and sustainability of protected areas and their ecological integrity,” they write. “To carry out this ambitious project, a global monitoring platform, based on advanced technologies, is required along with public contributions through community science projects.”

Currently, protecting ancient trees in forests, woodlands, historic gardens, and urban and agricultural areas remain limited by national policy levels. “The current review of the Convention of Biological Diversity and Sustainable Development Goal 15 ‘Life on Land’ of Agenda 2030 should include old-growth and ancient tree mapping and monitoring as key indicators of the effectiveness of protected areas in maintaining and restoring forest integrity for a sustainable future,” write the authors.

“We call for international efforts to preserve these hubs of diversity and resilience. A global coalition utilizing advanced technologies and community scientists to discover, protect, and propagate ancient trees is needed before they disappear.”

I will add that for those with the ability, I think there’s a lot to be said for  direct action. That can be anything from the long-standing tactic of camping out in trees to keep them from being cut down, to the ongoing movement to defend the Atlanta forest. This kind of activism is dangerous, both because of the inherent dangers of aerial camping, and because it will bring you into conflict with governments and with capitalists, both groups with a history of violence against environmentalists.   I also want to make very clear that if we are acting to preserve the ecosystem services provided by ancient trees, then that means we also need to make sure that younger trees get a chance to become ancient. There’s merit in defending very young forests, because they won’t always be young, if they have a chance to grow.

If you like the content of this blog, please share it around. If you like the blog and you have the means, please consider joining my lovely patrons in paying for the work that goes into it. Due to my immigration status, I’m currently prohibited from conventional wage labor, so for the next couple years at least this is going to be my only source of income. You can sign up for as little as $1 per month (though more is obviously welcome), to help us make ends meet – every little bit counts!

Video: No, Ebola is NOT Airborne

Ebola is sort of the ultimate Scary Disease. It can spread ridiculously easily through bodily fluids, including sweat, it has a mortality rate of 50% and above, and it is famous for being a “hemorrhagic fever”, in that it can cause internal and external bleeding. In reality, the bleeding isn’t that common, and it’s the other symptoms – vomiting, diarrhea, and sweating – that actually kill due to extreme dehydration. So, it’s not generally the bloody horror show in the imaginations of those of us who’re far away from it, but that makes it no less deadly, and it has a devastating impact on the communities it touches. If you want to learn more about it, you might want to check out this interview with a doctor who was involved in fighting the 2014 outbreak.

Ebola is scary at the best of times, and right now, we’re all dealing with a bit of trauma from the COVID-19 pandemic that’s still ongoing, though the numbers have improved. Everyone’s a bit worried that the next pandemic will come soon (monkeypox had a lot of people nervous), and the thought of it being something like Ebola has some people on edge. It’s also understandable that people wouldn’t trust official sources telling them not to worry, because they said similar things about COVID in the early days. Thankfully, Rebecca Watson is here to break down the situation, and explain why you shouldn’t be worrying about airborne Ebola (transcript linked, as usual):

Climate change is bad for your skin, and we should do revolutionary change about it.

Well, the rapid test says that I am now COVID-free, which is nice. My nose and sinuses aren’t back to normal yet – still some congestion and my voice resonates in my head as if I’ve got a cold. I also seem to just have less energy, which is annoying. All in all, it was unpleasant but far from unbearable, and I’m sure the vaccine helped with that.

When it comes to climate change and health, my focus has mostly been on stuff like the ways in which air pollution affects the cardiovascular system, with occasional mentions of how ecosystem collapse will likely lead to more zoonotic disease outbreaks. What I hadn’t really considered was how climate change looks to a dermatologist. Honestly, I don’t think about how the environment affects skin health in general, beyond solar radiation and things like poison ivy. I have encountered it when looking into the health impacts of flooding, but for some reason I haven’t felt a need to write about it, and that ends today. Sort of. It ends today because I came across some research on the ways in which extreme weather affects skin health:

The skin is a large, complex organ, and it serves as the body’s primary interface with the environment, playing key roles in sensory, thermoregulatory, barrier, and immunological functioning. As floods, wildfires, and extreme heat events increase in frequency and severity, they pose a significant threat to global dermatological health, as many skin diseases are climate sensitive. Investigators draw on an extensive review of published research to highlight the key dermatological manifestations initiated or exacerbated by these climatic events and also highlight the disproportionate impacts on marginalized and vulnerable populations. Their findings appear in The Journal of Climate Change and Health, published by Elsevier

“We wanted to provide dermatologists and other practitioners with a comprehensive overview of extreme weather-related skin disease as a foundation for patient education, implementation of early treatment interventions, and improved disease outcomes,” explained lead author Eva Rawlings Parker, MD, Department of Dermatology and the Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, USA. “We were astounded by the shear breadth of impacts that extreme weather events have on skin disease and how profoundly climate change exacerbates inequality.”

In their review, Dr. Parker and her colleagues cite nearly 200 articles documenting the myriad impacts of extreme weather events on skin. Marcalee Alexander, MD, Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Climate Change and Health, noted, “This information is especially timely in light of traumatic events such as Hurricane Ian, which has led to increased infections due to flood and standing water exposures.”

Flooding, one of the most common natural disasters, is linked to traumatic wounds and bacterial and fungal infections of the skin. Contact dermatitis is another common consequence of flooding since flood water is often contaminated with pesticides, sewage, fertilizers, and chemicals. Exposure to wildfire smoke can trigger atopic dermatitis (eczema) in adults with no prior diagnosis, and it can trigger or exacerbate acne.

Because the skin plays a critical role in the regulation of body temperature, the effects of extended heat waves can be severe. The inability to properly cool during high heat events can lead to heat stroke and death, for example. Many chronic inflammatory dermatoses are exacerbated by heat as well. Infectious diseases can be seasonal, with heat and humidity increasing the risk of common cutaneous infections caused by bacterial, fungal, and viral pathogens. Less obvious, extreme heat events influence behavior. When temperatures are high, people may spend more time outdoors, increasing exposure to air pollution, UV radiation, and insects.

I think I’ve been ignoring skin problems partly because I’ve been fairly lucky in the kinds of skin ailments I’ve had, and partly because of the ways in which our culture has affected my brain (more on that later). Injuries don’t seem to count, in my head. As a kid I had an unpleasant encounter with a bunch of boiling water, and learned that burning large portions of your skin can be deadly. It’s clearly a vital organ, but it’s one that’s designed to handle treatment that would destroy any other organ in our body, so I think I take it for granted sometimes. I suppose the same can be said of other organs as well, but generally if there’s something detectable wrong with an internal organ, that’s a much worse sign than being able to detect a problem that’s only skin-deep.

But, of course, skin health is damned important. Leaving aside the way the skin itself can give us indications of more internal health problems, it’s also where we’re most exposed to external harm, we rely on our skin to keep the good stuff in, and the bad stuff out.

Skin ailments come with unique forms of misery. It’s difficult to not be aware of something wrong with your skin, and the mental toll of pain, itching, and dysmorphia that tends to come along with skin problems – especially chronic ones – is something that I think we should not underestimate. More than that, skin problems are visible. They’re there for other people to see, and so they can be harder to ignore. You can sometimes cover them up, but if there’s something wrong with your skin, having it in constant contact with cloth can be a problem all by itself.

There’s also a degree to which actively taking care of one’s skin is seen as an act of vanity. Certainly, most products surrounding skin care are aimed at appearance, and while a desire to be seen as attractive is an entirely valid part of the human experience, I think the Puritanical disdain for seeming like you care about your appearance is still running strong in our society, as is the misogynistic denigration of “feminine” activities like skin care.

I’m mentioning the social stuff because beyond the direct impact of any given health problem, I think it’s important to remember that stress – in addition to being an effect of all sorts of illness, also is a cause of ill health.

The news on climate change tends to be bad. The planet is going to keep getting more hostile and dangerous as the temperature rises, and so if we want life to get better for everyone – mere survival is not enough for me – then developing a more caring society is a key public health measure. Climate change is happening, and happening fast, but a lot of the pain and death we’re seeing because of it is still mostly because of social, political, and economic factors that make life unnecessarily hard for a large majority of humanity. I think that systemic cruelty is going to get worse as the temperature rises, unless we make some pretty big changes.

Thankfully, this report does not shy away from the ways in which societal conditions interact with skin health:

Dr. Parker and her colleagues observed that extreme weather events disproportionately affect marginalized and vulnerable populations and widen existing health disparities. Children, pregnant women, the elderly, people with mental health illness, racial/ethnic minorities, low-income individuals, and migrants are especially vulnerable to climate-related effects.

Black and Hispanic populations and lower income populations are more likely to live in areas at higher risk for flooding. These populations also have a greater incidence of skin disease and less access to care. Extreme heat is a frontline occupational hazard for manual laborers and migrant workers. Extreme weather events contribute to large-scale migration. Skin diseases are among the most commonly reported health concerns observed in migrants. Of particular concern is the spread of communicable and infectious diseases and vector-borne viruses. People experiencing homelessness are plagued by higher rates of highly morbid, climate-sensitive skin diseases.

As a reminder – there are more vacant houses and apartments than there are unhoused people, and the money most societies spend on “policing” houseless folks (also known as punishing them for being poor) far exceeds what it would cost to just guarantee safe housing for all. The same is true for the cost of privatized vs. universal healthcare. Things are likely to get worse as the temperature rises, but it’s important to remember that they don’t necessarily have to get worse. Climate change is increasing all sorts of health problems, but the degree to which people suffer because of those problems is almost always going to be determined by their place in the economic and political systems in which they live.

If you like the content of this blog, please share it around. If you like the blog and you have the means, please consider joining my lovely patrons in paying for the work that goes into it. Due to my immigration status, I’m currently prohibited from conventional wage labor, so for the next couple years at least this is going to be my only source of income. You can sign up for as little as $1 per month (though more is obviously welcome), to help us make ends meet – every little bit counts!

Coal workers can be transitioned to renewable energy jobs throughout the U.S.

When people talk about ending fossil fuel use, there are a wide variety of objections. The one that I think is perhaps the most valid, is concern for those workers whose livelihoods currently rely on the extraction, processing, transportation, and use of oil, coal, and natural gas. I don’t remember when I first heard this objection, but as with so many other “arguments“, no matter how many times it’s addressed, it keeps coming up. If we remove the fossil fuel industry, the obvious answer is to make sure that fossil fuel workers either get new jobs that fit their skills, or be given a dignified retirement if they’re old enough that retraining seems like a waste of their remaining time. Honestly, I’d be fine just making sure they all have their needs met regardless of whether jobs are found for them, since I think that should be the default for everyone.

But I get the concern. Capitalism – and U.S. history in particular – is rife with examples of industries that either died, or moved overseas. Detroit is probably the most famous example of this. Its auto industry was gutted, the money all left, and the city’s working class – having made the auto industry fabulously wealthy – was left to twist in the wind. Under the system we have, if your industry dies, there’s a good chance that you and your family with die too, or at least any hope for a life free from the horrors of poverty. The solution that I prefer doesn’t really matter on a practical level, because I have virtually no power to affect policy. Most people who are worried about their jobs aren’t really looking for “have a revolution” as the solution. Fossil fuel workers may or may not be on board with a new, left-wing re-imagining of society, but until it’s actually happening, it’s not a valid alternative to their very real jobs.

The more short-term solution, from a left-wing, ground-up perspective, might be to pool resources to ensure that people’s needs are met, but that’s gonna feel like charity to a lot of people, and at this stage there’s simply not the organization to demonstrate that we can actually promise to keep people housed and fed. Regardless of our ultimate goals, we need to be able to offer solutions within the system we have, and we need to be able to show that those solutions are actually within reach.

A research team at the University of Michigan has shown that we can absolutely replace every coal job in the United States with a renewable energy job:

As of 2019, coal-fired electricity generation directly employed nearly 80,000 workers at more than 250 plants in 43 U.S. states. The new U-M study quantifies—for the first time—the technical feasibility and costs of replacing those coal jobs with local wind and solar employment across the country.

The study, published online Aug. 10 in the peer-reviewed journal iScience, concludes that local wind and solar jobs can fill the electricity generation and employment gap, even if it’s required that all the new jobs are located within 50 miles of each retiring coal plant.

Keeping employment local would increase the costs of replacing U.S. coal-plant workers by $83 billion, or 24%, nationwide, according to the study.

“These costs are significant in isolation but are small relative to annual U.S. power investments of $70 billion and to the total costs of transitioning the U.S. energy system away from fossil fuels, which have been estimated to be as high as $900 billion by 2030,” said study senior author Michael Craig of U-M’s School for Environment and Sustainability.

“Our results indicate that replacing lost jobs in coal-plant communities would modestly increase overall energy-transition costs while significantly furthering a just transition for one category of frontline communities,” said Craig, assistant professor of energy systems and an expert on power system emissions, operations and planning.

Obviously, the cost doesn’t bother me at all. I have my doubts as to whether it actually bothers anyone – most of the objections are probably from people who have an ideological problem with government action, or with ending fossil fuel use. Still, for those who still just see big numbers and general claims, the authors do go into a bit more detail:

The U-M researchers say federal policymakers could introduce a new investment tax credit to help defray the costs of achieving local replacement of coal with renewables. Such a credit would only apply to wind and solar projects that are located near retiring coal plants and that employ retrained coal-plant workers.

Previous studies have concluded that aggressively mitigating climate change will require deep, sustained reductions in emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide gas.

Since electric power is the cheapest sector to decarbonize, much of the early U.S. emissions reductions have come from that sector, largely due to a shift from coal to natural gas in the electricity-generation mix.

Many decarbonization pathways retire most or all U.S. coal-fired power plants within the next 10 to 20 years. Electricity generation from those retired plants will need to be replaced by new, low-carbon sources of energy. Despite the rapid growth of wind and solar power in the United States, previous research has not quantified the feasibility and costs of replacing coal jobs with local wind and solar jobs across the country.

The new U-M study helps fill those research gaps. It applies a bottom-up optimization model to all coal plants in the contiguous United States and assumes a full phase-out of the U.S. coal-fired fleet by 2030.

As each coal plant retires, the model requires new renewable investments to replace the retiring plant’s electricity generation and employment. The model replaces coal-plant power generation and employment with wind and solar located within specified distances from retiring power plants.

The researchers analyzed three “siting limits,” the maximum distance that replacement solar and wind facilities can be located relative to a retiring coal plant: 50 miles, 500 miles and 1,000 miles. The 50-mile limit approximates local solar and wind facilities and jobs that would not require relocation of coal plant workers, while the 1,000-mile limit includes jobs that would require relocation.

The researchers found that across most U.S. regions and siting limits, annual renewable energy employment fully replaces coal employment. In all regions and for all siting limits, retiring coal plants are replaced with a mix of wind and solar power.

Operations and maintenance jobs account for 57% to 92% of the replacement employment at wind and solar facilities while construction jobs play a lesser role, according to the study. O&M jobs include field technicians and administrative and management staff.

I think it’s fair to say that this sort of research will not persuade coal barons like Joe Manchin, but I think it could well persuade some of his current supporters that he doesn’t have their interests at heart, when he refuses to support better alternatives and a brighter future for the people of his state. I hate to mention that asshole, but it keeps coming back to the same thing, doesn’t it? We have the “solutions”, we just lack the political power to enact them (which is why organizing and building collective power is key). Without that, knowing that we can do this doesn’t do much beyond raising our blood pressure when we keep not doing it. Even though I don’t think our system is capable of a real response to climate change that addresses environmental injustice, it’s important to recognize that even progress that’s not far enough can still be a big step in the right direction.

And for every step, we can celebrate, and point to the clear evidence that more steps are both needed, and entirely possible.

If you like the content of this blog, please share it around. If you like the blog and you have the means, please consider joining my lovely patrons in paying for the work that goes into it. Due to my immigration status, I’m currently prohibited from conventional wage labor, so for the next couple years at least this is going to be my only source of income. You can sign up for as little as $1 per month (though more is obviously welcome), to help us make ends meet – every little bit counts!

Soup, Sabotage, and Spectacle Activism

I’ve been around liberal activism for most of my life. Specifically, I’m very familiar with what you might call “Liberal Protest Activism”(LPA for short). This is the kind of protest where you gather to demonstrate the numbers and determination of your movement, and to call for the government to make a change in response to popular pressure. In a lot of ways, it’s the main form of activism that’s viewed as “acceptable” within our society. In some sectors it’s the only form of activism that’s considered at all effective, which is something I used to believe.

You know the story – Ghandi’s movement was able to win freedom for India and Pakistan, M.L.K.’s movement was able to end Segregation and bring about racial equality. Anything that hints at violence, or that damages property or interferes with business is out of line and counterproductive.

In reality, both of those movements had militant elements, and took place within broader geopolitical contexts that had as much influence as any peaceful protest – probably more.

But within the framework of LPA, spectacle is extremely important, and there are a lot of different opinions about how to do it “right”. Some people think that the more “respectable” the conduct of the protesters, the better the optics, and the more likely that others will join in. Others think that doing silly, loud, or dramatic things will draw more media attention, and stir more conversation about the issue. There are also some who believe that a sincere demonstration of their sincerity, love, or faith will move other people on a spiritual level, and protests can become a sort of ritual.

In a lot of ways, this is the same as the arguments atheists have had about how we should defend or promote our unbelief. Should we mock religious beliefs and practices that seem silly to us? Should we be respectful and patient, and avoid ruffling any feathers? What tone is the most likely to get people to overcome their prejudices and listen?

My view on both of these arguments is the same. Different approaches will work on different people, at different points in their lives. There is room for a wide variety of approaches, and that’s what we should expect for such a strange and diverse species as humanity. More than that, I defy anyone to make a compelling case that it’s even possible to get everyone to agree on messaging and tactics. That’s not what humans are. Some will definitely go for uniforms, planned messages, and so on, but trying to get everyone to do the same thing feels a bit like saying that if everyone just agreed with me, then the world would be doing fine.

That may or may not be the case, but it’s largely irrelevant, because that’s not how people work.

This is not me saying there’s no point in trying to convince people of things. I hope this doesn’t need saying, but if I believed that, this blog would not exist. I just don’t think that I can persuade everyone. I don’t even think that I can persuade anyone by myself, I’m just trying to be part of the process that moves some people in the right direction.

In that same spirit, while I don’t think that LPA is sufficient to change the world in the ways we need to change it, I do think it’s a valid part of a larger movement. For myself, I’m fairly uncomfortable with theatrics, and I have a hard time persuading myself that dressing up and dancing around or something like that is worth the effort. My preference has been to find conversations about theatrical protests, and try to direct them towards the issue the protest is about. They did their job by making people talk, and now it’s my turn to make something useful of that conversation. If people are going to be doing silly and dramatic things, then the media is going to focus on that. It just makes sense to try to make use of that attention while it’s there, and it’s not like I can stop people from doing that stuff anyway.

Which brings us to the recent decision of a couple activists to throw tomato soup on a glass-protected Van Gogh painting and glue themselves to a wall.

Was this useful? Not particularly, but within the framework of LPA, it fits. No real damage was done, and it certainly generated a lot of buzz. The thing is – while I believe some people are genuinely upset at the disrespect shown to a great work of art, I don’t actually believe that anyone’s seriously changing their mind about climate change because of it. If someone’s opinion on whether or not climate action is necessary is swayed by two kids throwing soup at a painting, then I don’t know that it’s worth trying to discipline a global movement specifically for that person’s benefit. I also don’t see a lot of point in saying “they don’t represent all of us”, because I don’t think anyone believes they really do. Some may pretend to believe it because they already opposed the movement, but those folks will also believe that people are going to give their kids free drugs. Trying to appease them doesn’t seem worth the effort to me.

So my initial reaction was to point out that more conventional protest has not resulted in adequate climate action thus far.

I still think that’s the case.

We’ve certainly made progress. Renewable energy is booming around the world, and that is slowing the rate at which annual emissions are increasing. At the same time, emissions are still increasing, and people are dying because of climate change now.

If you think the action that’s been taken to date is adequate, then I have to question to what degree you value human life.

That said, my initial response was wrong, at least in one way. I think it was a holdover from my fairly recent days of believing in the efficacy of this kind of protest, combined with a lack of new reflexes for a different approach. See, from what I can tell, a majority of the world – even in Western countries – believes there’s a need for more action on climate change. If I have a role in redirecting the attention from activism like this, it probably should be to try to get people talking more about organizing and direct action. What we’re lacking isn’t a desire for change, but the tools for change. If conventional protest doesn’t work, what does work? Doing stranger more offensive forms of protest amounts to trying to do more of the thing that’s not working, in the hopes that “more” is what’s needed.

What I probably should have done in response to this was work on updating my direct action post, since it’s overdue for a tune-up, and trying to have a conversation about more effective forms of activism.

There’s been some discussion around whether or not Just Stop Oil is actually trying to undermine the climate action movement, but while I think that’s worth investigating, it shouldn’t be the basis for how we react to any given action by them. The reality is that there are people trying to sabotage that movement, and there will be for any movement that’s trying to get large-scale change. There will be corporate infiltrators. There will be government infiltrators. We should be on guard against that, but I don’t think that means trying to find and expose every single one. That seems like a futile effort, and a great way to create division and enmity within any movement.

The focus, rather, should be on what goals we want, what tactics we want to use, and making sure everyone understands why a group wants to do things a certain way for a certain action. What material effect will a given action have? If there’s a media buzz around something like this soup-throwing protest, is that something we should try to use, or should we just ignore it and focus on what we were already doing?

As I’m fond of saying, I don’t have all the answers, I’m just trying to figure out some of them. I don’t think this protest was helpful, but neither do I think there’s much point in getting worked up about it. Personally, I shouldn’t have given in to my reflex to defend this one in the way that I did. I think the best conversation for me to try having next time something like this happens, is about what kinds of activism would actually work.

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No, parents, nobody is going to give your kids free drugs on Halloween.

Well, COVID seems reluctant to just… go. Today has been much like yesterday – eyes feel puffy, some congestion, and a need to sleep more than usual. My default seems to be staring vacantly into space without any real ability to focus, which makes the ability to touch-type very useful, as long as I don’t get my hands out of alignment and start yoprgm tsmfpo9y, mpmdrmdr.

That means that today’s a video. I’d thought about Shaun’s latest, but PZ beat me to that. If you haven’t seen it, you really should. It’s pretty simple – a breakdown of who J.K. Rowling’s transphobic allies are. As with other analysis of that bigot’s behavior, beliefs, and buddies, this really makes one feel that she enjoys making other people suffer, so long as she’s still still rolling in dough.

So, for today I’ll direct your attention to a different bullshit moral panic – the traditional Halloween-time activity of convincing frightened parents that people want to give free drugs to their children. The TL:DW is this: whether it’s cannabis, meth, or fentanyl, nobody is going to give your children free drugs. That’s not a thing that happens. The people who make drugs want to sell them, because that’s how they make money.

I think what’s really depressing about this is how well it demonstrates that for a certain section of the population, they will believe anything if they’re told that that thing is a threat to them from “bad people”.

To those who need to hear it I will say this: Enjoy Halloween. Let your kids go trick-or-treating. Start trying to think of your fellow humans as being, well, your fellow humans. The ones you need to be afraid of are the ones constantly telling you to be afraid of the people around you.

 

Coverage of cops needs to change.

I am not a journalist. I write about news, but I’m pretty much always a secondary or tertiary source. All of that is to say that I’m not an expert in this field, so maybe I’m missing something obvious when I ask:  Why would so-called “news” organizations ever report police statements as fact?

The recent ubiquity of cameras has revealed something that was always there – police do not make our communities safer. They do not serve us. They serve themselves, and they serve the ruling class. In fact, through civil asset forfeiture, they play an increasingly large role in preventing class mobility – stealing from those who have little enough to begin with, apparently just because they can. If the United States was actually a free and just society, governed by and for the people, civil asset forfeiture would never have been made legal in the first place. If we had the kind of democratic power our leaders pretend we do, then I have to believe these laws would have been changed after John Oliver shined a big spotlight on them in 2014. Apparently the only state that’s actually made a meaningful change is apparently New Mexico.

Between 2000 and 2020, police stole at least $68 BILLION dollars from innocent people in the United States. Again, under the law, you do not have to be convicted of anything for the police to just take your property, and you have to hire an attorney on your own dime if you want to get it back. Might be hard to do if they’ve just stolen all your money, or your car, or your home.

More than that, cops lie constantly, and at this point it’s been so widely reported that I cannot believe anyone in the news industry is unaware. By the time we saw the cavalcade of lies from the Uvalde PD, nobody who had been paying even a little attention was surprised by their craven dishonesty.

When the subject of police violence comes up, I sometimes hear people say that even though cops do kill around three people per day. that’s not that many out of the hundreds of thousands of interactions every day. Even ignoring the less direct harm done by police theft and police dishonesty, the focus on killings often leads to us overlooking the non-lethal violence that police inflict on the communities that pay them:

>Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that since 2015, more than 400,000 people have been treated in emergency rooms because of a violent interaction with police or security guards. But there’s almost no nationwide data on the nature or circumstances of their injuries. Many of the country’s roughly 18,000 law enforcement agencies don’t tally or make public the number of people who need medical care after officers break their arms, bruise their faces, or shock them with Tasers.
Researchers point out that only a tiny portion of arrests involve force. But when police do use force, more than half of the incidents ended with a suspect or civilian getting hurt, according to a 2020 analysis. It’s unclear how serious the harm is. “We need better data on injury severity,” said Matthew Hickman, a professor at Seattle University and one of the study’s authors.
Most experts agree that injuries at the hands of cops remain underreported.

And, of course, that doesn’t even start talking about the prevalence of white supremacy in law enforcement.

I don’t think any of this is new to my readers at this point, or if it is maybe you’re new around here? Maybe I need to write about this more often. Obviously, I don’t think that the corporations who own most “news” coverage in the United States serve the public interest any more than the cops do. If you want more of a breakdown of the problems of crime reporting in the US, you can go here. The point of this post was to say that I think the tendency towards passive reporting, and police-friendly reporting continues to help cops get away with a level of abuse and criminality so extreme that I’ve had people deny its reality to my face “because they would have heard about it”.

They should have heard about it, but for all our media love sensationalism, they love protecting the rich and powerful far, far more. If they actually saw themselves as serving the interests of the public, this is what their reporting would look like (content warning for extreme grief):