The mythological figure Icarus flew with wings of feathers and wax crafted by his father Daedalus, but when he got too close to the sun his wings melted and he plunged to his death in the sea.
The ancient Greeks had a myth for everything.
2/n
Breugel's painting "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" is also relevant. Note the man plowing in the foreground, totally oblivious to the fallen man in the lower righthand corner, whose legs are still visible above the waves. This is an allegory for business as usual.
2.5/n
More business as usual: the trade ship with its sails billowing out towards sea, totally ignoring and speeding away from the drowning man who they could easily save if they suspended their goal of profit-making and colonial exploration even just for a moment.
2.75/n
See also the man in the lower right-hand corner, doing his futile best to save Icarus by holding out a stick for the tragic man to grab.
Unbeknownst to him, he is shadowed by a vulture—a symbol for death, to be sure.
2.9/n
Bruegel wants us to ignore this man, the activist trying to save the man of hubris who thought he could fly. He wants us to ignore Icarus too.
The central figure, the allegory for the economy, is dressed in a vivid red, which grabs all the viewers attention.
2.99/n
We must fight every day to keep our & other people's attention on the #ClimateEmergency, vultures circling or not.
And one way to do that is to talk about the reasons you've given up flying as much as possible.
I am baffled by this opening claim in @TimothyDSnyder's New Yorker piece on Trump's fascism.
Trump's entire campaign was fueled by empathy for white men. It explicitly advanced the promise to improve their lives through his power as Leader ("I will fix it.")
1/n
The US *has* been destroyed — economic inequality, lack of eduction or culture outside churches, crumbling infrastructure, the slow poison of social media in the body politic — has made town after town a decaying shadow of its former self.
2/n
Yes the neoliberalism that catalyzed this decline was introduced by Reagan and best advanced by Republican policies, but, of course, the truth is not the point — especially because in this case it's a half truth. Clinton and Obama are both neoliberals.
3/n
I am very proud that Ted Nordhaus, @mattyglesias, and right-wingers like Judy Curry are attacking my book. It means they feel threatened by my analysis of their rhetoric in favor of expanding fossil fuels. This is good!
I must say, however, that their attacks are spurious.
@mattyglesias This week The Breakthrough Institute published a blog post written by some guy I blocked on Twitter for misogyny years ago, who claims that errors he found in my text prove my research is faulty.
@mattyglesias This post did find two errors in my book. Thanks for that!
But its other claims are incorrect, perhaps because its author has no understanding of scholarly responsibility and striking problems with reading comprehension.
3/n
Last month I spoke to @350NYC about William Nordhaus and economics of decarbonization, using material from *The Language of Climate Politics*.
TL/DR: all too much discourse about the “cost” of climate policy is bullshit.
🧵
1/n
A prime piece of fossil-fuel propaganda is that resolving the climate crisis will “cost” Americans too much.
But the truth is rather the opposite: NOT halting global heating will, within decades, cost Americans way more than creating a net zero economy.
2/n
In fact, phasing out fossil fuels and creating a net zero, ecologically integrated economy will make 90% of people on this planet, including most Americans, way better off than they are now.
3/n
In all the drama over Biden, & all the mockery of Trump's unhinged (yet super-boring) convention speech, I haven't seen much attention to the language of climate politics during the Republican Convention.
But the GOP did unveil new climate propaganda, so let's take a look!
🧵
First of all, both Vance and Trump introduced a new term, replacing "hoax," that suggests climate change isn't real.
That term is "Green New Scam."
2/n
The word "scam" will of course be familiar to anyone who follows climate news on X and is thereby exposed to the MAGA tolls using the "ClimateScam" hashtag.
3/n