Climate Clownishness

When it became apparent that either President Biden was likely to lose the 2024 presidential election or the Democrats would never be able to overcome the sluggish economy and keep the White House with a different nominee, John Kerry, President Biden's special envoy for climate-change issues, was on the PBS NewsHour explaining why a future Republican President, whom most people assumed would not be Donald Trump, would honor the Paris Climate Agreement, which President Biden had had the United States rejoin in 2021 after Trump had pulled the U.S. out of it.  Kerry explained that the business sector would advise such a hypothetical Republican President to remain in the climate accord because it was good for business and good for the economy.

Fast forward to 2025.  Trump returned to power, he pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement ten minutes after taking office to the thunderously vocalized approval of F-150-owning MAGA cultists present, and a good deal of the business sector capitulated to Trump's entire economic agenda.  (And I no longer watch the PBS NewsHour.) This became apparent - no, blatantly obvious - when former Volkswagen of America president Scott Keogh, now heading up Volkswagen's Scout SUV subsidiary, announced that Scout would instead develop gasoline/electric hybrid systems rather than the electric-only vehicles Scout had been created to develop.  And, while only a year ago, clean energy sources like solar power and wind power were the wave of the future, the major energy policy upheaval Trump perpetrated as soon as Biden (and Harris) was gone now envisions a future of more oil and gas - which only satisfies "public" utilities overcharging its customers for electricity and gas, Vladimir Putin, Russian energy oligarchs, American legacy oil and gas companies, and startup oil and gas companies like Phoenix Energy, which just went public and has been insufferably running ads on YouTube - which, thankfully, can be skipped. 

It is in the milieu of this brutal reality that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced the EC's new policy toward climate change.

Von Der Leyen announced that the European Commission would focus on controlling and fighting carbon emissions from fossil fuels rather than going after fossil fuels themselves.  This is like conservatives on a local school board who believe that rap is a detriment to America's musical heritage (and it is) deciding to censor rap by banning it from student events and school campuses rather than spending more money on music education.     

When it comes to trying to heal the planet, the Europeans are America's superiors, just as they are in cinema, urban planning, social welfare, and intellectualism, but von der Leyen and her fellow commissioners seem resigned to the idea that anything they attempt to do to combat climate change that is more than what they're doing right now is going to be canceled out by Trump.  The United States is already the biggest polluter on earth, except when in some years it's China, and Trump's commitment to more carbon pollution - which he took pride in during his incoherently improvised speech to the United Nations this past September - is only going to make that worse.

To be fair, many American companies such as General Motors and Pepsico, along with even a couple of oil companies like Occidental Petroleum, are defying Trump and working with foreign governments and various NGOs to do something about climate change, recognizing, as John Kerry predicted, the positive business opportunities that dealing with climate change offers.  Many of them were active in the COP30 climate change summit in Brazil, as was California governor Gavin Newsom, who as the chief executive of the world's fourth-largest economy, is a de facto world leader. But - and you knew I was coming to a "but" - the mission statement COP30 issued was as substantial as milquetoast, and the participants who vowed vocally to continue the fight against climate change spoke with the roar of a tiger but offered the bite of a kitten. 

And while there are many states other than California who still want to be in the Paris Agreement and commit to its goals, Trump is already working on ways to prevent that, and in, for example, my home state of New Jersey, where Trump canceled federal support for a wind farm designed to reduce energy costs, Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill has her work cut out for her. Given that there is more commitment to the Paris Agreement in more Democratic regions of the United States than in Republican regions, and given that the U.S. is too divided to return to the Paris Agreement if a Democrat ever holds the Presidency again - not that we'll be welcomed back in, given that a future Republican President probably would pull us back out and cause a perpetual whiplash when it comes to American climate policy - well, bearing all that in mind, this is just another perfect argument for breaking up the United States in separate countries.     

The California Republic will join the Paris Agreement and stay in.  So will the United Republic of New England and whatever republic New Jersey ends up in.  The Confederate States will reject the Paris Agreement and stay out. 

Bye bye, Florida. 

Hotter and Hotter

Climate change is accelerating faster than we thought - everything bad always turns out to be worse than we think, it seems - and we have less and less time to reverse course and prevent the absolute worst long-term effects of climate change.  Many of those effects have already happened.  You'd be hard pressed to find any bayshore beaches thanks to rising sea levels, and rainstorms flood low-lying areas of coastal cities (Miami is one big low-lying coastal city in and of itself) much more frequently.  And of course we are getting more wildfires, droughts and hurricanes doing more and more damage and laying out beautiful planet of ours to waste.

But as long as the ways out of this mess are to avoid eating beef three times a week, use public transportation (in a pandemic?) or at least drive smaller cars, and cut back on energy-inefficient entertainment like indoor ski slopes, no one is interested in changing their behavior.

Oh yeah, and July 2021 was the hottest month ever recorded.  To be replaced by August 2021, no doubt.

In Washington, Democrats are desperately trying to get some sort of carbon regulations in place to address the problems, and Republicans are finally beginning to acknowledge the problem of climate change but only pushing piecemeal policies that would not be to hard on the fossil-fuel industries, whose lobbying budgets are probably bigger than the national budget of Slovenia.  Now, I'm not one to "doom scroll," that is, look for negative news on the Internet, but I still come across a lot of it by looking for positive news.  I'll Google the words "climate change" and "optimism" and end up being led to articles with sentences like, "Anyone who thinks people are ready to get serious about climate change is displaying unwarranted optimism."

There's still some optimism out there, though.  In addition to activists like Greta Thunberg and massive environmentalist demonstrations, we have President Biden pushing environmentalism-related jobs to show voters that we can save the planet and build our economy, as well as special climate envoy John Kerry, who is hell-bent on making up for lost time in getting the United States to lead on climate change after four years of Donald Trump.  In fact, a column from Joyce McMillan of The Scotsman about Biden and Kerry actually offers, despite all of the gloom and doom on climate, cause for hope in the prelude to the climate conference coming this November.

Together For Earth

John Kerry, President Biden's special envoy on climate change, has announced a deal between the United States and China to work together on combatting climate change.  As the top two greenhouse gas-emitting countries on the planet, the U.S. and China have recognized the need to push forward a bold climate agenda to get the ball rolling on stopping or at least slowing carbon emissions before it's too late.

The main goals, taken form the State Department's official communique on the meeting between Kerry and Chinese officials, are as follows:

• Policies, measures, and technologies to decarbonize industry and power, including through circular economy, energy storage and grid reliability, CCUS, and green hydrogen
• Increased deployment of renewable energy
• Green and climate resilient agriculture
• Energy efficient buildings
• Green, low-carbon transportation
• Cooperation on addressing emissions of methane and other non-CO2 greenhouse gases
• Cooperation on addressing emissions from international civil aviation and maritime activities
• Other near-term policies and measures, including with respect to reducing emissions from coal, oil, and gas

This is a big deal, coming as it does in advance of a two-day virtual climate summit President Biden is hosting today, Earth Day, and tomorrow, and not because of Trump's effort to stop anything from being done about climate change.  It's because the Americans and the Chinese haven't been able to agree on anything, trading insults recently at a bilateral meeting just a few weeks ago over COVID.  Instead of blaming each other for the problem of climate change (the European Union is already doing something about the problem while blaming both countries for it!), the U.S. and China are putting differences aside for the good of the planet and giving great impetus to getting some sort of an agreement to go forward at the 26th United Nations Climate Change conference, to be held this November in Glasgow.

If John Kerry sounds like he needs to get this issue under control as soon as possible, it's because he does.  The efforts to combat climate change will be ineffective after we reach the tipping point, possibly as soon as 2030.  And if there's a Republican President in 2025, it will really be too late after that.

2004 Redux?

He is a U.S. Senator with a record of accomplishment, and when he runs for the Democratic presidential nomination, his party rallies around him to defeat an intensely disliked Republican President who got in without winning the popular vote and bungled his reaction to a national crisis.  Unfortunately, but the Democratic presidential nominee's awkwardness and paper trail of controversial Senate votes hamper him, as do rumors about his past.  Although early polls show him in a strong position against the incumbent President, many fear that he will still lose in November.

No, he isn't Joe Biden; I'm talking about John Kerry in 2004.  But the resemblance between the two is striking.  Biden, like Kerry, seeks to defeat an incumbent Republican President who has all of the advantages of incumbency and an ability to influence the voters that no challenger can match.  And the fear of another outcome like 2004 - Kerry lost - is justified.  George Walker Bush made the argument that you don't change leaders in the middle of a war, and Donald Trump is trying to position himself as a steady leader in the middle of a pandemic . . . while ignoring scientific and medical guidelines.  Polls show that, though Biden has an overall edge over Trump, Trump is solidly beating - yes, beating - Biden on the economy despite its free-fall in the past nine weeks.  Trump knows this, which is why he's pushing the insane, inane idea that the economy will regain a good deal of its mojo by autumn if we reopen immediately - science be damned! This would suggest that enough people in swing states can be taken in to give Trump the necessary swing states to give him the necessary 270 votes  in the Electoral College.

Biden backers have every reason to be worried - especially when people who should be in his column (*cough cough*, Bernie bros, *cough cough*) aren't ready to support him yet and maybe won't be ready at all . . . and he also has to deal with campaigning with only one resource to him - virtual outreach - that is also his greatest weakness.  But there are differences between 2004 and 2020.  The economy was going relatively smoothly in 2004, and Kerry was a less a known quantity than Biden, hence the "Swift Boat" charges against him stuck to him more firmly than sex-assault allegations against Biden have.  Trump can talk up the economy all he wants, but whether states reopen sooner or whether they reopen later, the growth he projects will likely not happen and the economy is likely to  get worse between now and November and erode his standing.  His campaign merrily pledges to destroy Biden, but Biden sees what's coming and is slowly but diligently preparing for that inevitability.  (If he could only get his Internet connections to work flawlessly.)   Biden beats Trump in polling on who would handle the pandemic better; this pandemic could be going on for years, at least until 2023.  And if more states open up, it could give Biden the opportunity to have public events that allow him to engage in retail politics - with previously screened and tested groups of voters, of course - which is is biggest strength.

I am not saying Biden will win in November.  After all, despite the reality of a worsening economy, Trump's effort at exploiting his better polling numbers on the issue over Biden might just work.  I am only saying that the circumstances facing Biden are different from the circumstances failing Kerry in 2004, and they allow more room for Biden to gain an edge on Election Day.  One thing is for certain - even if Trump wins, he will not win a majority of the popular vote.  The election of 2004 is one of only two instances in which the Republican presidential candidate won a popular majority since Ronald Reagan's 1984 re-election landslide; the other instance was the election of 1988.

Both of the winners, for the record, were named George Bush.  And unlike Trump, both Bushes took national-security crises seriously.  (The younger Bush started the initiative to have the United States plan for dealing with . . . a pandemic.)

Kerry On?

John Kerry is thinking of running for President again in 2020.

Don't laugh - and don't send the former Secretary of State a Harold Stassen bumper sticker as a joke.  I started to laugh, until I realized that it actually made sense.  Kerry isn't a man who would consider such a decision lightly.  He's a serious man, and God knows he wouldn't do anything without careful consideration.  He's been considering a run because of Donald Trump's completely disastrous foreign policy, from his withdrawal from trade agreements, a climate change agreement, and several other agreements to his thorough trashing of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.  In fact, Kerry intimated as much to an interviewer for an Israeli newspaper who has close ties to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.  He also relayed to Abbas through this interviewer that the Palestinians should advance a pro-active peace plan and "hold on and be strong" against Trump's desire to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and recognize the city as the Israeli capital, something Trump insists will bring peace (do I have to bring up the curious case of Danzig again?).

But Kerry for President? Another geezer?  Yes, but a geezer who is smart and energetic, and someone who might have defeated George Walker Bush's bid for a second presidential term if not for the Iraq War and the mood in the country to stick with someone who vowed to see the war through after having instigated it.  (Ironically, Kerry voted to give Bush the authorization to go to war, based on what he thought was true about Saddam Hussein's arsenal, but as Michael Moore later said, Kerry didn't vote to start a war; he voted for Bush to use his judgment in dealing with Iraq.  Kerry's biggest mistake?  Thinking Bush was a man of sound judgment.)   

Here's the thing.  John Kerry is a man of integrity and a man of duty.  He served his country in Vietnam, he's been a U.S. Senator, and he values service above all.  And while he didn't quite win the Presidency in 2004, he now at least knows how not to run a presidential campaign.  He wanted to answer the "swift boat" charges against his Navy service as a river patrolman in Vietnam, but his aides advised him against it; this time, he's ready to fight back hard against that noted draft-dodging carnival baker Trump if #45 tries Swift Boat Mark Two against Kerry in a general election match-up.  Kerry's not going to talk too much, and he's not going to let his wife say anything.  He's also going to explain his Senate votes more clearly, and he sure ain't gonna be caught windsurfing! 

Also, Kerry represents the best of an underrated generation.  He belongs to the Silent Generation, the Americans born between 1928 and 1945, the generation between the World War II generation and the Baby Boomers - the Americans too old to have been at Woodstock and too young to have been at Guadalcanal.  Kerry's generation has never produced a President - it's only produced unsuccessful presidential candidates, including Walter Mondale, John McCain and Kerry's old boss Michael Dukakis (Kerry served as lieutenant governor of Massachusetts under Governor Dukakis before Bay Staters elected him to the first of five U.S. Senate terms in 1984) - but it's long overdue to put one of its own in the White House.  It may the best, most productive generation this country has produced, apart from the World War II generation.  The Silent Generation - or the "Depression babies," as they're sometimes called - was the generation of Americans that took part in the Freedom Rides, fought the Korean War to make eastern Asia safe for democracy, campaigned for John F. Kennedy, voted for John F. Kennedy, joined the Peace Corps, gave the world James Dean, invented rock and roll, and sired and raised the free and independent thinkers who became Generation X.  Baby Boomers may idolize Martin Luther King, Jr., but the Silents marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., one of their peers.  Baby Boomers may take to heart the lyrics of Bob Dylan, but the Silents gave us Bob Dylan.

It is from this group of Americans that only someone like John Kerry could emerge - a man who, as freelance writer David Klion wrote on Twitter, is of a "rich northeastern liberal noblesse oblige, saw combat when he didn’t have to, believes in high ideals," and is "way more admirable than most politicians his age."

Politicians his age - or close to it, at least -  include Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden.  Both are in fact slightly older than Kerry - two years and one year, respectively - and yet both are taken seriously as presidential contenders.  And as Ed Kilgore noted in New York magazine, Kerry "came within an eyelash of defeating an incumbent President who was (at the time) a lot more popular than Donald Trump is likely to be in 2020."

Kerry still has his drawbacks.  He left a lot of campaign money unspent in the 2004 election, angering Democrats who thought that money could have made the difference between victory and defeat in a close race.  His defeat made the Supreme Court appointments of John Roberts and Samuel Alito possible, and for that many Democrats can never forgive him.  Democrats in 2004 never really voted for Kerry as much as they voted against Bush. He also chose John Edwards as his running mate, suggesting an inability to accurately judge another person's character. But he has his strengths.  He's since served as Secretary of State.  As Secretary of State, he helped negotiate the now-imperiled Iran deal.  He doesn't owe allegiance to either the centrists or the progressives.  At a time when there are still hard feelings between the two wings, that can be an asset.

Don't get me wrong. I'm still for Martin O'Malley.  But I wouldn't dismiss Kerry, who will be 77 in January 2021, out of hand.  Incidentally, he would not only be the oldest man elected President if he won, but he'd be the first failed Democratic presidential nominee to get another shot at the White House since Adlai Stevenson in 1956.  To respond to the inevitable point that Stevenson still lost, I would argue that Stevenson didn't have the luck of having as an opponent a man like Donald Trump.

Stevenson lost a rematch with President Eisenhower . . . a man who was in some ways like Kerry.