| As the world emerges from the current Covid-19 pandemic, we should review strategies that enabled us to recover, and retain the ones that improved daily lives and global conditions. |
| The pandemic is also an urgent call for national and personal reinvention and rebalancing. After the Black Death came the Renaissance. From the depths of economic horror came Roosevelt’s New Deal. From this horror, so far, come the senseless twists and turns of the orange Narcissus.
Source: "Who Knows Where the Time Goes" By Roger Cohen - NY Times - May 1, 2020 As we struggle through the Covid-19 crisis — the greatest challenge to global health, national security and our economy since World War II — we must ask again how we can emerge a more just, equitable and cohesive nation. Now is the time to rebuild better — our economy, our health care and education systems, our democratic institutions — so that we cure the root causes of our collective disease. Long before Covid-19, partisan gerrymandering, voter exclusion, dark money and foreign interference combined to erode the integrity of our electoral system. Congress must ensure all eligible Americans can vote safely by fully funding (roughly $5 billion) and requiring all states to provide these things: no-excuse absentee voting by mail; at least 20 days of early voting; curbside or drive-through voting; accommodations for the disabled; and accessible voting places in rural and tribal areas. Source: "It’s Not Enough to ‘Get Back to Normal" By Susan E. Rice - NY Times - April 28, 2020 Global greenhouse gas emissions are on track to plunge nearly 8 percent this year, the largest drop ever recorded, as worldwide lockdowns to fight the coronavirus have triggered an “unprecedented” decline in the use of fossil fuels, the International Energy Agency said in a new report on Thursday. More than 4 billion people are living in countries that have imposed partial or more extensive shutdowns on economic activity to slow the spread of the virus. By mid-April, the report found, energy use in many of those countries was 17 percent to 25 percent lower than it was in 2019, as factories idled, employees stopped driving to work and airlines grounded their flights. That would put global emissions back at levels last seen in 2010, wiping out an entire decade of growth in the use of fossil fuels worldwide. The projected annual drop in emissions would be six times the size of the decline seen after the global financial crisis in 2009 and a far bigger drop than at any point during the Great Depression or at the end of World War II, when much of Europe lay in ruins. This week, leaders from Germany, Britain, Japan and elsewhere held a video conference urging nations to invest in technology to reduce emissions, such as solar power or electric vehicles, as they chart their economic recovery efforts. “There will be a difficult debate about the allocation of funds,” said Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. “But it is important that recovery programs always keep an eye on the climate.” The world’s use of oil fell nearly 5 percent in the first quarter of this year, the report said. By March, global road transport was down nearly 50 percent, and air traffic was down 60 percent, compared to 2019. That slump in fuel demand has caused crude prices to crash worldwide, straining the budgets of major oil producers like Saudi Arabia and pushing drilling companies in places like Texas to the brink of bankruptcy. The world’s use of coal, the dirtiest of all fossil fuels, fell nearly 8 percent in the first quarter of the year. Much of that was triggered by early coronavirus shutdowns in China, the world’s biggest coal user. By contrast, wind and solar power have seen a slight uptick in demand during the pandemic. One big reason for that: Many countries are using significantly less electricity as office buildings, restaurants and movie theaters close. But because existing wind turbines and solar panels cost little to operate, they tend to get priority on electric grids, which means they are still operating closer to full capacity, while fossil-fuel plants are allowed to run less frequently. While experts noted that the current lockdowns won’t last forever, some expressed hope that they might reveal some of the benefits of switching to cleaner energy. In recent weeks, for instance, cities like Los Angeles and Milan have seen a dramatic reduction in air pollution and smog as fewer people drive and cars stay off the road. “I hope the striking improvements in air quality we’ve seen remind us what things could be like if we shifted to green power and electric vehicles,” said Rob Jackson, an earth scientist at Stanford University. Source: "Emissions Declines Will Set Records This Year. But It’s Not Good News." By Brad Plumer - NY Times - April 30, 2020 A recovery from the coronavirus crisis must not take us just back to where we were last summer. It is an opportunity to build more sustainable and inclusive economies and societies — a more resilient and prosperous world. Fossil fuel subsidies must end and polluters must pay for their pollution. Like the coronavirus, greenhouse gases respect no boundaries. Isolation is a trap. No country can succeed alone. Source: "A Time to Save the Sick and Rescue the Planet" By António Guterres - NY Times - April 28, 2020 (Mr. Guterres is the secretary general of the United Nations. Before that, he was the United Nations high commissioner for refugees.) The coronavirus{. . . } is allowing us to see with our own eyes how ready the natural world stands to reclaim the planet we have trashed, how eagerly and how swiftly it will rebound if we give it a chance. We are seeing how clear the waters of Venice can become in the absence of motorboats, how clear the air of New Delhi can become in the absence of cars. The pandemic is teaching us that all is not yet lost. Source: "Now We Know How Quickly Our Trashed Planet Can Heal" By Margaret Renkl NY Times -- April 27, 2020 The state unemployment systems that were supposed to help millions of jobless workers were full of boxes to check and mandates to meet that couldn’t possibly apply in a pandemic. Now these requirements have been getting in the way. Effectively, many states have been trying to scale up aid with systems built to keep claims low. The crush of claims has demanded of states not just more server capacity and call-center workers, but also an abrupt change in the premise of the safety net: Systems trained to treat each case as potentially fraudulent must now presume that millions have legitimately lost their jobs. No state unemployment system could have handled this smoothly. State offices have fielded more applications in a single day than they did in the worst weeks of the Great Recession. People talk about making these systems work better in a crisis, said Jennifer Pahlka, the founder of Code for America, who is now part of a team of volunteers helping states with their unemployment systems. “But if you’re poor in America, you’re having this kind of battle,” she said, “pretty much every day.” Now more than 30 million people — including middle-class workers who’ve never touched the safety net before — have seen firsthand what that means. Source: "States Made It Harder to Get Jobless Benefits. Now That’s Hard to Undo." By Emily Badger and Alicia Parlapiano - NY Times - April 30, 2020 At this point, even many Republicans acknowledge that the era of small government is over. (“Big-Government Conservatives Mount Takeover of G.O.P.,” said a recent Politico headline.) In such an environment, ambitious progressive ideas that once seemed implausible, at least in the short term, start to become more imaginable. “I do think there’s an F.D.R. moment,” said Senator Edward Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts and co-sponsor of the Green New Deal resolution, which calls for a huge new public works program to build environmentally sustainable infrastructure. “Like 1933 — which would be 2021 — we can see that it is now time to discuss universal child care, universal sick leave and a guaranteed income for everyone in our society.” “I’ve had people in my district, Silicon Valley, tech professionals who’ve lost their jobs,” Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, told me. “People who were doing well at small businesses who have either lost their jobs or faced extraordinary hardship, and suddenly they are now having to confront the difficulties of being uninsured. They’re having to confront the challenges of the private health system.” Khanna sees a much broader awareness “of how uncertain economic life can be,” he said, which creates a bigger coalition for progressive ideas to improve the social safety net. {Senator Elizabeth} Warren and Khanna recently released a proposal for what they’re calling an “Essential Workers Bill of Rights,” which folds many longtime progressive labor priorities into a plan to address our current emergency. The proposal includes a mandate for free adequate personal protective equipment, hazard pay, universal paid sick leave and paid family leave, a crackdown on employers that misclassify full-time employees as independent contractors, and protections for union organizing. That last part is important, because Warren believes we’re on the cusp of a new wave of labor mobilization. There have already been strikes, walkouts and other demonstrations across the country by workers forced to expose themselves to potential infection, including bus drivers, Amazon warehouse workers and employees at fast-food restaurants. Nurses have taken to the streets. “Whether it is slog-it-out bargaining over safety measures or bold legislative moves, unions see their coronavirus activism as the beginning of a new era for the labor movement,” said a Los Angeles Times article. The economy was always more fragile than the top-line numbers suggested; in some surveys a majority of Americans said they were living paycheck to paycheck before the coronavirus hit. But now the economy’s weakness is no longer a matter of debate. Now, with so many of our assumptions about the way our country works collapsing around us, it’s progressives stepping forward with a set of answers they’ve been refining for years. “We are going to be faced with a national rebuilding project at a scale that has never existed in our lifetimes,” said {Andrew} Yang. The biggest battle in politics now is over who will control that project, and whom it will prioritize. Source: "The New Great Depression Is Coming. Will There Be a New New Deal?" By Michelle Goldberg - NY Times - 5/2/2020 Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, on Monday said what many in her caucus have been saying for weeks: A guaranteed income to help Americans struggling because of the coronavirus pandemic is “worthy of attention.” As recently as just a few months ago, an income guarantee was widely written off as unrealistic. But two-thirds of the members of the House Democratic caucus now support the idea of some kind of cash payment that would continue until the end of the crisis. The pandemic may have precipitated this change of heart, but the pandemic alone isn’t why we need a guaranteed income. The American economy is plagued by instability and fragility, much of it caused by staggering levels of inequality. If we want to create a more resilient economy and country, a guaranteed income should be permanent American policy, not just an emergency measure to help with this crisis. We have ended up with an economy that is not only unjust but also stunted in its growth and more fragile than before. The coronavirus crisis has heightened and made more vivid what was already clear to many: The unfairness of our economy is a matter of life and death for millions of Americans. The United States needs a new economic framework designed for resiliency in the face of disruption and change. A guaranteed income — one that would provide $1,000 for every adult and $500 per child per month — should be its centerpiece. The pandemic has also exposed how many Americans teeter close to the brink financially. This is why government can’t be relegated to providing just a “safety net” for people who find themselves on the losing end of otherwise fair markets. The markets themselves are structured to provide short-term profits for some, rather than long-term resiliency for many. Proposals vary, but a consensus is emerging that every American adult in a family making less than $100,000 should get at least $1,000 a month, and each child in these families should get $500 a month. A family of four would receive $3,000 a month or $36,000 a year. The coronavirus crisis has created staggering levels of suffering. Let it be a reason we commit to a more moral and just structure for our economy, one that ensures all Americans are better prepared for adversity in the future. Source: "Why Americans Need a Guaranteed Income" By Chris Hughes - NY Times - May 1, 2020 |
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