Jay Inslee knows perfectly well from multiple failed climate ballot initiatives in Washington State that there is no secret cache of climate voters to be mobilized — if it’s an important issue, then work within the constraints of reality don’t lie to people.
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People who work on foreign aid and international development manage to:
(a) Believe the cause is important on the merits
(b) Understand that helping poor foreigners is not a huge political winner
That’s life. They deal with it like adults.
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Climate, due to the global nature of the problem, just has a lot of the same structural features.
It is inherently hard to ask people to bear short-term costs for the sake of future people in Nigeria — doesn’t mean “give up” but be realistic.
Insisting on treating this as a top-tier winning political issue when it isn’t is one of the factors that’s pushed American democracy to the brink.
You need to respect the voters’ actual clearly articulated priorities.
In the specific context of a depressed labor market, climate advocates eventually acknowledged this and reformulated an energy agenda for job creation.
But conditions have changed, and today it’s all about the cost of living and they haven’t adapted.
There is always going to be room for analytic work on energy policy, on climate science, on other aspects of pollution, on industrial and agricultural decarbonization, etc.
But Inslee and Climate Power lying to Democrats doesn’t help with any of that.
Barely inaugurated, the US president called for an evaluation of development aid programmes. How much is allocated to the continent? Which sectors are funds earmarked for, and in which countries? We offer an analysis in infographics.
