Democrats are the "choice" party.
They should be consistent. Choice on climate.
Democrats are for choice on issues of sex, gender, and reproduction. Let people do their own thing. It's nobody's business but one's own.
More problematic is the trans and gender issue. Standard Democratic policy supports gender choice, but third parties get involved. "My pronouns are. . ." is not about what a person calls oneself. The words are instructions to others on what words they are supposed to use, even when it seems to them unintuitive and inaccurate. Male-to-female trans athletes and trans people in traditional gendered spaces are another instance of forced interaction. It isn'tyourown thing. It is now our thing. This compulsory interaction creates political pushback and Republicans are exploiting it.
There was a lesson there for Democrats. The values and norms of educated, urban and suburban, diversity-accepting people -- the new heart of the Democratic Party -- can enjoy acceptance so long as they don't rub too hard against people who make other personal choices.
Democrats did not analogize from abortion choice to Covid-vaccination choice. There were good arguments that the issues were fundamentally different. After all, at first at least, vaccinations appeared to reduce transmission to others, not just the severity of the disease to oneself. Democratic governors were feeling their way amid emerging information. But when that presumption appeared not to be true, and vaccinated people do sometimes transmit the disease, and vaccinations were about personal safety, Democrats were slow to adjust. Democrats looked to have switched roles with the abortion-banning right and became the choice-denying busybody. That hurt them politically.
The Democratic climate agenda risks continuing the pattern of failing to read the room on choice and compulsion. Commercial feedlot beef and hog farming may well be an environmental and climate disaster -- I think it is -- but people who eat meat object to being shamed for their food choices. People who have investments in natural gas cookstoves or home heating systems don't welcome criticism of their choices or having progressive cities' governments ban them. A mere decade ago serious cooks removed electric stoves to switch to gas, the supposedly superior cooking technology among the cognoscenti. The reverse in polarity requires a fast adjustment in attitude. The overwhelming majority of Americans have internal combustion engines in their vehicles. They fully expect to drive them for several hundred thousand miles -- or to sell them to a succession of future buyers who will continue to drive them that long. Electric vehicles are expensive, and refueling is still a problem that makes them impractical for many, including people who need to haul things or pull trailers. Green New Deal policies and messages against fossil fuels strike many of my neighbors as ideology trumping practicality. Few people object to electric cars, per se, either for themselves or others. They fear progressive ideologues will take away their choice to buy what makes sense for themselves.
Democratic climate activists may well be exactly right on the science on natural gas, on fossil fuels, and electric vehicles. I expect they are. But they will succeed in electing Trump and a Congress sworn to unwind everything Biden did and that climate activists want if their policies are about prohibitions and limitations of choice. Their policies and messaging need to be about creating creating real-life affordable alternatives. Americans will embrace greener energy when it is approximately as reliable, inexpensive, convenient, and available as are fossil fuels. And then it won't take government mandates. The solution to a greener America is largely technological. Democrats are the progressive party. They need to express their confidence in progress.
If Democrats try to take away choices, or force people to make ones that are inconvenient and more expensive, they will have the same result as GOP legislatures who try to end abortion choice. They will elect their opposition.
Exactly.
First, we need not ride a pronoun pony to perdition; as an individual, I try to honor others' choices, but it's crazy to make a fetish of anything.
Second, the big, important moves on climate are a matter of carrots>>>>>>sticks. Pay people to make individual decisions that are in the interest of all of us: heat pumps, distributed energy production and storage, EVs, and so on. Support nascent, promising technologies and industries: better anodes, ultracapacitors, carbon capture and sequestration, better biosurveillance, vaccine platforms, and so on--let people make some fortunes and benefit humanity (and the rest of the natural world).
Great blog today Peter. Approaching our differences with tolerance and goodwill goes a long way toward getting along and ultimately establishes trust.