Influences
The people, events and institutions which have influenced me the most with respect to the environment include Chris Hedges, The Post Carbon Institute, Roger Hallam, the 2016 Dakota Access Pipeline Water Protest and my children.
Bottom-Line
Environmental collapse is accelerating, and is speeding the process of societal collapse. Climate change is being worsened by self-reinforcing feedbacks. An unstable climate makes agriculture more problematic and causes more natural disasters, which cost money for recovery. Beyond a certain point, money spent for recovery from one disaster makes less money available for recovery from the next disaster (already a problem for California). People feel more miserable, and, presented with competing narratives, become more partisan; on and on the cycle goes.
[Politicians] are flailing blindly. Above all, they are trying to do something that’s ultimately impossible—maintain economic growth in perpetuity. Doing anything else is inconceivable to them because failure to maintain growth will result in casualties. What policy makers actually need to do is minimize casualties in the absence of growth. Our best goal would be to adapt to declining energy while laying the groundwork for a sustainable post-fossil-fuel society. Pursuing that alternative goal will require intelligent and courageous action. Mistakes are inevitable. But if we all keep doing what seemed to make sense during the fossil-fuel era, we are likely to see a dismal if not horrific outcome.
— Richard Heinberg
What I Will Do If Elected
I will tell the truth to the American people about what we are facing and the path forward. I will marshal the power, platform and authority of the office to tell the hard truths. I will write policy to “minimize casualties in the absence of growth” through “intelligent and courageous action”.
In the US Senate, I’ll build on my experience as publisher to execute a national, public information project providing the public the truth about the crises we face. This will include an unvarnished account of the private sector players that have misled the public for decades and what we need to do now.
I will continually share a new vision and perspective for human survival, which, in the words of Joshua Farley, “centers on the fact that human life and the economy is sustained and contained by the global ecosystem…a [provides a] new, shared vision of a sustainable and desirable future emphasizing healthy ecosystems, communities, and people over ever-increasing consumption.”