Feb 13, 2022 Hot Take

Don't Wait Until It Becomes a Crisis

Don’t Wait Until It Becomes a Crisis

By Mary Annaïse Heglar

If you read this newsletter, I trust that you’re aware that American democracy is in deep shit. But even though there’s been article after article about how perilously close we are to authoritarianism and/or fascism, there’s this pesky theory running around that you can’t campaign on democracy because people “don’t understand it.”

Sigh.

There’s two huge underlying problems with this argument. First, it tells me that the people who want to be in charge of making the policies to guide this nation (which is, unfortunately, the most powerful in the world) are lazy as fuck. If preserving democracy is the most important issue facing this country, then you need to say that. If you think people don’t understand, then you need to do the work and MAKE THE MOTHERFUCKING CASE! Like it or not, this is part of the job, sweetie!

It’s not lost on me that just a couple of election cycles ago, these same Very Smart People said the same thing about climate change. Where exactly did that get us? To the crisis point. Please, just this once, can we NOT wait until it’s a crisis?

Here’s the other problem: the people who want to govern (and the people who advise them) clearly think the American public is stupid. As Rhiana Gunn Wright said on our post-election show in 2020, “People aren’t stupid, they’re busy.” I’d add that they’re misinformed and miseducated, and that’s because of the underinvestment in schools and the media industry, which is the result of policy decisions made by these very same people who think they can’t talk to their constituents like adults.

And these same people will sit around and wonder why someone like Joe Rogan is so popular. Look Joe Rogan might be a racist, sexist, transphonic, irresponsible shit, but he doesn’t talk down to his audience. He doesn’t tell them that an issue is too complicated for them to understand. Because, guess what? NO ONE LIKES THAT.

If you wanna lead people, the least you can do is respect them enough to tell them the truth. Otherwise, maybe it’s not that we’re stupid. Maybe you’re just not qualified for the job.

Climate Therapy and Reparations

By Mary Annaïse Heglar

My therapist and I experienced two very important and very different “firsts” at the same time: her first pregnancy and my first bout with climate grief. I saw how happy she was with her growing family and how comforted she was to know that I was working in the environmental field. I knew she didn’t know how bad it was.

I watched her belly get bigger and bigger while my nightmares of rising seas and gathering storms became more and more vivid. By the time she went on maternity leave, they weren’t nightmares anymore. They’d become more like visions, in which a normal New York City street was upended by a tornado and everyone just kept on walking, or where the subway car I rode in filled with water but no one looked up from their books and the breakdancers didn’t miss a beat.

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Climate Coverage Is Exploding (Fingers Crossed)

By Amy Westervelt

Dare we believe that the media is finally really going to treat climate like that thing they've been saying it is for years: the most important story of our time? I gotta tell you, the numbers look pretty good! In 2021, coverage didn't just surpass 2020's anemic numbers, it beat out all the years before it. And while January 2022 was a slight drop from December 2021 (probably at least partly due to all the "year-end, looking ahead" stories), it delivered an 11 percent increase in coverage from January 2021.

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Digest

Your weekly roundup of climate coverage.

Rising Temperatures, Rising Tides

Americans Are in Total Denial About Flooding by Liza Featherstone for Earther

A third of Americans are already facing above-average warming | Climate crisis | The Guardian by Oliver Milman for the Guardian

Climate Change Is Stretching Mumbai to Its Limit by Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar for the Atlantic

Water Supplies From Glaciers May Peak Sooner Than Anticipated by Raymond Zhong for The New York Times

Climate change brings thinner, more unstable ice to the Great Lakes by Diana Kruzman for Grist

How the speed of climate change is unbalancing the insect world bWritten by Oliver Milman, read by Elinor Coleman and produced by Hattie Moir for the Guardian

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