Rebecca Solnit on 2012, and on 2013 as "year zero"

I’ve been worrying myself lately, trying to imagine a positive future that I can actually believe.  As opposed to sinking into science-based Catastrophism.

Rebecca Solnit takes a different tack in her end-of-year essay for Tom Dispatch, and, I gotta say that, despite a few clunkers — e.g. “For millions of years, this world has been a great gift to nearly everything living on it” — it rings true. In fact, her overall approach to the what-the-hell-do-we-do-now problem, one that’s both accessible and encouraging, has clear advantages over my “we need to actually plan for a fair global transition” style of rationalism.

Solnit’s point, basically, is that fighting to save the world will allow us to live well — in the classical sense of living “a good life’ — even as we face the dark and iffy days ahead. And that, by pursing both solidarity and clarity, we might also find that we have a real chance at a desirable, and even emancipatory future.

“Everywhere people are at work to build a better world in which we — and some of the beauty of this world — will be guaranteed to survive. Everywhere they are at war with the forces threatening us and the planet. I usually avoid war metaphors, but this time it’s barely a metaphor. Our side isn’t violent, but it is engaged in battle, and people are putting their bodies on the line and their lives behind the cause. The other side is intent on maximizing its profit at the cost of nearly everything.”

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America's first "climate dividend"

Great piece in the Huffington Post today on California’s new climate regime.  Mike Sandler, in a piece called The Birth of Carbon Pricing and Delivering California’s First ‘Climate Dividend‘ can see what, alas, many climate activists miss — allowance auctions can be understood in a very positive light indeed. Sandler writes here of America’s first climate dividend and offers an analysis that is astute in both its details (which I will skip, hoping that you read the article) and its overall import.  He even quotes the mad utopians at the California Public Utility Commission on the commons logic that is carefully embedded in the new system:

“The equitable distribution of revenues recognizing the “public asset” nature of the atmospheric carbon sink refers to… the idea that the atmosphere is a commons to which all individuals have an equal claim…Returning revenues equally to all residential customers is more equitable and comports with the idea of common ownership of the atmosphere given that residential ratepayers will ultimately bear the increased costs as a result of the Cap and Trade program.”

Read the article.  It’s a relief after all the recent bad news.