This is the rational way we have learned to think, in the society that has produced the climate crisis: to chase well-being by picking up and moving to a new place, rather than thinking about the social connections and large-scale emergent properties that make life possible
(Don't pretend this kind of thought hasn't crossed your mind/haunted you! We're all made by this world that makes our future impossible!)
But I think a lot about how all of my dearest lifelong friends and family--the people that would drop everything to care for me if I were sick--are scattered across the country
The mistake the rightwing preppers always make is to ask "what must I do to survive when I must survive on my own?" instead of "how do I ensure that I am never alone?"
Anyway, this is what so-called "climate nihilism" can teach us--that Climate! Solutionism! can make it difficult to see--the world is becoming a different place, and we will have to be different kinds of societies to survive in it
(this is not an attack on OP or anyone who thinks this way; you and I think this way because we all have been formed by a world which makes this the rational way to think; the hard part is understanding the new world that is coming into existence, something we must do together)
In unrelated news, I am moving to Patagonia.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
This is significant because the problem becomes something other than "how to persuade qanon addled reactionaries"; it becomes "how to do big government interventions that will succeed with disenfranchised populations"
Our healthcare system presumes that your health is your problem, and you should pay for it, and you should also do the work to figure out how to access care; given this starting point, it's not surprising that the same people who are always poorly served, continue to be
But if you are a Democrat who is invested in the status quo, and you don't want to spend money on supporting the poors, it is MUCH MORE ideologically comfortable to make the far right into the face of non-vaccination
The GOP's war on trans athletes is about transphobia, yes, but I think it also very nicely demonstrates what so many people think youth sports are for: COMPETITION. Not a communal activity that brings people together; sports is a WAR for victory that trans kids are STEALING.
For so many people, the idea that we have physical recreation for youth some reason other than a Nike-branded "SECOND PLACE IS FIRST LOSER" deathmatch is completely foreign to them
If a kid's experience of youth sports was RUINED because they didn't win--which is the subtext of every "Trans athletes are DESTROYING sports" story--then maybe youth sports aren't serving all the kids who don't win (which is most of them) very well at all?
He is also extremely rich man from fossil fuels and closer than people think to retirement; Democratic power could mean actual Climate legislation, so preventing Democrats from taking power is literally good for his personal wealth
If you are Joe Manchin, and you want to stay a coal millionaire, why wouldn't you literally want Republicans to be in control of climate politics?
There are real GND advocates in the democratic party and even Joe Goddamn Biden is talking about transitioning; we can be cynical about how real any of that really is, but keeping the GOP in power is the obvious safe choice for a crooked coal millionaire named Joseph Manchin III
I've got a (thick, layered) mask I wear for situations where I'm going to be in high-risk areas (indoors, public transit, etc) and I've got a basic cloth mask that's a lot more comfortable and forgettable that I wear when I'm doing performative virtue signaling walking the dogs
I feel like this is... fine? Do you know any angry conservative or libertarian pundits that can consult on whether this is fine, I need to know
At the beginning of the pandemic, wearing any kind of mask at all was really annoying, but now the basic thin cloth one doesn't even register as a thing (how universal is that?)
DESTROY GOLF COURSES "The average Palm Springs golf course uses the same amount of water in one day that a family of four does in five years." motherjones.com/environment/20…