1. In 50 years, when people write the history of American Conservatism from Goldwater to Trump, one of the central themes will involve the way @gop anti-regulation and anti-gov't extremism rendered the US unable to grapple with the coming climate crisis. nytimes.com/2018/08/31/pod…
2. We can hope that in 50 years the rise of an emboldened white nationalist movement in the 2010s will look like a temporary blip, a "dead cat bounce" of white, tribalist identity politics that spoke to and for a small (but loud) fraction of Americans. Time will tell on that.
3. But I think there's little doubt that in 50 years our current generation will be judged, more than anything else, on our political system's failure to act on the dire climate news that scientists have been telling us about for decades.
4. That was my main take-away from that excellent piece by @mikiebarb and his colleagues at The Daily. Reagan's ideology (and ties to big industry) made him unwilling to take action on the climate evidence that had emerged by the late 70s. A tragic, missed opportunity.
5. This is not to imply that a Carter victory in 1980 would have necessarily resulted in a climate solution. We'll never know because it didn't happen. But we do know that the Reagan Admin did NOTHING, while the scientists' screams got louder and louder.
