In the Shift

So, the unthinkable happened and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (USA) has a Republican senator. Why is this so monumentous for the rest of the world? Poke a stick into the virtual world and you will find innumerable analyses of what happened – my source of info on Massachusetts (my one time home) is WBUR.

But from the climate change perspective is that one more Republican senator could be the final stab wound in America’s already stumbling attempts to take meaningful action. Up until this week, the Democrats had a 60 seat supermajority in the Senate which meant that the filibuster – that peculiar weapon that allows minority parties to delay legislation as famously depicted in James Stewart’s Mr Deeds Goes to Washington – could not be used. Now they don’t, and bills on matters from health care reform to greenhouse gases run the risk of being diluted or ditched entirely.

Insofar as the Massachusetts election is a victory for the Republican grassroots movement known as the Tea Party, it is a vote against the kind of social and economic reform that needs to happen in the USA if the mother of emitters is to be part of a low carbon world. The Tea Party goers are small government, private sector, market-solutions supporting people of the kind that used to be synonymous with C19 Liberals. In the Bush era the Republican leadership could energise the grassroots by using abortion, the war on terror and the right to life as rallying cries in the so-called heartland.

Now climate change could play a bit part in a similar strategy. (The starring role will of course be taken by the economy and health care reform.) The victor in the Massachusetts senate race appealed to many voters because he campaigned from a gas guzzling pick-up truck. Climate change action is unpopular: it poses too many threats to iconic aspects of modern American culture. When push comes to shove, quality of consumption trumps quality of life for many many Americans. The health care reform debate is often about the right to procedures that only one in a million people will needs, and ignores the fact that Americans pay over the odds for a lousy health care system that delivers low life expectancy. Yet many Americans seem prepared to fight for the shiniest system with the poorest outcomes.

And that’s how it is with climate change too.

Americans have spent too much time and effort doing soul-destroying jobs that require them to work all hours with little security all in order to grab the golden ring. The changes needed to tackle climate change all seem to deprive people of the chance of the ring. At least that’s how it appears once the geniuses of branding, marketing and PR have shoved it through their mangles.

In a chastened Senate, the message that climate change transformation borders on the unAmerican will be easier to sell. Obama talks proudly of American leadership. Now’s the time to lead at home.