Joe Biden has been taking a lot of heat for his response to the blatant racism at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden debacle. The claim is that he called Trump’s supporters (plural) “garbage.”

But that isn’t what he actually said.

Here’s a piece of the transcript. He uses the possessive singular and follows it up with “his demonization of Latinos” (emphasis mine). Seeing them together, it is 100% clear: Both of these two uses confirm that he was directing his ire at that one particular supporter who spewing racism on the stage–and as I see it, that so-called comedian deserves the insult. Here is the quote, in context: “they’re good, decent, honorable people. The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”

Meanwhile, Trump, in his arrogance, not only didn’t apologize, not only called this horrorshow a “lovefest” and said it was “an honor to be involved,” but then had the hubris to do one campaign event from the cab of a garbage truck, telling reporters “How do you like my garbage truck? This truck is in honor of Kamala and Joe Biden” and say at another, “We know it’s what they believe, because look how they’ve treated you. They’ve treated you like garbage.”

The only way I can interpret this is he’s is totally OK with calling Puerto Ricans “garbage.”

I have to wonder how any decent, moral person can support this man who goes against those values. He’s not only racist, he’s homophobic, he otherizes lots of groups from people with disabilities to both Muslims and Jews to military veterans. He has been convicted of 34 felonies so far, is a self-acknowledged sexual predator, has stiffed hundreds of small businesses that did work for him, was found in court to have not only committed “the equivalent of rape” but to have defamed one of the at least 69(!) women who have accused him of rape or sexual misconduct–and increasingly, he is advocating fascism. Increasingly, too, he is showing signs of rapid cognitive decline. He is also the only US President, as far as I know, to use the office he was elected to for massive business and personal financial gain. He has repeatedly betrayed the loyalty of those who stood by him, from his Attorney General, William Barr, to his Vice President, Mike Pence. He has been called unfit by dozens of people who worked for him.

He is not fit to be President. He is not fit to be trusted with any responsibility for others. Please share widely with anyone in your circle who is considering voting for this cowardly, criminal, immature bully.

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…They claim the Dems are undemocratic because Kamala didn’t become the presidential nominee through primaries? What hypocrites!

Here’s what to tell MAGA folks when they start kvetching that Biden got 14 million votes in the primaries while Kamala got none:

  1. 81 MILLION people (almost 6 times as many as Biden’s primary votes) voted for Kamala Harris when she ran for Vice President in 2020 (and that same 14 million who voted for Biden this year also voted for her again in the Democratic primaries)—and the entire electorate will get to vote on this very shortly.
  2. She has Biden’s (and both Obamas’ and both Clintons’) strong endorsement as well as pretty much every major non-MAGA politician from AOC and Bernie on the left to Liz Cheney, her father the former VP, and conservative columnist George Will along with a bunch of former Trump senior staffers on the right—precisely BECAUSE Trump presents an existential threat to democracy.
  3. She got endorsements from practically every delegate pledged to Biden once he withdrew.
  4. The whole idea of HAVING a VP is to have a mechanism in place if the president can’t continue. Listing them in reverse chronological order, LBJ, Harry Truman, Calvin Coolidge, Teddy Roosevelt,  Chester Arthur, Andrew Johnson, Millard Fillmore, and John Tyler all became president without ANYONE voting them into that office. They were sitting VPs when the president died. If people feel that Kamala’s nomination was unfairly undemocratic, they have the option not to vote for her on November 5.
  5. MAGA people are opening quite the can of worms by bringing up undemocratic attitudes. Because THEIR guy is super-vulnerable on this. Not only has Trump openly stated he wants to be a dictator but his speeches are jam-packed with attacks on minority groups, calls for retribution against his enemies, endorsements of other dictators including Orban, Xi, Putin, and Kim among others, not to mention endorsing the savage but fictional cannibal Hannibal Lecter. Project 2025, which Trump falsely claims to know nothing about, is a roadmap for overthrowing democracy—created with help from more than 140 past and  present Trump employees and naming Trump numerous times. And that is just one of his tens of thousands of documented lies (30,573 just during his time as president, 162 in a single recent so-called press conference that did not take actual on-the-fly questions and did not subject him to being in the same room with his hand-picked panel). Agenda 47, which Trump does endorse and which the GOP has adopted as this year’s platform, sounds an awful lot like a simplified, less detailed Project 2025.
  6. And Trump not only has an extremely undemocratic record in his four years as president, a lot of the guardrails that kept him at least somewhat in check have been taken away—starting with the loony Supreme Court decision that found a president can not be held accountable for any action that was taken in his role as president.
  7. Finally, do we even need to mention that sore loser Trump is the ONLY US president who refused to hand over power peacefully at the end of his term, who incited a riot in a vain (and in-vain) attempt to incite a coup, who filed roughly 60 lawsuits to overturn the will of the people, many of which were tossed out by judges he had appointed? And, of course, he’s the only US president to be charged with 94 felonies and to be found guilty of 34 of them in the one trial that has taken place so far, not to mention held liable for $454 MM in the aftermath of just one of many suits against him for slanders and credible allegations of abusing women.

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If you missed Part I with the first four takeaways, please click here. Meanwhile, on to the final two.

 

  1. The Media Needs to Put Trump Under the Same Microscope

So quick to microanalyze every gaffe and instance of slow reaction on the part of Biden, the media now has to look just as carefully at the other old white guy (only 3-1/2 years younger than Biden). Since the debate, prominent media have harped over and over again on Biden’s fitness for office while giving far less attention to Trump’s far worse fitness level. This is something we can change with pressure! Every time you hear about a verified Trump non-lucid moment, every time you discover another one of his authoritarian policy proposals—if you don’t see it covered in the mainstream media you read, write to them and ask why they aren’t covering this important story.

First, let’s look at Trump’s public persona. Then his record as President. And third, his really scary policy plans.

Trump as a Campaigner

  • For starters, Trump also mixes up names. If it’s fair to talk about Biden confusing one person for another, it’s also fair to point out Trump’s repeated instances.
  • Trump has so much difficulty staying awake that he fell asleep repeatedly during the trial that could put him in prison for years. And the man who frequently derided Biden as “Sleepy Joe” may have also fallen asleep during his own Republican National Convention. I watched the video. It sure looked to me that he was sleeping, and it wasn’t during the prayer (as some have claimed). It was actually while the woman speaking was heaping praises on him.
  • Trump’s speeches mix rambling incoherence, total falsehoods, and bloodthirsty claims that he will wreak vengeance and retribution on his numerous enemies. As recently as his acceptance speech at the Republican Convention a few days ago, he was still spewing the proven lie that the 2020 election was stolen—probably because he hates being the loser that he is—a lie that’s been debunked over and over even in the courtrooms of Trump-appointed judges. And even though it made him a laughingstock when he first said it, he returned during his convention speech to his admiration for the fictional villain Hannibal Lecter.
  • Speaking of lies…Trump is a pathological liar on a scale exponentially beyond any other politician I’ve ever heard of. Just during his four years in the Oval Office, Trump was caught in more than 30,000 lies—that’s an average of 21 untruths every day he was in office.

 

Trump’s Record in Office

 

What Trump Wants to Do if He Gets Elected

If you’ve heard accusations that Trump and the Republicans want to bring back fascism, this is what they’re talking about. Here’s a tiny fraction of the antidemocratic policies they’ve proposed:

Over and over, Trump has made it alarmingly clear. He wants to be “a dictator on Day 1.” He wants to roll back the clock on progress in dozens of areas: climate, LGBTQ rights, women’s rights (including reproductive freedom), rights of people of color, of labor, of protestors. He has called for massive deportations of up to 15 million immigrants and mass detention of activists. He has called for Israel to “finish the problem,” implying he’s in favor of Israel exterminating Gaza. And with significant help from more than 100 former Trump administration employees, the Heritage Foundation has released 887 pages of repressive legislative proposals in a document called Project 2025. Trump has tried to pretend he doesn’t know anything about it, because he knows it’s going to be hugely unpopular. He’s been plugging the “kinder, gentler” version adopted as a platform by the Republicans and written with his active involvement—but make no mistake, Project 2025 will be his blueprint if he gets into office again. In fact, Trump’s VP pick J.D. Vance wrote a gushing foreword to Project 2025 architect Kevin Roberts’ new book. And let’s not forget Trump’s constant cries for revenge and retribution and his open desire to illegally use the military to quash domestic protests.

 

  1. The Democrats Actually Manage to Unite

It’s not a surprise that the sitting vice president of a successful administration is the front-runner. But the immediate unity around her candidacy is a delightful shock. Before Biden’s withdrawal on Sunday, July 21, most pundits I read expected a brutal, damaging struggle for the nomination. But somehow, the party often labeled a “circular firing squad” managed to pull it together and instantly rally around a single candidate. It took her only ONE DAY to gain pledges from 2668 delegates—way more than the 1976 that clinches the nomination. By Monday, July 22, she also already gained the endorsements of Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) Victory Fund, and the Latino Victory Fund, eight major unions. Of 47 Democratic US Senators, 212 Democrats in the US House, and 23 Democratic Governors, 42, 186, and 23, respectively, have endorsed her, along with most state party chairs. Fundraising is also record-setting, with over 888,000 individual small donors collectively donating $81 million while megadonors threw in $150 million more, bringing the total to $231 million just one day into her campaign.

A July 1 story on NPR named seven potential Democratic presidential candidates: Harris, Gavin Newsome, Gretchen Whitmer, Wes Moore, Pete Buttigieg, Josh Shapiro, and J.B. Pritzker. When NPR updated the story Monday, Newsome, Moore, Buttigieg and Shapiro had already endorsed Harris. Later yesterday, Whitmer and Pritzker joined the chorus.

The unexpected unity is a feather in the caps of both Biden and Harris, could motivate disaffected votes unexcited by Biden, and could help to provide a comfortable margin of victory in November—which is absolutely necessary considering Trump already tried to steal one election.

 

  1. What Does this Mean for the Democrats and the 2024 Election?

With all this, I think Biden stepping down can provide some big opportunities for the Democrats. They have a chance to re-engage the progressives they lost over Gaza, push for meaningful gun safety after Trump himself was almost killed by a sniper, push for the same kind of scrutiny of Trump that Biden suffered through, and leave the party in strong, capable, younger hands. Let’s show them we have their backs.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

Along with every other decent human being, I deplore political violence. And as much as I despise his politics AND his character, I wish Donald Trump a speedy recovery from the wound inflicted by a would-be assassin with an assault rifle.

BUT that doesn’t mean we need to stop campaigning. It doesn’t mean we should fail to make the most of the opportunity that this criminal’s attack on another criminal creates. And it certainly doesn’t mean we should slink off with our tails between our legs because the MAGAs tell us “this is not the time!” It’s never the time, according to them.

And it absolutely doesn’t mean we should roll over play dead, and abandon hope just because Biden had a bad night in the recent debate or just because Trump may get sympathy votes for getting shot. Trump (who is only 3-1/2 years younger, by the way) had a bad night too, if you filter against fact-checking. He spewed blustery nonsense for 90 minutes, nearly all of it either blatantly false or totalitarian fantasy.

Here’s what we should be saying at every possible chance:

It’s time for the United States of America to stand behind the value of not getting shot by a random psycho at a school, a movie theater, a supermarket, a religious service, a concert, or anywhere else. And Trump cannot lead that effort. After all, he:

By contrast, President Biden issued a powerful Executive Order promoting gun safety and managed against the odds to gain passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which he calls “the most significant bipartisan gun safety legislation in nearly 30 years.  The Act provides communities with new tools to combat gun violence, including enhanced gun background checks for individuals under age 21, funding for extreme risk protection orders and other crisis interventions, and increased mental health resources to help children impacted by gun violence heal from the resulting grief and trauma.” If Biden chooses to step down, the Democrat who will challenge Trump in November is also likely to favor sensible gun laws. The Democratic Party as a whole has been advocating common-sense gun safety for many years.

Finally, let’s remember three very important things:

First, just because the MAGA crazies have taken over the Republican Party doesn’t mean they’ve taken over the minds of mainstream Republicans. We see this in the typical 20 percent that Nikki Haley continued to draw even after she suspended her campaign! And I’ve also seen it in my conversations with many Republicans who tell me they don’t like Trump’s character, his lack of understanding of the issues, his massive narcissism, his open racism, his lack of a moral compass, etc. His support is weak even in his own party, in other words. Many could easily defect—as more than 100 prominent Republican have publicly pledged—to RFK, Jr., to the Democrats, to a Republican write-in, to to the Libertarians, or simply leave that space blank on their ballots.

Second, the Republican positions on many issues are wildly out of step with mainstream views. They oppose women’s reproductive freedom, LGBT rights, immigration (even legal immigration), voting rights, rights to protest against repressive governments, environmental protection, labor rights, and more. Both the Republican platform and the truly sinister Project 2025 (written largely by people who worked in Trump’s administration) embrace these extremist proposals—as do, apparently, a majority of the Supreme Court, which recently gutted environmental protection, declared Trump immune from prosecution for “official” acts, and of course, a year ago, overturned Rowe v. Wade—becoming the first Supreme Court to remove a constitutional right. And if that weren’t enough, Trump himself has alienated and insulted many large constituencies—veterans, people with disabilities, women, Palestinians, Muslims, Latin Americans, to name a few—and, starting January 6, 2021, thrown even some of his most loyal supporters like former Attorney General William Barr and former Vice President Mike Pence under the bus.

And third, Trump is not an attractive candidate to swing voters. He is now a 34-count convicted criminal and was found in civil court to have committed sex crimes. His rambling, off-topic speeches and compulsive lying could be evidence of serious mental decline. And of course, both men have a track record. Trump got little done besides his economy-crushing tax cut, while Biden, for all his flaws, has made huge progress on the economy, on recovering from the pandemic, on the environment, and on the US’s position as a world leader. On every issue where Biden has been bad (especially Gaza), Trump is demonstrably worse for progressives.

So let’s get out there and mobilize people to vote Democratic—including spreading the word about the huge negative impact of Trump’s proposals to people who don’t always vote for Democrats. Despite its problems, we still have a democracy worth saving!Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

Bob Burg devoted his Daily Impact newsletter this morning to endorsing a concept he found in Robert Greene’s book, The Daily Laws: 366 Meditations on Power, Seduction, Mastery, Strategy, and Human Nature: “Always stick to what makes you weird, odd, strange, different. That’s your source of power.”

I love the idea of embracing your weirdness—and I’ve basically lived it since my teen years. But I want to add three corollaries:

  1. Present your weirdness in ways that foster, rather than cut off, communication. So, in my case, living in a socially conservative farm community, I’ve chosen not to wear skirts even though I find them very comfortable—because I want my neighbors to understand that while I’m different from them in many ways, we still inhabit the same neighborhood and have more in common than they might think. I made different, more outrageous, choices in other places I lived in. Marrying and having kids, recognizing that my decisions impact other people, was another encouragement to dial it back. But I still publicly label myself as a “marketing heretic,” still post unpopular views in public places, still invite people of all viewpoints to engage with me (as long as they do so civilly). And I can proudly point to many examples where my activism has made the world a better place, both within the business community and in the wider world.
  2. Listen and engage when your weirdness starts to set up barriers. Let people express their discomfort. Strive to uncover their deeper feelings. Find points of agreement and build the discussion out from there.
  3. Bring your weirdness to the table but BE at the table! Participate actively in your community. I spent 9 years on my town’s Long-Range Plan Implementation Committee and have attended almost every Town Meeting for more than 25 years. In the 17 years before that, I was actively involved in the government and social infrastructure of the small city where I was living, both through board service and community organizing and through electoral work. I believe that service de-demonized the way several members of our town Planning Board perceived me. I went from newcomer/troublemaker who had organized the movement that blocked a big, totally inappropriate mountainside housing development to a person whose input was valued and seen as vested in keeping the character of the town.

How do you bring your nonconformity into your work, how do you make it a strength, and how do you engage with people who might feel threatened by it?

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This could be quite the game-changer: a new technology that turns gas piping from a useless and expensive “stranded asset” to a powerful lever to green entire business and residential districts. And New York State just passed a law to encourage it.

The article is called This Emerging Green Technology Could Decarbonize Buildings and Provide Good Union Jobs. It’s a pretty quick read, and a remarkable one.

On a quick look, I don’t see any obvious flaws. Do you? Please leave it in a comment. I’ll be taking a more in-depth look at this in my March newsletter. If you’re not a subscriber yet, please visit any page at my main website, https://goingbeyondsustainability.com/ You’ll get some nice gifts for subscribing, too.

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Guest post from Bob Burg—may it inspire your success in 2024. I first discovered Bob through a newsletter he used to do called Winning Without Intimidation, some time in the 1990s–which was all about getting your desired outcome through kindness, compassion, and empathy. I still use many of those teachings.

Bob Burg, speaker and author on success through kindness and compassion
Bob Burg, speaker and author on success through kindness and compassion

He published this in his current newsletter, Daily Impact, on December 29. I just love the frame that only one partner has to think of an interaction as a collaboration to achieve dramatic success, even if the other party sees an adversary. What a wonderful abundance frame—and so applicable to entrepreneurs! You can subscribe at Burg.com (scroll down to just above the footer). Used with Bob’s permission.

—Shel

 

Use This Concept, Which Is So Much More Productive Than Competition…

By Bob Burg

It ranks right up there with my all-time favorite quotes:

“I never saw the opposing pitcher as my adversary, but rather as my ‘partner’ in hitting home runs.” ~Sadaharu Oh (868 Home Runs)

This statement is perhaps the ultimate in collaboration.

And the Japanese professional baseball legend knows what he’s talking about. He remains the all-time leading home run hitter in the world…ever!

“But,” you might ask, “certainly the pitcher isn’t wanting to collaborate on this. The pitcher wants to strike the batter out, right?”

Indeed! Which leads to a very important truth…

Key Point: There are times when both parties don’t even need to be in on the collaboration in order for it to occur.

As long as at least one of the parties involved — whether we’re talking about an interpersonal conflict, a business negotiation, or a home run — has the proper attitude, they will approach the situation from a frame of collaboration, which is really nothing less than a frame of love.

And love conquers all.

You could even say that…it’s the ultimate home run.

Today’s Exercise: Recall a time when you witnessed collaboration, even though only one person *at first* seemed to be “in on it.” Based on the attitude of the first person, did the second person seem to naturally become more involved?

Now think about how *you* can set a frame of collaboration, even when the other person isn’t quite in on it…yet.

Best regards,

BobFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

I often find myself disagreeing with, disappointed in, and even demonstrating against President Biden’s policies.

And yet, assuming he’s the candidate in November, he will get my vote. I admit he might not if the US had adopted ranked-choice voting. But until it does, a vote for any third-party candidate is a vote for the main opponent of your preferred candidate. More importantly, I believe that the bad things Biden has done have been part of his own effort—sometimes accurate and sometimes off-base—to leave the world  better than he found it. He is, fundamentally, a good person, And despite never having a majority in both houses of Congress, he’s done quite a bit of good as president:

  • Shepherding a phenomenal economic turnaround, the best post-COVID economy in the world, and creating or recovering hundreds of thousands more jobs
  • Replacing skepticism with science on topics ranging from global climate change to the safety of COVID vaccines
  • Restoring US leadership on the world stage after it was torn to shreds by his predecessor
  • Supporting labor, the middle class, the poor, and the disenfranchised—and doing his best to hold big corporations and the super-rich accountable for dong their part
  • Championing the right to vote—and the right to have that vote properly counted

As I write this BEFORE the first primaries and caucuses, that opponent is likely to be the orange-haired former president. Yeah, the guy who is facing more than 90 felony counts, who has bragged about a history of sexual abuse (and been accused of many others and found liable in one he didn’t admit to). The serial liar who was caught in 30,000 false statements just during his four-year presidency. The narcissist who thinks rules and laws don’t apply to him. The person who stacked the Supreme Court with people who have undermined the values shared by most US citizens, overturned longstanding legal precedents, and for the first time in modern history, stripped away the rights of whole classes of people.

And, let’s not forget, the man who has promised that if he is elected, he will focus not on governance, not on the economy, not on human rights—but on revenge against his perceived enemies, active harassment of people who might be a different color, ethnicity, political philosophy or religion, and who repeatedly uses language straight out of Hitler.

Yesterday, Christmas 2023, both men issued Christmas messages. Robert Hubbell devoted his daily newsletter to these messages—and their contrasts couldn’t be more stark. Biden spoke of unity, teamwork, kindness, and hope. But DT used his bully pulpit to wish that those he perceives as “EVIL and SICK…THUGS” (which includes the military and those who favor electric cars) “ROT IN HELL” (capitalization is his).

Please make sure you’re registered to vote. That your friends know why you will vote for Biden. And that the records of these two men while in office leave no choice.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

Today, I spent two hours with my heartstrings tugged at a concert of the Jerusalem Youth Chorus—where Palestinian teens and 20-somethings from East Jerusalem sing—and compose—together with their Israeli Jewish counterparts from West Jerusalem. In June 2014 (a time of relative peace), I attended an equally moving concert in the Galilee (northern Israel) by Diwan Saz, a modern combo whose performers that night included a 10-year-old Bedouin boy (with a gorgeous voice) and a Chassidic rabbi, among others.
Those hopeful events seem far away an out of reach as we mourn the tragic and avoidable loss of over 4000 lives on both sides this month.
We have to somehow prevent even greater losses of life—and to reset!

Ultraorthodox Jews protest in London for Palestinian rights. Photo by Alisdare Hickson from Woolwich, United Kingdom, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Ultraorthodox Jews protest in London for Palestinian rights. Photo by Alisdare Hickson from Woolwich, United Kingdom, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Let’s start with some points I hope everyone can agree on:
  1. Innocent people have been killed and hurt for decades, and nothing will bring them back
  2. The violence has not worked, no matter who commits it
  3. Both Arabs and Jews have claims on the land going back thousands of years
  4. They also claim common ancestry with both honoring a heritage that started with Abraham. They eat very similar foods, speak languages with many cognates, and have both had to adapt to the harsh desert that surrounds them.
  5. It is long past time to find a workable solution
From that very rudimentary framework, could we perhaps evolve to:
  1. We all are carrying deep hurts. An eye for an eye doesn’t just leave everyone blind, because it will eventually leap from eyes to other things. So an eye for an eye, ultimately, leaves no one standing. Can we accept not only that the past is filled with violence, cruelty, and the spewing of hatred/dehumanization—but that all sides would benefit from moving past this?
  2. Can we look to the world for other examples of long-standing hostility and violence transforming into something better—such as the Truth and Reconciliation process in South Africa and Sierra Leone and the peace process in Northern Ireland?
  3. Can we finally break the cycles of fear, hatred, and grief that seem to lock everyone into ever-deeper and more destructive cycles of violence?
  4. Can the barriers—both physical and psychological—between the two cultures be removed so that Israelis and Palestinians who are kept apart by laws and physical barricades learn to work, play, and live together; there already are several small projects that are a great start, such as:
  • Neve Shalom/Wahat as-Salam, a cooperative multicultural village;
  • Numerous other musical collaborations, including  Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and many lesser-known ensembles;
  • Combatants for Peace, which presents touring programs featuring one person who fought in the Israeli army and another who was involved in the Palestinian resistance, now working together for peace despite some of them experiencing injuries, imprisonment, and all of them mourning the loss of friends and family members in the conflict

It takes great courage to organize for peace when the leaders of both communities feed their population an unending diet of hatred for the other side. In the Middle East and around the world, many people have been killed for trying to make peace.

I have visited Israel and Palestine twice and have family and friends (both Palestinian and Israeli) in both  Israel and Palestine (in the West Bank). I’ve stayed in the homes and hotels of Palestinians, with a Chassidic family, in a Druze village, a Transcendental Meditation village, a kibbutz, and an Israeli settler community on the West Bank. I’ve met with a blogger in Ramallah and with leaders of several Israeli peace organizations. I’ve also participated in Middle East peace groups in the US going back to the early 1980s. The vast majority I’ve talked to over the years, no matter what their ethnic or religious heritage, just want peace. The governments are not giving it to them. Surely there are better ways to solve things than yet another war in a long and brutal series of wars!
Perhaps we can take our cue from songwriter Nerissa Nields, who answers the old labor union song “Which Side Are You On? with “The world says ‘you can figure it out. Haven’t you noticed I’m round?‘”

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NASA photo tracking 2011 Superstorm Sandy
NASA photo tracking 2011 Superstorm Sandy. Attribution: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center from Greenbelt, MD, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Tracking_a_Superstorm_(8970258657).png

A friend posted her fears that the extreme weather we’ve pretty much all been experiencing is only going to get worse…that coastal cities (which includes most of the world’s great centers) are going to be hammered by storms that will make Hurricane Sandy—which wreaked havoc in NYC and elsewhere—feel like a gentle rain…wildfires that consume vast acreage, depleted aquifers that cannot regenerate and can no longer supply our farming needs…

I agree with her that the current path will lead to multiple calamities. But I remain optimistic that the rapidly closing window to fix it is still open for now; we can still reverse the destruction. We know how: innovation has reached astounding levels in the last 20 or 30 years, and we humans have developed and piloted hundreds of cool technologies and processes that accomplish multiple good outcomes with zero-to-minimal harm.

But we are 50 years late in making meaningful progress and we can’t be wasting time debating whether human-caused climate change is real. Nearly unanimously, scientists who are not funded by polluters agree that humans have accelerated climate change significantly. And even if the climate change is nothing more than the earth making course corrections, we still need to address/reverse/prevent the effects if human civilization is going to continue in anything like the way we know it.

With light editing for context and to mask the identities of others who posted in the thread, this is my response:

My Response to the Gloom-and-Doom Post

One thing we can all do—homeowners, tenants, farmers, business owners—is STOP SQUANDERING CLEAN WATER! We waste far more than we actually consume, and this has serious consequences as aquifers dry up. I just read this morning in a book called The Sustainabiity Scorecard that certain prescription drug manufacturing processes generate up to 7700x the product weight in waste, most of it water. I’ve said for more than 20 years that while our descendants might forgive us for squandering oil (which has substitutes), they will NOT forgive us for squandering water, which is essential to life.

Like most pieces of climate change, we’ve known how to fix the problems for decades—but we can’t find the political will. We should be living in a circular economy by now, where waste is transformed into input. We should be powering that economy with clean and renewable power sources including not only the common ones like solar and wind but more advanced, less well-known technologies like harnessing light and natural electrochemical reactions (see Gunter Pauli, The Blue Economy 3.0). We have known how to do this since at least 2001, and we’ve known we need to do it since at least 1970. This is our last chance to get it done before the scenarios [the original poster] is worried about become everyday reality—and lead to constant civil unrest, widespread famine, and various other calamities that dwarf anything we’ve experienced. Science fiction writers like John Brunner have been describing that awful world for generations, because they could see the logical consequences of hiding our heads in the sand and pretending everything can go on as it has. 

BTW *I* am actually an optimist on this. I believe we can still fix it, but we damn well better hurry up and commit society to solving these interrelated problems just as we committed ourselves globally to de-fanging COVID (with amazing success in a very short time)—but the longer we wait, the harder the task. The window is closing while we squander the 50-60 years we’ve had to get it done.

And thus I AGREE with [another commenter]’s paragraph about mitigation. Yes, engineers and designers can fix a lot of stuff—especially if they come in not attached to particular solutions but look holistically at how integrated solutions can not only address multiple problems at once (e.g., climate, waste disposal, water and food insufficiency, human comfort) but provide lots of jobs and community revitalization at the same time. But too many engineers have been trained in the existing, failing ways of thinking. We need to think circular and lifecycle impacts (including end-of-product-life disposal or repurposing), with closed loops, zero waste, net energy consumption, or pollution, etc.—and not linear thinking that only acknowledges processes production cost. Engineering as usually practiced has a tendency to externalize things like disposal costs onto the backs of us taxpayers and our progeny.

I also agree that we need to look at pollution, waste disposal, etc. in other industries including chemicals and battery manufacturing, and I don’t see electric cars or solar panels as panaceas.

But I totally disagree with most of his other points. The overwhelming scientific consensus, at least of scientists not funded by fossil companies or others who would have to drastically alter their processes (and temporarily lower their profitability) to fix the mess they helped create, is that human-caused climate change is real, and extremely dangerous.

[Original poster] brings up fusion, as she often does. Fusion sounds great in theory, but I’ve been hearing for my whole life that it’s just around the corner, and yet we never turn that corner. We can’t sit around waiting for fusion. The most optimistic predictions still put it pretty far down the pipe as a mainstream energy source. Yes, let’s keep the research going, but meanwhile, dig ourselves out of this deep hole of our own making.

I know [the original poster] is also a fan of small-scale nuclear fission, but I am not. [In her response to my comment, she corrected me and said she is not either.] If you want to know why, visit https://clamshellalliance.com/statements/statement/ (disclosure: I provided some minor help in writing this, particularly the section on accidents). I have some expertise here: my first of ten books was on why nuclear fission is a big mistake. It was written in the aftermath of Three Mile Island (as a revision/update of a much older book by my co-authors) and I updated it again—for a Japanese publisher—after Fukushima.

Several years ago, I brainstormed a list of 111 things the average person can do to reduce carbon and water footprints. It’s not comprehensive, it’s not necessarily the most important—it’s just one person’s brainstorm from around 2009. It retails for $9.95 but I’m giving it away. Just visit https://goingbeyondsustainability.com/#Freebies and click “Painless Green” (yes, you will need to provide your email and subscribe to my monthly newsletter—but you can unsub if you don’t like it).

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