Weekly Selection of Thought Provoking Articles
The Atlantic: Progressives Can't Repeat The Mistakes of 2008
Luke Savage discusses how the Progressive Left cannot become complacent following Trump’s defeat and must stand firm in their demand of key progressive positions.
“In 2008, amid an economic crisis and a national hunger for change, progressives allowed a Democratic victory to drown their ambitions and inspire a culture of deference and passivity. As Donald Trump leaves office, in the aftermath of street protests and as a pandemic ravages America, it’s a history the activist left cannot afford to repeat.”
Jacobin: Explaining Our Morbid Political Symptoms
Daniel Denvir interviews political theorist Wendy Brown to discuss the populist appeal of Donald Trump in the context of the rise of Neoliberalism.
“We’re getting a deep suspicion of democracy as something that overreaches, that builds a state that legislates too much, that tries to push the common, tries to push social justice. We’re getting a population that has been fashioned by a form of reason in which social justice is simply wrong and actually an attack on freedom.”
Project Syndicate: Mission Sustainable Development
Jeffrey Sachs makes a case for the United States to recommit to the Sustainable Development Goals and envisions a possible pathway to decarbonize the U.S. energy system by 2050.
“My colleagues and I in the US chapter of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network have recently laid out a Zero-Carbon Action Plan (ZCAP) that charts a technological, financial, and employment pathway for decarbonizing the US energy system by 2050. Like the moonshot and subsequent US technology missions (including the creation of the Internet and the sequencing of the human genome), ZCAP envisions a public-private partnership to accomplish four key objectives: shifting all power generation to zero-carbon sources, mainly wind and solar energy; adoption of electric vehicles; converting buildings from oil and gas heating to electricity; and switching from coal, oil, and gas in industry to hydrogen and other “green” (zero-carbon) fuels.”
