Section A, Page 11
America’s greenhouse gas emissions from energy and industry rose 6.2 percent in 2021 as the economy began recovering from pandemic lows and the nation’s coal plants roared back to life.
It's not front-page news, but the NYT dutifully reports this anyway, on Page 11.
I'm not the first person to note that some of the same restrictions we adopted to fight COVID would be needed to fight global warming & climate change -- such as maximum telework for white collar staff, and dramatically less air travel. Our greenhouse gas emissions fell by 10% during 2020. Not enough to solve the ongoing problem, but a decent down payment, if we'd continued moving forward on that axis.
What we think of as "normal life" or "the economy" in the US requires not only that we deny how deadly COVID remains (1500 deaths/day), but also that we deny global warming & climate change. I've written before that this denial of global warming & climate change may be driving us insane, both individually, and as a culture, because of the gigantic disconnect between what we'd have to do to stop global warming & climate change, versus the daily lives we lead. The amount of sacrifice required to actually fix the problem ...
So Republicans would do nothing. Democrats propose policies that aren't enough to fix the problem, and then fail to enact them. Greens propose policies that would fix the problem (Green New Deal), except without detailing the actual sacrifices required -- Net Zero by 2030, while waving a magic wand and simultaneously increasing both public benefits and wages -- yes, your living standard would somehow go up while we rapidly phase out both fossil and nuclear fuels.
-----
Elsewhere on the NYT website, but not in the print edition (yet?), Ezra Klein exhorts Democrats to do more than complain to their friends and relatives about the state of the world, but to get directly involved in local politics. For me as a federal supervisor, I've long been circumscribed by both the Hatch Act and my own limited amount of energy, after full-time job, chores, exercise, relationships. Plus being generally introverted as a personality. Some of my favorite time is when I wake before dawn and write in my journal about stuff, or when I can get away from the house and watch porn while playing with toys, or when I can play a board game solitaire on the dining room table. I barely see anybody in person outside of the house as it is.
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A career in public service, that's what I've got. And I'm not alone. Over 20% of employed adults in Maryland work for local, state, or federal governments.
Not counting the uniformed military or intelligence agencies, 22 million people work for the government.
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Yeah, but I don't do any sort of volunteer work. Instead I've written for years about how I've felt stuck in "peak responsibility" and how I look forward to having fewer responsibilities in the future.
Not to have zero responsibilities, but fewer. And then different.
-----
With my job, although it seems I don't write about it much, there are many periods of time during which I feel overwhelmed by my To Do List. These periods can go on for weeks or even months.
Because I often feel overwhelmed by my official To Do List already, the thought of adding some sort of volunteer activity to my resume ... slays me.
Millions of people must feel the same way. And then add on top of that the responsibilities of child raising -- I don't have that responsibility, but so many people do. And if you belong to a church, that presents additional obligations.
I think the anarchist in me rebels against having any more time-sucking responsibilities than I already do.
To get to the point where I have additional "spoons" left for volunteering seems to require either living alone or retiring from my job or both.
-----
I don't think I could've survived as an attorney in private practice. I can barely handle a 40-hour workweek.
It's not front-page news, but the NYT dutifully reports this anyway, on Page 11.
I'm not the first person to note that some of the same restrictions we adopted to fight COVID would be needed to fight global warming & climate change -- such as maximum telework for white collar staff, and dramatically less air travel. Our greenhouse gas emissions fell by 10% during 2020. Not enough to solve the ongoing problem, but a decent down payment, if we'd continued moving forward on that axis.
What we think of as "normal life" or "the economy" in the US requires not only that we deny how deadly COVID remains (1500 deaths/day), but also that we deny global warming & climate change. I've written before that this denial of global warming & climate change may be driving us insane, both individually, and as a culture, because of the gigantic disconnect between what we'd have to do to stop global warming & climate change, versus the daily lives we lead. The amount of sacrifice required to actually fix the problem ...
So Republicans would do nothing. Democrats propose policies that aren't enough to fix the problem, and then fail to enact them. Greens propose policies that would fix the problem (Green New Deal), except without detailing the actual sacrifices required -- Net Zero by 2030, while waving a magic wand and simultaneously increasing both public benefits and wages -- yes, your living standard would somehow go up while we rapidly phase out both fossil and nuclear fuels.
-----
Elsewhere on the NYT website, but not in the print edition (yet?), Ezra Klein exhorts Democrats to do more than complain to their friends and relatives about the state of the world, but to get directly involved in local politics. For me as a federal supervisor, I've long been circumscribed by both the Hatch Act and my own limited amount of energy, after full-time job, chores, exercise, relationships. Plus being generally introverted as a personality. Some of my favorite time is when I wake before dawn and write in my journal about stuff, or when I can get away from the house and watch porn while playing with toys, or when I can play a board game solitaire on the dining room table. I barely see anybody in person outside of the house as it is.
-----
A career in public service, that's what I've got. And I'm not alone. Over 20% of employed adults in Maryland work for local, state, or federal governments.
Not counting the uniformed military or intelligence agencies, 22 million people work for the government.
-----
Yeah, but I don't do any sort of volunteer work. Instead I've written for years about how I've felt stuck in "peak responsibility" and how I look forward to having fewer responsibilities in the future.
Not to have zero responsibilities, but fewer. And then different.
-----
With my job, although it seems I don't write about it much, there are many periods of time during which I feel overwhelmed by my To Do List. These periods can go on for weeks or even months.
Because I often feel overwhelmed by my official To Do List already, the thought of adding some sort of volunteer activity to my resume ... slays me.
Millions of people must feel the same way. And then add on top of that the responsibilities of child raising -- I don't have that responsibility, but so many people do. And if you belong to a church, that presents additional obligations.
I think the anarchist in me rebels against having any more time-sucking responsibilities than I already do.
To get to the point where I have additional "spoons" left for volunteering seems to require either living alone or retiring from my job or both.
-----
I don't think I could've survived as an attorney in private practice. I can barely handle a 40-hour workweek.