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My Point of View by Jennifer Vogt-Erickson

 

This has already been a year of climate disasters with heavy tolls on individuals, businesses, the insurance industry and governments. Climate science predicted these outcomes, and it predicts worsening conditions based on the amount of carbon we continue to emit at a record pace.

That means that this year’s catastrophes will be fairly mild in retrospect.

A few weeks ago in this column, Brad Kramer made a number of straw man arguments and false dichotomies related to liberals and the environment. Well, I haven’t flown in an airplane since 2007. I’ve driven the same economy car for 14 years. My husband switched jobs so he could work from home, which saves over 200 miles per week of driving. I purchase a farm share every year to help support local agriculture.

We must build and support resilient systems now to prepare for climate shocks that will disrupt food and fuel supplies in the future.

But it takes more than our individual behavior. The wealthiest 10% in the US are much more responsible for climate change than the bottom half. Furthermore, Matthew Rozsa recently wrote in Salon that the top 0.033% are “super emitters” due to their “extensive use of private aircraft and yachts, as well as their massive real estate holdings all over the planet.” Banning private jets would reduce emissions and create zero inconvenience to almost everyone.

Republican leaders are still running interference for people and corporations causing the most climate damage, but I am grateful for ones like Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp who are at least choosing democracy over autocracy. They are fighting a tide of corruption in the GOP, and I hope they give more fellow Republicans courage to join them.

Kemp and his family have faced death threats for his refusal to cave to Donald Trump’s pressure. We’ve heard the tape where Trump tried to shake Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger down for extra votes, and Kemp said Trump will get his day in Georgia court for multiple felony charges related to his alleged attempt to commit election fraud against the state’s voters.

We know most Republican leaders go along with Trump even if they privately disagree. Self-preservation is understandable, but “freedom isn’t free.” History will show that Gov. Kemp is on the right side.

Last week Brad Kramer ludicrously claimed that Democrats will make Trump president again. If people vote for someone who is facing 91 felony indictments, that’s on them. Don’t blame it on anyone fighting for democracy and trying to preserve the rule of law. “Take responsibility for your own actions” is a basic principle of conservatism, but Kramer’s entire column encapsulates how the Republican party has surrendered conservatism in favor of shallow and dangerous authoritarian showmanship.

Similarly, the “liberal media” didn’t make Jason Aldean’s “Try That In A Small Town” a brief hit, Trump supporters did after CMT pulled Aldean’s video.

Here’s what we really try to do in small towns, like the one I grew up near: We try to keep our school, post office and churches open. We try to keep our grandmothers in their homes even though the grocery store they felt comfortable driving to has closed and their local shopping options are limited to a c-store and the muni. We check in on people, and we stop in the middle of the road to chat.

Aldean’s song celebrates vigilantism, not “law and order” conservatism nor small towns. Small towns are suffering from capitalist extraction, not carjackings. The newest buildings are often dollar stores and self-storage units with rows of closed metal eyelids.

Voters in rural areas are angry about the overall economy improving while we lag behind, but Trump’s promise is to burn down the government institutions that could fundamentally reform the situation. Nearly a century ago, FDR made government work for the people again. He steered us between the Scylla of economic bust and the Charybdis of rising authoritarianism by shoring up our capitalist system in a way that stabilized it and spread its benefits to a much wider segment of the population.

Both my grandfathers laced up their work boots early every morning knowing that the wheelchair-bound man in the White House had their backs and was supporting legislation like the Agricultural Adjustment Act that helped them stay on their farms. When one of them died relatively young, FDR’s Social Security checks helped my grandmother finish raising their seven children and keep the farm going.

We need to stop flirting with authoritarianism and reinforce democracy so we can take on the climate shocks that are coming while preventing the ones we still can. President Biden is our era’s FDR. Trump is a strongman type, full of braggadocio and threatening rhetoric like Mussolini, and it will not end well to trust him.

Jennifer Vogt-Erickson is a member of the Freeborn County DFL Party.