Let’s stop bemoaning the need for “radical” action and let’s just get to work with what we know can work—because what can work has worked and is working.
The Climate Historian Substack, in a post titled, “On Billionaires, Numbness, and the Futures We’re Allowed to Imagine,” with the subtitle “The problem is not only that billionaires have too much money. It is that we have started believing they have the right to decide what comes next.” It’s a good Substack, with good writing and thinking. Although, notwithstanding its qualities, I often end up skipping it, what with everything else on my feed list.
The Climate Historian is written by Athena Drakou, and she is “an independent researcher and environmental scientist working at the intersection of environmental science, political history, and geopolitics.” She is “particularly interested in the history of climate change politics and how ideology and competing perspectives influence climate change policies.” On her About page, she answers the question of why she writes about climate change:
One day someone said to me that I write as if I am running out of time. He was right. I carry that sense of urgency with me every single day — a constant feeling that I am running out of time. I write because no matter how hard I try, it never feels like enough to make people truly care about this fragile planet we call home.
Her recent post’s title caught my attention. I’m a would-be professional imaginer, although this is also known as a writer. I am a fellow traveler with her on the issue of our current dilemma with billionaires. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, no doubt: the category of “billionaire” should not exist and the fact that there are billionaires is a pathology that illuminates our society’s ill health. As for “numbness,” this seems an accurate descriptor for how most of us feel in this time of polycrisis, at least those of us fortunate enough not to be desperately scrambling for basic necessities of food and shelter. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people scrambling, and even here in the United States, although there are billions of others across the world caught up in a daily existential crisis. This makes the existence of billionaires look sick under such circumstances.
There are structural economic problems with billionaires, too. If you want a succinct definition of the main structural problem, I suggest you check out GarysEconomics on YouTube, Instagram, and other such platforms; there’s a memoir and a documentary, too. Gary Stevenson emerged from Britain’s working class to become a wildly successful financial trader at Citibank, then went to Oxford. He now has an significant online footprint that he uses to draw attention to how today’s economic situation advantages the wealthy over everyone else. His core concepts are straightforward, and summarized by Google Overview thusly:
- Passive Income: Billionaires make massive amounts of passive income from large portfolios of assets.
- Buying Assets: Because they cannot spend all this cash on daily consumption, they buy up property and investments.
- Falling Standards: This pushes up prices and locks ordinary people out of owning homes or building wealth, lowering living standards.
We are all aware these days that billionaires (and more modest multi-millionaires, too) consider politicians and the institution of The Supreme Court of the United States asset classes.
Radical Solutions?
There are many definitions of polycrisis, but The Climate Historian provides one as good as many other such efforts:
We are living in a world defined by climate change, nuclear risk that most of us have simply stopped thinking about, the arrival of AI, rising misogyny, expanding inequality, and above all this, a tiny club of ultra-wealthy individuals who are convinced that this planet and maybe a few nearby ones is their private VIP lounge. Given all of that, it seems to me that it’s only logical to fight for the future we actually want, rather than the one being sold to us.
Amen, I say. Where I disagree is when Drakou says the following:
There are no easy solutions, but I believe that we can solve our problems. They require systemic changes, and some of them may seem radical at first. But we are at a point that only radical changes can save us. Pretending otherwise is its own kind of denial.
Yes, required solutions are hard. But are the solutions radical?
Oh my gosh, it turns out that I’m the conservative. I want to conserve the Constitution. I want to conserve common sense and long-term beneficial projects for the country and the world. I want to conserve the planet as habitable for mankind. There’s nothing radical about it.
Of course, “radical” is one of those Swiss Army Knife definitions, including in mathematics, chemistry, and linguistics, but I’m sure “radical” as used in The Climate Historian post mentioned at the start is standing in for political/social reform that is rapid, sweeping, or extreme fundamental changes in laws, governments, or social structures. Some of the radical proposals for moving forward on addressing climate change include de-growth or ending capitalism. These are indeed radical choices. But a lot of what needs doing to address climate change, which in turn helps address other aspects of the polycrisis, are things we’ve done before.
Been There, Done That, Let’s Do It Again
The thing we should keep in mind and try to promote within the public discussion of the polycrisis is that we have the means to make changes and that many of these solutions are not radical, but rather part of our recent history. Heather Cox Richardson points to this when she notes that during the Eisenhower Administration (1953-1961) the upper income tax bracket was 91 percent, corporate taxes were much higher, the federal estate tax for estates over $10 million was 77 percent and in many of the states there were state estate taxes, too. Back then, working people could be a one-income family, buy a home, a car (or two), go on vacations, and send the kids to college. The post-war period that extended well into the 1970s is rightly described as an American economic golden age where most people shared in fast rising productivity gains.
Back then, the Republican administration was directed to maintain New Deal social programs, with a duty to provide a social safety net, regulate the economy, and invest in and protect infrastructure. Hell, there were proposals from the Republicans back then for health care programs, too. Most adults born before and during the Eisenhower administration have some idea of Eisenhower’s view about military spending; in his “Chance for Peace” speech, when he talked about the dangers of the Military/Industrial Complex, he warned that heavy spending on weapons and war was literally a theft from citizens who needed food, clothing, education, and health.
No, I’m not forgetting Jim Crow and other deep problems of the time. Still, the argument holds: What is a radical change is that most of what’s mentioned in the above paragraph is now out of reach for the vast majority of Americans.
It’s Even Good Business
If you want to dive in deeper as to why clean energy is good for business—and, of course, a good tool in the battle against climate change—check out a report I ran on Gemini, “Economic Imperatives of Clean Energy Transitions: Microeconomic Advantages, Fossil Fuel Stranding Risks, and Externalities Abatement.” Here’s the opening paragraph to the analysis:
The global energy economy is undergoing a structural reallocation of capital from fossil fuel extraction and thermal generation to clean energy technologies. This transition is propelled by fundamental market dynamics, capital efficiency, risk management, and microeconomic competitiveness1. Clean energy technologies offer superior long-term economic structures characterized by zero-marginal-cost generation, rapidly declining levelized costs, and insulation from volatile global commodity markets1. Conversely, continued investment in fossil fuel infrastructure introduces mounting financial liabilities, including asset stranding, regulatory cost escalation, elevated capital costs, and exposure to severe external health and environmental damage costs2.
Obviously, things can remain “business of usual,” although we need to understand that today’s “business as usual” is highly unusual to most of us living in America. The intense threat to America’s democracy itself is highly unusual. There have been plenty of periods in America’s history when business interests got too close to the halls of government (Heather Cox Richardson offers great perspective on this history) and like any human institution, our government of the people, by the people, for the people has varying degrees of corruption. Today’s corruption, unfortunately, seems the clear winner is that particular sweepstakes, and what’s more, the corruption rampant in the Trump Administration today is actively bad for business. Unless, that is, your business is to stuff as much money into your pockets in order to score high on the power scale even as your world grows more and more unlivable. I’m pretty sure the world growing more and more unlivable is generally bad for business.
Of course, there’s the failure by the government to capture the resources needed to undertake the sorts of programs, policies, and projects needed to speed up the transition to clean energy to more quickly reduce carbon and greenhouse gases, thus slowing down worsening climate change. That government failure comes about through a many decades-long crusade (cf. Louis Powell Memo) by money interests to alter tax law and related policies that in turn further enrich the wealthy, thus providing yet more influence upon the government. The ultra rich, by accumulating absurd levels of wealth, are starving much needed systemic changes such as the clean energy transition, along with many other programs (e.g., child care, housing, healthcare) that would make regular people more productive, never mind happier!
The fossil fuel industry is a strong governmental influence force, and, yes, there are plenty of other money interest groups, too. Even though the business model for fossil fuels is becoming more clearly understood as downright lousy, the influence of the fossil fuel industry keeps profits up by cheating. How does the industry cheat? Well, for instance, costs directly associated with the exploration, extraction, transportation, refinement, transportation, and use of their products are indirectly passed to the public, making the use of fossil fuels seem more economically competitive. Fortunately, there is a growing sense of the trickery underway. Unfortunately, the deceit of the fossil fuel industry—I’m looking at you, C-Suiters!—is pushing the world’s climate into a worsening crisis. Someday soon, we’ll find ourselves puzzled as to why these enemies of humanity haven’t already been arrested and imprisoned, their ill-gotten gains confiscated to settle a tsunami of lawsuits and criminal liability.
Don’t be confused: President Big Oil Stooge has been bought by Big Oil and is delivering to his masters. He’s suppressing wind farms. His executive orders disadvantaging clean energy generation interconnects puts fossil fuel generation well ahead in the interconnect queues. There’s an astoundingly large supply of clean energy—in various stages from planning through completion—that is made artificially unavailable to the grid, even while old and extremely expensive coal plants are ordered to stay online. In the United States, nearly 1,800 gigawatts (GW) of clean energy generation and battery storage projects sit in regional grid interconnection queues, representing roughly 85% of the 2,060 GW in total proposed capacity. This isn’t just a thumb being pressed to the scale; this is the whole Republicans’ elephant sitting on Big Oil’s side in the marketplace, without any sense of true balance.
Here are some highlights of the Trump Administration’s specifically anti-clean energy policies and orders:
- Offshore Wind Leasing Freezes and Lease Terminations
- Energy Emergency Directives and Fast-Tracking Thermal Power
- Asymmetric NEPA Reviews and Federal Siting Priorities
- Supply Chain Tariffs Triggering Restudies
- Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act and Market Rule Interventions
The fact of the matter is that Trump and Big Oil are the radical actors. Clean energy is sensible and fits quite soundly into rational processes of markets by replacing less efficient and costly products or processes with cheaper and better ones.
Oh my gosh, it turns out that I’m the conservative. I want to conserve the Constitution. I want to conserve common sense and long-term beneficial projects for the country and the world. I want to conserve the planet as habitable for mankind. There’s nothing radical about it.