Can I just say, yesterday I got spooked. It wasn’t just the fear of falling on black ice, it was also the hearings with all that gaslighting, inverting of sense and fact. How the lying seems to work. By now, too, I know that I always feel terrible after trump has been abroad. The embarrassment and the visible costs of his corrupt incompetence are harsh to note.
How fragile it all seems! I know people say it all the time, but yesterday I felt it in my body. How we might not make it. As a republic or a planet.
Prompt after writing prompt produces articulations of rage and despair about climate deniers and about the damage itself. After teaching Tuesday’s class (on Zoom because of the snow emergency), I thought, why does this keep coming up? Then yesterday: why doesn’t it come up more?
In fact, how can we talk about anything else?
Tomorrow there’s a climate strike in Copley Square. I’m not planning to go. It’s been a long week with K in China and back to back snowstorms. But I laud the young people skipping school to protest — getting their priorities right.
The first thing I listened to this morning was the inspiring, intelligent, beautiful Naomi Klein. She and Rebecca Solnit keep trying to remind us that climate denial is violence. Abuse. Part of a pattern of corporate greed.
It’s worth the six minute listen.
‘They are true planetary arsonists’ — Journalist and author @NaomiAKlein explains how Trump and other ‘strongmen’ leaders are perpetuating the climate crisis pic.twitter.com/OCllnqwHGY
— NowThis Impact (@nowthisimpact) December 5, 2019
PS A few weeks ago, I read Maddow’s book about ‘the world’s most destructive industry on earth’ — the fossil fuel industry. Amazing how much is about Russia.