Saturday, October 20, 2018

On October 19, 2018, Dan Corjescu published a blog post titled The New Politics of Climate Change on Counterpunch.org. Dan Corjescu is an activist for the Green party and writes almost exclusively for Counterpunch. Corjescu's credibility and background does not extend any farther than merely being passionate for environmentalism and fighting climate change, but regardless, I agree with him. His intended audience is the American public and since this editorial was posted to a liberal-leaning blog, it seems that he is not spending as much effort convincing his readers that climate change is an issue as he is describing potential ways that political parties need to be addressing climate change. He claims that climate change is an urgent issue and that as it accelerates, it will become a more prominent and "boiling" issue within political parties. Corjescu states that there will be two political outcomes. One outcome being reactionary and one outcome being progressive. He briefly skims over the reactionary outcome and states that it will tend to "put up strong national defenses and seek out convenient sacrificial lambs such as migrants and refugees." The remainder of the article focuses on the progressive outcome and that the existing American political parties need to broadly transform themselves or else other parties "such as the Greens" will seize dominance. In his final paragraphs, Corjescu suggests that the green party employs tactics similar to the ones used by minority groups in the civil rights era such as "Earth Marches" and "Green Demonstrations" in order to be seen as more "hip," "cool," and appealing.  Overall, I agree with Corjescu and the pressing necessity of more legislation for decarbonization and technological-ecological innovation.

No comments: