The Common Good

Without an overwhelming victory for democracy on November 3, I’ll be glad to die.

Trump is the ultimate expression of a basic misperception, that private goods matter more than the public goods, that national well-being matters more than global well-being, that fences and borders can isolate and separate us.

This is especially true when it comes to the environment.

My children face a bleak future unless current climate trends are reversed. But the U.S. can’t change it alone. Every country must do its part.

The ice caps’ disappearance means many cities around the world are doomed. New Orleans is doomed. Miami is doomed. New York City is doomed. So are Calcutta, Mumbai, Shanghai, and Kuala Lumpur. Sea level rise means these places will soon be underwater.

Meanwhile, the methane of the Siberian tundra is bubbling to the surface. Fires in the Amazon and West mean the Earth can no longer breathe. The “habitable” part of the U.S. will be cut by two-thirds within 50 years. The oceans are warming so that, along with overfishing, all that’s left will be jellyfish.

In past bouts of global warming, when the ice caps disappeared, nature adjusted. Cooling trends returned and nature came back. With man-made global warming, there’s no natural reversal. It takes 80 grams of energy to melt a gram of ice. Once the ice is melted, 80 grams of energy take its temperature to 112.

I’ll be gone by 2100, but what about your grandkids? Without basic, systemic, global change they face an absolute hellscape of climate refugees, mass starvation, war, and pestilence. They will curse our names from their deathbeds (assuming they have beds to die in).

But here’s the good news.

We can beat this. We have the technology. The great task of terra re-form can be made real.

We have the desalinization technology to fill the drinking needs of the West Coast. All we need do is put a price on water. Solar panels and wind turbines can provide cheaper energy than natural gas. All we need do is deploy and connect them. Batteries are showing dramatic improvement, and energy can be stored simply by pumping it uphill. We just need to adapt micro-grids that are more resilient and can distribute the power. People in India and Africa can use solar stoves, if they have them, just as they now use cellphones to become part of the global conversation.

We need to scale all these solutions, and more, accelerating current plans for being carbon neutral by 2050. We can do it at a profit, but only if we invest in research and demand. Trump is preventing investment in new technology by focusing on military arms and tax cuts that go to capital. Stocks and land are overvalued. That money is going to be lost.

Global trade means all kinds of lifeforms can travel at what is, for them, hyper-speed. But we don’t have any choice. We must have trade.

This requires new attitudes in state and local policy. Right now, my hometown of Atlanta faces an invasion of pythons from the south, rabbits from the west, deer, and coyotes from the north, and all the insects or microscopic creatures riding on their backs.

Every place faces similar problems, but the details differ. Only cooperation is going to mitigate them. We need to set policies on which animals to protect, and which to kill. Some invasive species aren’t dangerous, others are. Do you see how far we are today from starting the work that needs to be done?

We also need a completely new foreign policy. Right now, we’re allied with the oil powers and fighting with China, the world’s second technology power. It should be the other way around. We need to crush oil, now. Yeah, I know all about Xinjiang and Hong Kong and Xi’s designs on the rest of Southeast Asia. But China is already the leading producer, and buyer, of solar panels. We need all their creativity to get this done.

We need to be less focused on how countries are run and more on what they do, either for or against the Earth. There is only one world. Borders are artificial. Focus on the planet’s health, not your ideological preferences. Ideologies will compete. Liberal democracy will win if it’s allowed to compete freely.

While Joe Biden has talked about investing in green technology, he has done it from a traditional nationalistic perspective. I get that, it’s politically correct. But we have a planet to save. We can’t be worrying just about ourselves. If Brazil burns down the rest of the Amazon it won’t matter if GM has union workers making electric cars.

For all these reasons COVID-19 is an opportunity. It’s the first pandemic that’s hitting the entire world at the same time. It is proof that public health works when private health doesn’t. This is true for everyone, including the rich.

It’s how we respond to common challenges that will determine our fate, and it’s only possible to respond adequately if there’s a consensus. For domestic policy, that means a health care system which provides care, and an unemployment system that keeps people at home when they need to be. It means prioritizing the public interest over any private interest.

There are going to be more pandemics. We have more than this novel coronavirus to worry about. The only way forward is with massive investment in science, and in scaling the results globally. Otherwise we’ll be right back here in 4 years, or 10.

This year is a turning point, not because of Trump’s personality but because of his policies. No man is an island. No city is an island. No country is an island. We are all part of the main, and we need to act like it or the 22^nd century will be ruled by cockroaches.