Tuvalu's foreign minister Simon Kofe addresses the COP 26 climate summit from Tavalu standing in knee deep sea water to demonstrate the immediacy of the impacts of climate change.
Climate change is not the biggest story of all time. On Daily Kos, it’s barely a story at all.
The biggest story of all time is how humanity is pushing into multiple natural limits simultaneously, the impacts of those limits and the human response to the developing situation. Both the Covid-19 pandemic and increasingly extreme weather events such as the deadly unprecedented heat wave in the Pacific northwest in the summer of 2021 are the results of nature responding to environmental changes caused by human activities. Developing crises of water and food supplies are complexly intertwined with the climate and health crises. But you wouldn’t know that from reading Daily Kos.
I cut back my writing on Daily Kos about climate related disasters because it wasn’t helping us do anything positive. I was getting the response “were doomed” far too frequently. “We’re doomed” is no better a response than delay or denial because it is another excuse for inaction. The false optimism that CO2 is plant food isn’t holding up so it has been replaced by the dishonest optimism of net zero in thirty years when we come up with a perpetual energy machine that removes CO2 from the atmosphere. The U.S. is buying into that impossible solution as it expands pipelines for dirty tar sands “dilbit” under the great lakes and leases out vast tracts in the Gulf of Mexico for increased offshore oil production, oil spills and climate be damned.
Meanwhile, back at this Democratic web site that still allows community input, the response is either “we’re doomed” or silence. A few vigilant climate activists write on hoping for community response while the management and paid writers tell us about the outrage of the hour or something stupid someone said.
Memes don’t make movements. Outrage and anger over the latest insult, slight or display of bigotry by Republicans doesn’t elect Democrats or make for progress. Non-stop outrage increases unfocused anger which in effect is heat, not light. To make progress to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or any other kind of progress be it environmental or social requires focused energy. It requires work and power organized to move forward.
The strategy and tactics that Daily Kos is using are failing us on climate, the environment, and politics in general. Everyone knows, even if they don’t admit it, that we are already in a climate crisis. From western floods and fires, to Gulf and east coast floods and hurricanes, to midwest derechos, to extraordinary heat waves, all Americans have been impacted by the climate crisis. The Democrats admit there’s a crisis but don’t do much because the senate is controlled by conservative rural states including West Virginia. We can all hate Joe Manchin and how he has sabotaged Joe Biden’s agenda but it doesn’t do any good. We can single out rural white Americans for criticism for their behavior on covid or climate, often deservedly so, but it doesn’t help us get one more vote in the senate.
The GOP has a strategy, albeit a bad one. Put the foot down on the accelerator and build a wall. Put white Americans first. When challenged by a climate activist, Joe Manchin pointed to China, then voted to burn more coal. Manchin may be, in his own way, setting the world on fire but he has the support of most of West Virginia voters to do this. We as Democrats and progressives have failed to get a message to rural Americans that there is a better way than white conservatives banding together to fend off the rest of the world. When we state or endorse positions that there’s going to be a great die off the white rural conservative response is natural and something we should anticipate. If China is going to destroy the planet then we might as well live at the best standard of living we can as long as we can. Party like it’s 1999, then overdose on opioids. That’s not a good plan, but it’s pretty much what’s been happening in West Virginia. Democrats need to get off the path to nihilism. The talk about doom needs to stop now.
Progressives and Democrats win by building a bigger tent based on hope, realistic good ideas, and hard work and organizing to make them happen. If we want to get legislation through the senate we must have ideas, policies and plans that pull in rural states and rural voters. The strategy of appealing to big city voters is not enough because the senate empowers small rural states and disempowers large states. Even if Democrats can find a way to win Texas and lock up presidential elections, rural states will be empowered in the senate. To make progress in the senate we need to appeal to rural state voters and politicians. We full well know that, at present, the majority of rural voters don’t meet our progressive standards on racism, sexism, homophobia, diversity and religious tolerance, yet we cannot afford to write them off because of how the Constitution empowers them. We certainly cannot afford to be repeatedly mocking them, like the front page of Daily Kos does, if we want progressive legislation to get through the senate.
Environmental progress and universal health care are key issues in rural America. No where is the climate and the weather more important than in farming and fishing. Climate crisis caused droughts, floods and fires are devastating rural America. The lack of health care and rural Americans’ inability to afford the quality of health care that big city Americans get is killing rural America and rural Americans. We should be able to win over many rural Americans with our hope and change and good ideas and policies on health care, climate and the environment. Renewable energy means freedom, wealth and jobs for rural Americans. We can sell our ideas on climate and the environment because they literally empower rural America. We can sell our ideas about health care and our policies will save mid sized towns across rural America and the hospitals that are critical to their existence.
But here at Daily Kos we aren’t doing that. Instead, personal stories are being used to build partisan distrust for the GOP and for rural Americans in general. And it’s not just white rural Americans we are losing. I have talked repeatedly with third generation Mexican Americans in Bakersfield, California and we are losing many of them, too. One gentleman I have talked to is very responsive to environmental issues and knows about how the climate of the central valley has changed better than I do. He is responsive to environmental issues in general, but he responds to the GOP messaging to rural Americans. He is an example of how the messaging of the Democratic Party and Daily Kos is failing to reach a major segment of the Hispanic demographic. When Daily Kos puts down rural Americans we lose votes from a swath of voters that is substantially larger than the rural white demographic. What’s worse is that Daily Kos paid staff are barely trying to communicate on climate issues and policies that are critical to the survival of rural American communities now that Meteor Blades has retired. When they do try top communicate on climate, except for Mark Sumner, they generally lack the knowledge base and expertise to communicate effectively.
My hat is off to Boatsie and all the Climate Brief writers who are trying to put COP 26 and all of the issues revolving around climate change in the spotlight. Kudos to Meteor Blades for pulling in enough readers to get climate coverage related to COP 26 onto the “trending” list and into the spotlight. Shame on Daily Kos management for burying climate coverage under a mountain of mediocrity.
