[GWSG] Fusing with Trump; strangers; On Tyranny; unstable by fossils; coastal risks; hardier oysters

[Tilley, Al]

1. Why are some Trump followers impervious to arguments and evidence on climate and even to their personal experience of its effects? One explanation holds that it is possible for engaged followers to fuse their identify with a leader. “A sense of deprivation—real or perceived threats to socioeconomic status—also seems to leave people inclined to fuse.” “The process of de-fusing, then, might involve offering alternative systems of creating consistency and order. “     https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/09/identity-fusion-trump-allegiance/598699/

Perhaps the popularity of the Green New Deal comes in part from the kind of community it suggests as a goal—inclusive, supportive, successful, at home in the world. Such a prospect could be de-fusing.


2. Berkeley sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild wondered how people could support political forces which worked against their own interest. She set out to discover how people around the environmentally savaged community of Lake Charles, LA, felt about the Tea Party and then Trump (which they largely supported), servants of the same fossil fuel industry which had victimized them. What she found is suggested by the title of her book Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right (2016; paper ed. 2018). Her ideas are consistent with a frame of identity fusion, and with the prospect that the dislocations from the climate crisis can create conditions friendly to tyranny. Thanks to Jim Crooks for suggesting the book.  https://smile.amazon.com/Strangers-Their-Own-Land-Mourning/dp/1620973499/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=strangers+in+their+own+land&qid=1569861519&s=books&sr=1-1


3. Concerning the way social dislocation can serve the interests of aspirant tyrants, and how we might resist, Yale historian Timothy Snyder’s book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century is a quick and rewarding read. https://smile.amazon.com/Tyranny-Twenty-Lessons-Twentieth-Century/dp/0804190119/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2N8NIG4KBVYSP&keywords=tyranny+book&qid=1569862522&s=gateway&sprefix=tyranny%2Caps%2C185&sr=8-1


4. Fossil fuels are not only at the root of climate dislocations, but susceptible to attacks which create more disruption—and more opportunities for political mischief. A transition to renewable energy would serve stability.  https://climatecrocks.com/2019/09/30/we-all-know-it-fossil-fuels-lead-to-war-time-to-move-on/


5. What does a bank do with a mortgage of a property at risk from such climate disasters as hurricanes? One option is to sell it to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, privatized lenders prohibited from charging a premium to insure for natural disasters but backed by the taxpayers when such disasters materialize. https://climatecrocks.com/2019/09/27/banks-quietly-moving-flood-risk-to-taxpayers/

We must find some way to diminish the promotion of coastal settlement in threatened areas. That means somehow neutralizing the incentives offered by FEMA Flood Insurance and disaster coverage.



6. Selective breeding is hardening farmed oysters against seawater acidification, which impairs their ability to form sound shells. https://e360.yale.edu/digest/farmed-oysters-show-resilience-to-ocean-acidification

Food security in my region of Northeast FL once depended on oysters. Some of our best hills are actually oyster shell middens left by the Timucuan Indians. Oysters may be important to us again, if we are graceful enough as we submerge to clean up our brownfields, septic fields, and buried tanks of rotten gasoline.

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