The Washington Post - USA (2022-06-09)

THURSDAY, JUNE 9 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A

THURSDAY Opinion

E

ach day seems to bring us a zombie step closer to the climate apocalypse. Drought in the West. Fires in the Southwest. Power outages coming to the Midwest. Monkeypox and other strange diseases spreading. Food prices soaring. Migration and crime exploding. Giant spi- ders arriving with young that can parachute from the sky. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration going full Lake Wobegon, forecasting a seventh con- secutive “above-average” hurricane season. It might feel as if The End Is Near. But fear not: House Republicans are swinging into action. After a quarter century of Republican climate denialism, The Post’s Maxine Josel- ow and Jeff Stein revealed this exciting news last week: “House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) plans to unveil a strategy Thursday outlining how Republicans would address climate change, energy and environmental issues.” But there were just a couple of small problems with the resulting two-pager put out by the House GOP “Energy, Climate, & Conservation Task Force.” The strategy didn’t, er, actually mention the word “climate.” Neither did it make any commitment to decreasing greenhouse-gas emissions. The only indirect acknowledgment that climate change is even a thing was a call to mine more rare minerals of the sort used in batteries. And the strategy included a gush- er of proposals to boost oil and gas produc- tion. The Sierra Club’s legislative director, Me- linda Pierce, called the plan “McCarthy’s latest attempt to greenhouse gaslight the American public.” In fairness, the man in charge of the Republican task force, Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), says the group plans to outline a fuller climate-change strategy later this year. In an interview, he told me that “global emissions as a result of our strategy would go down more than they would under Biden,” who has set a target for cutting U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions in half by

No climate denier, Graves also said he
wants to “try and change the trajectory and
try to hit that 1.5 C target” — the Paris
agreement’s goal of limiting the global tem-
perature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
It would be an extraordinary achieve-
ment if Graves could persuade his fellow
Republicans to undergo such a sea change
on climate — and I wish him gigawatts of
power as he attempts it. For now, his col-
leagues continue to operate under what
might be termed the R.E.M. climate policy:
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I
feel fine.
That avert-your-gaze approach worked
well enough when the climate debate was
about theoretical sea-level models and Arc-
tic ice projections. But now the crisis is real
and present, with food shortages, electric
outages and pestilence already plaguing us.
Last week, The Post’s Evan Halper wrote
that “a large swath of the Midwest” is among
the areas facing a summer of rolling black-
outs of the sort seen in California and Texas
— a byproduct of “extreme weather precipi-
tated by climate change,” among other
things.
The World Health Organization last week
reported that climate change is accelerating
outbreaks of monkeypox, Lassa fever, Ebola
and other diseases. The Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention’s list of health
threats increased by climate change in-
cludes anthrax, dengue fever, plague and
rabies, along with disease-causing fungi in
soil and algae and cyanobacteria contami-
nating water.
Prices for wheat and other commodities
have soared, in part because of extreme
weather. (India recently banned wheat ex-
ports because of a heatwave-caused short-
age.) U.N. Secretary General António Gu-
terres said last month that global food prices
have risen by almost one-third in a year, and
the number of severe food-insecure people
has doubled in two years.
The drought in the Southwest is the most
extreme in 1,200 years, a study found this
year. Fires burning for two months in New
Mexico have already consumed more than
600,000 acres. Tropical Storm Alex has
already flooded Miami.
And that’s just a taste of what’s to come.
Studies indicate we can expect more cli-
mate-related lung disease, heart disease,
cancer, infertility, migration, armed conflict
and violent crime. As a result, we can also
expect more depression, anxiety, suicide and
addiction.
Facing so many disasters, it’s only natural
for people to try to look the other way. “It’s
an important defense mechanism that al-
lows people to go about their day by pre-
tending that this is not happening,” says
LaUra Schmidt, who founded the Good
Grief Network, which uses a 10-step pro-
gram inspired by Alcoholics Anonymous to
help people “metabolize collective grief,
eco-anxiety and other heavy emotions that
arise in response to daunting planetary
crises.”
But as climate disasters shift from ab-
stract to imminent, the look-away strategy
starts to fail. “It’s a defense mechanism until
it’s on our doorstep, until the fires are here,”
Schmidt says.
That moment has arrived. A belated deci-
sion by Republicans to abandon the denial-
ism and join the fight sure could brighten
our doomsday.

DANA MILBANK

R epublicans’

climate

denialism can’t

work anymore

A

year and a half ago, I put aside my column with The Post to explore running for governor in Massachusetts. Now, I’m back. Most of the people I know are not in politics, and many of them are asking: What happened? And what’s it like? First, here’s what happened. The ex- ploratory listening tour went well. It confirmed my sense that this is a time for change — so after six months, in June 2021, I jumped in in full. Then I spent the next nine months fundraising, stumping around the state and building out a policy agenda. I also worked hard to win support from those likely to be delegates at the state’s Democratic convention. Those party delegates are the magic key to placing your name on the primary ballot. But in February, in the middle of caucus season, I dropped out. We weren’t securing the delegates we needed, and knowing that, I couldn’t raise money in good faith. And if you can’t keep raising money (or aren’t independently wealthy), you’re at the end of the road. It’s just like with sharks. Keep moving or die. So that was that. And what it was like? The short answer: It was a very expensive but very effective form of therapy. I started the process full of anger and despair about the direction of my state and country. When I set out in December 2020, children weren’t back in school yet in Massachusetts, and the state government wasn’t providing clear, timely and stable guidance. We were on the cusp of what turned out to be a pretty unsatisfac- tory vaccine rollout. Nationally, state and federal governments were at odds — first because of covid-19 and then because of a defeated president seeking to overturn an election. I wasn’t alone in my feelings. I met people in the trades seething that building inspectors were examining construc- tion sites via Zoom. How could that possibly ensure safety? I spoke to people who took responsibility for feeding the families of workers in the collapsing hospitality industry. The pain of running out of food before the line had barely even begun rang in their voices. One woman broke down telling me how the program she runs for single mothers seeking fi- nancial literacy had to be transformed into a site simply aimed at getting people food and diapers. People were stretched to extremes and felt so alone in the face of overwhelming need. Our state and federal governments let us down in many specific and tangible ways. And yet. And yet. We did not let one another down. This was the therapeutic part. When Massachusetts’ vaccine rollout failed to provide appropriate access to the elderly and those lacking transporta- tion, networks of civic leaders pulled together and got the job done. The Black Boston Covid-19 Coalition used get-out- the-vote techniques to help get more of the city’s residents vaccinated. In the western part of the state, the Berkshire Vaccine Collaborative organized a network of small health-care providers to serve as vaccine sites and got the state to knuckle under and deliver vaccine sup- plies, allowing rural-area residents to stay put for their shots. After the murder of George Floyd, amid clear calls from communities of color to change the pattern of policing, forward progress was again achieved at the local level. The highly effective mayor of Lynn, north of Boston, helped forge a collaboration between a social justice civic organization and police that led to a pilot program, funded by the city, to build out unarmed response capacity for mental health crises. In Williamstown, in the northwestern corner of the state, community activism achieved an inde- pendent investigation into problematic policing practices, resulting in the resig- nation of the police chief and an effort to make a fresh start. This is how it was throughout Massa- chusetts, and it was the antidote to my despair. Good work abounded. Every- where I found people — with different perspectives — forging alliances to address some of our toughest challenges. Yes, our state government could and should do more to support and help scale it all up. Yes, our federal government is unable to answer even a shock as dire as a massacre at an elementary school. But it is also a fact that problem-solving is underway in every corner of my state. That’s bound to be true of every state. Having had the chance to see that good work up close left me with a pro- found understanding of our resilience as a people and our capacity to meet even the exceptionally daunting challenges of our moment. That brought me hope. For this, I will be forever grateful. I recommend this therapy to everyone losing hope in our democracy. All you have to do is pick an office and run for it. And this too, I believe, is how we’ll at last crack our national gridlock and get the solutions we deserve.

Danielle Allen, a political theorist at Harvard University, is a Post contributing columnist.

DANIELLE ALLEN

I ran for office

full of despair.

I felt hope after

dropping out.

M

ore people died in San Fran- cisco last year from fentanyl overdoses than covid-19, yet District Attorney Chesa Bou- din did not convict a single person in 2021 for dealing the lethal opioid. This helps explain why one of the most liberal cities in America voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to recall Boudin and repudiate the prosecutor’s soft-on-crime approach. Boudin’s defeat is the latest wake-up call for Democrats, who have lost the public’s trust on criminal justice and play down voter anxieties about crime at their peril. Court records obtained by the San Francisco Standard show Boudin’s office convicted just three people for the charge of “possession with intent to sell” in 2021 — for meth, heroin and cocaine. His predecessor secured more than 90 drug-dealing convictions in 2018. Fentanyl is widely available at open- air drug markets in the city, and the proliferation of the synthetic opioid is inextricably linked to other crimes. Junkies break into cars and shoplift from stores to feed their addictions. Many become homeless. They squat in tent cities, defecate on streets, trade sex for drugs, shoot up in front of children and, if they’re not in some stupor, ha- rass productive members of society who are trying to do honest work. Burglaries are up more than 45 percent since Boudin took office in Janu- ary 2020. Walk around, and it won’t take long to see smashed car windows — even in neighborhoods such as tony Pacific Heights that historically have been insulated from such hooliganism. Eleven Walgreens outlets have closed in the city since 2019. Boudin ran three years ago on a

platform of “decarceration,” and he used the coronavirus pandemic as cov- er to enact his extreme agenda. He has bragged about reducing the jail popula- tion by around 40 percent and ending cash bail. In practice, Boudin almost seemed to care more about criminals than their victims, whether Asian Americans experiencing hate crimes or merchants suffering from smash-and- grab attacks. Boudin insisted that he took the drug epidemic seriously but focused more on treatment than imprison- ment. He said his office pursued diver- sion programs or agreed to lesser charges in many cases, such as “acces- sory after the fact,” because drug- d ealing convictions are grounds for deportation. “A significant percentage of people selling drugs in San Francis- co, perhaps as many as half, are here from Honduras,” Boudin said in a video posted to Twitter last year. Even for San Franciscans, this catch- and-release approach was far too radical — especially as overdose deaths snow- balled. Boudin’s performance prompted the Justice Department to pursue drug- trafficking charges in cases it would typically leave to local authorities. The event that really turned the city against Boudin happened on the final night of 2020, when an allegedly drunk man who was on parole for armed robbery fatally ran down two women in a stolen car. He had been arrested five times between June and December that year for crimes that included burglary, but Boudin didn’t file charges that would have sent him back to prison. One of the most outspoken propo- nents for the recall was Brooke Jenkins, who resigned in protest as a homicide prosecutor after Boudin accepted an

insanity plea from a man whom she had convicted of murdering his own mother and setting her corpse on fire. Jenkins is among 62 prosecutors who have either left or been fired in the district attorney’s office since Boudin took power. Boudin pulled out all the stops as he clung to his job. He tried to gaslight residents by pretending crime wasn’t as bad as voters perceived. He blamed courts for shutting down during the pandemic. He blamed cops for not making enough arrests. Voters saw through the desperation. A woman whose son got hooked on heroin and fentanyl in San Francisco started a group called Mothers Against Drug Deaths, which spent $25,000 in April to erect a billboard in Union Square that has a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge and the caption “Famous the world over for our brains, beauty and, now, dirt-cheap fentanyl.” Boudin was never beloved by local party officials. The Democratic estab- lishment, including former senator (and district attorney before that) Ka- mala D. Harris, endorsed a more prag- matic candidate who had been a suc- cessful prosecutor in the office. About six months ago, Boudin at- tacked San Francisco Mayor London Breed (D) when she deployed more officers to crack down on drugs in the city’s Tenderloin neighborhood. The district attorney held a news confer- ence with the head of the public de- fender’s office to say the mayor should instead use that money for shelters, job training and social services. “We can’t arrest and prosecute our way out of problems that are afflicting the Tender- loin,” Boudin said. Breed now gets to select Boudin’s replacement.

JAMES HOHMANN

Boudin’s recall proves Democrats

have lost the public’s trust on crime

JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES District Attorney Chesa Boudin distributes election information to potential voters on June 7 in San Francisco.

N

ews flash: Voters don’t like crime, chaos, disorder or violence. They are angry and horri- fied over mass killings and police shootings of unarmed Black men. They don’t want their lives disrupted by petty crime, which doesn’t feel petty when it hits you. Many who live in cities, including very liberal ones, think the public authorities have lost control. Elections, like scripture, are read in different ways for different purposes. The recall of San Francisco’s liberal District Attorney Chesa Boudin (D) is being widely cast as a political earth- quake that will shatter the movement for police reform and reinforce calls for tougher law enforcement. The first round of the Los Angeles mayor’s race is being read much the same way. Rick Caruso, a Republican turned (at least nominally) Democratic, spent at least $40 million on a campaign pledging stern action against crime and homelessness. He stormed into a runoff with Democratic Rep. Karen Bass, once the contest’s heavy favorite. Let’s stipulate: Something big is happening, not unlike the backlash in the late 1980s and early 1990s when voters reacted against much higher crime rates than the ones we’re seeing now. In 1993, Republican mayors were elected in very Democratic cities — Rudy Giuliani in New York and Richard Riordan in Los Angeles — by promising to restore order. But the California vote is not this week’s only news. On Wednesday, the House heard testimony from families affected by mass shootings. Despite the media’s focus on what’s wrong with liberals’ approach to crime, conserva- tives continue to do the gun manufac- turers’ bidding by dragging their feet on efforts to strengthen our nation’s pa-

thetically weak weapons statutes. We are told to be patient as Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a champion of sane gun laws, tries to wheedle modest con- cessions from Republican negotiators in the wake of the heart-rending and pre- ventable tragedies in Uvalde and Buffalo that demand so much more. The GOP is utterly opposed to a ban on assault weapons and seems to be resisting raising the age for purchasing them. Why? Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) explained. “In my state, they use them to shoot prairie dogs and, you know, other types of varmints,” Thune said. “And so I think there are legitimate reasons why people would want to have them.” Varmints? Really? Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) had some news for Sen. Thune. “Across the country,” he tweeted, “ ‘they use them to shoot’ human beings in schools, grocery stores, hospitals, churches, synagogues, malls, bars, and workplaces.” As for calls for police reform after the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Ar- bery, Breonna Taylor and others, they were and are rooted in the same moral sense that leads to demands for safer streets and neighborhoods: Innocent people should not be killed, whether by criminals or those we count on to be the forces of order. We need better policing in both senses of that word: Better, as in more effective, and better, as in more just and more responsive to community concerns. Ousting Boudin will not suddenly solve San Francisco’s crime problems, partly because the city’s challenges are broadly similar to those in other cities — including jurisdictions with old- f ashioned, pre-reform-era prosecutors. My guess is that many who backed the recall know this but saw their ballots as

the one vehicle they had to shout out their frustration. Progressives will be lectured in the coming weeks about the need to take the public’s desire for order seriously. The hectoring will be annoying, but they shouldn’t resist the advice. The desire to contain crime crosses racial, ethnic and political divides. The current sense of insecurity undercuts every goal progressives have — including police and criminal justice reform as well as more effective and compassionate policies on drug addiction and homelessness. At the same time, they should not abandon those objectives, which are as urgent today as they were last month or last year. And liberals must continue to call the right wing’s bluff on regulating weapons. Those who remain under the control of the gun and varmint-patrol lobbies have no standing to cast them- selves as champions of law and order. Our nation needs an honest and comprehensive reckoning with the sense of vulnerability so many of our fellow citizens feel. It must start not with polling or focus groups but with the sense of our shared humanity that Rob- ert F. Kennedy invoked in 1968 during another cycle of division and violence. “Whenever any American’s life is tak- en by another American unnecessarily,” Kennedy said, “whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence — whenever we tear at the fabric of life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.” We need order. We need justice. And a free society will never get one without the other.

E.J. DIONNE JR.

Yes, voters are angry about crime.

No, abandoning reform isn’t the answer.

The Washington Post - USA (2022-06-09)

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