| Pronouns | He/him |
| Location | Providence, RI, USA |
Another voice from Newport, #rhodeisland saying yes to #offshorewind as a means to combat the #climatecrisis and save our oceans.
Part of the community voices by Climate Action RI.
This post by local #RhodeIsland environmental journalist Frank Carini nails how the false promise of #SMRs is being used as a cynical delaying tactic.
The title says it all: We can't wait.
So the Dems have been playing the centrist "all of the above" / "we're not anti-fracking" line instead. Which has worked, tactically, for awhile.
But maybe it's time to stop trying to straddle that fence and get foursquare on with the job that the IRA's title said it was about.
And try acting on a clear & coherent theory of change, rather than tactical and self-contradictory nuances. Stand 100% for #energytransition.
Just sayin'.
2/2
If voters failed to turn out for Democrats primarily because of economic pain caused by inflation...
And if inflation is largely due to high oil prices (see @TransitionShow Ep. 221)...
And the GOP are all-in on FF...
Then the Dems should have led with climate action.
BUT...
It would take long & sustained effort to educate the electorate to understand all this, amid a barrage of GOP BS about EVs vs. ICE...
1/2
My larger point is that the problems that the Democratic Party and #democracy in America are facing are structural, and will not be easily resolved.
Tactical responses like more GOTV volunteers at election time isn't going to cut it. We need deeper structural work.
That's my thesis. Mastodon readers - what do you think? Let me know with responses.
/7/end
NAFTA was a decisive step in the great off-shoring of the U.S. industrial base.
Another decisive year was 1996, which brought us not only the WTO, but Fox News. So just as we were starting to destroy our manufacturing sector, a new right-wing propaganda network was emerging to indoctrinate Americans, including blaming immigrants and people of color for the woes that the white working class was experiencing.
A long time coming, but in the end a perfect recipe for #MAGA #Fascism.
/6
Some of the problem here is a failure by Democrats to communicate what they have done economically for Americans. Some of it is probably that the new jobs are just now arriving, and don't make up for what communities lost in their industrial heyday.
I don't mean to discount the racism and misogyny that likely played a role in Harris' defeat (particularly in the South). But I think that in many ways, the trends that caused this loss in 2024 started not in 2020, but in 1992, with NAFTA. /5
Some of the problem is geography; for solar and battery factories, these are mostly coming to the South, and only a few in the part of the country that has been most hollowed out by deindustrialization: the Midwest.
If we lost the Blue Wall - maybe this isn't entirely unrelated. /4
Energy Transition Show
Chris Nelder 🤘
Joe Philip