On-going Threats to Democracy

While the worst results were avoided in this year's election, Jessica Goodheart outlines six areas of concern:

1. An election system that can be subverted

2. A media ecosystem that breeds disinformation and mistrust in elections

3. Concerted attempts to undermine the voting process

4. Gerrymandering leading to partisan minority rule

5. Laws that limit who votes

6. Upcoming Supreme Court rulings that could upend elections

Regarding Moore v. Harper, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has a very simple question:

I don’t understand how you can cut the state constitution out of the equation when it is giving the state legislature authority to exercise the legislative power.

Update (December 12):  And just to underscore the threat we face, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has an "interesting" take on the January 6 insurrection.

If Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won. Not to mention, it would’ve been armed.

Of course, after sharp condemnation, it turns out to be a "joke".

The White House needs to learn how sarcasm works. My comments were making fun of Joe Biden and the Democrats, who have continuously made me a political target since January 6th.

Update (December 13):  Talking Points Memo released hundreds of text messages involving Mark Meadows. Representative Ralph Norman sent this message to Meadows on January 17, 2021:

Our LAST HOPE is invoking Marshall Law!! [sic] PLEASE URGE THE PRESIDENT TO DO SO!!

And Representative Jamie Raskin didn't find Greene's "joke" very funny.

If you and Bannon organized the violent insurrection against our government on 1/6 you'd be going to jail with everyone else convicted of seditious conspiracy and conspiracy to interfere with a federal proceeding. These are crimes, not stupid laugh lines.

Update (January 15, 2023):  Republicans across the country filed almost as many lawsuits over election results in 2022 as 2020. Marc Elias has an explanation. 

Republicans found themselves unable to persuade a majority of the electorate to support their candidates. This sparked a conviction among many on the right that their best hope to win elections rested on restricting who can vote and shaping the electorate.

Conviction

Five "Oath Keepers" on trial for activities related to the January 6, 2021 insurrection were found guilty on multiple charges. Two were convicted of seditious conspiracy, including the founder Stewart Rhodes.

Harry Litman:

The effect of these guilty verdicts, in a trial conducted with thoroughness and care, will be to marginalize the apologists for January 6. They can’t help but look more and more like wingnuts or monsters now, inveighing against what a critical mass of society has accepted and denying a jury’s account that squares with what the whole country saw in real time.

In probably related news, good ol' Orangeman makes his January 6 intentions regarding the 2020 election crystal clear.

A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.

Voting For Democracy

Though control of the House of Representatives and Senate is still not decided, Senator Mark Kelly's win means Republicans need the last two undecided races to win control and the Georgia runoff isn't until December 6.

There is a small chance Democrats could keep control of the House, but more likely is a split Congress and maybe gridlock is the best we can hope for these days.

But Amanda Marcotte points to a positive aspect:

Americans voted in an astonishingly high turnout election. They also did serious damage to [Dear Leader's] best — and possibly only — path toward illegally installing himself in the White House in 2024.

[He] tried to install people into powerful offices who could steal the election for him. And most of them have lost. It doesn't mean we're out of the woods yet. If it's close enough in 2024, he may only need to steal one state in order to pull off a coup.

And John Stoehr notes that flipping Congress in a midterm election is really a more recent phenomenon (a party can often lose many seats without losing control). 

[T]he conventional wisdom, based on [recent] electoral patterns, said the Republicans would wipe out the Democrats the way they did in 2010.

Then something happened.

Whatever it was (the fall of Roe, probably, and/or the J6 insurrection), it pushed 2 percent of white women, who are unaffiliated with either party, to choose Democratic candidates.

These are respectable white people. These are the Americans who determine which party establishes and maintains a political regime. The GOP has lost the support of respectable white people in a year when they would normally rely on them. If they don’t have that support now, they won’t have that support two years from now.

I'm not sure I'm as optimistic that we're in "a new regime in which a majority favors the ideas and policies of the Democrats over those of the Republicans", but the Republicans built in all kinds of advantages (gerrymandering, etc) and will just barely win the House. It's possible our polarized standoff may last for years to come, but perhaps the transition is in motion. Unfortunately, urgent issues don't allow the luxury of much time.

Update (November 13):  Democrats have retained control of the Senate with Senator Catherine Cortez Masto's win in Nevada.

But Chauncey DeVega reminds us that the fascists are not yet defeated.

In a reasonable society, the Republican Party would have been utterly vanquished or driven to the political margins, but instead it retains its cult-like hold on tens of millions of white Americans. The midterms represented a welcome setback for their movement, but have not altered that fundamental fact.

Update (November 16):  Republicans are projected to win control of the House of Representatives. So, that sucks. 

Update (December 10):  Senator Warnock was re-elected in Georgia, but Senator Sinema mucks things up by switching to "independent" in party affiliation. The Senate will still have a chance to do more useful things than investigate Hunter Biden.

A Defeat for Authoritarianism

It's close, but it's also a win for the global environment.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won Brazil’s presidential election on Sunday, defeating far-right President Jair Bolsonaro in a heated contest during which the incumbent repeatedly threatened to dismantle the world’s fourth-largest democracy.

Brazil’s Superior Electoral Tribunal called the race for da Silva just before 7 p.m. Eastern time, with the leftist holding a narrow 50.83% to 48.17% lead with more than 98% of votes counted.

Record GHG Concentrations

The World Meteorological Organization reports that greenhouse gas concentrations reached the highest levels since records began.

WMO’s Greenhouse Gas Bulletin reported the biggest year-on-year jump in methane concentrations in 2021 since systematic measurements began nearly 40 years ago. The reason for this exceptional increase is not clear, but seems to be a result of both biological and human-induced processes.

The increase in carbon dioxide levels from 2020 to 2021 was larger than the average annual growth rate over the last decade. Measurements from WMO’s Global Atmosphere Watch network stations show that these levels continues to rise in 2022 over the whole globe.

Between 1990 and 2021, the warming effect on our climate (known as radiative forcing) by long-lived greenhouse gases rose by nearly 50%, with carbon dioxide accounting for about 80% of this increase.

Carbon dioxide concentrations in 2021 were 415.7 parts per million (ppm), methane at 1908 parts per billion (ppb) and nitrous oxide at 334.5 ppb. These values constitute, respectively, 149%, 262% and 124% of pre-industrial levels before human activities started disrupting natural equilibrium of these gases in the atmosphere.

Needless to say, the Emissions Gap report from the United Nations Environment Programme describes global efforts to reduce carbon pollution "highly inadequate".

Update (November 4):  A study published in PLOS finds an interesting, though implausible, result.

The worldwide phase out of animal agriculture, combined with a global switch to a plant-based diet, would effectively halt the increase of atmospheric greenhouse gases for 30 years and give humanity more time to end its reliance on fossil fuels.

[E]ven in the absence of any other emission reductions, persistent drops in atmospheric methane and nitrous oxide levels, and slower carbon dioxide accumulation, following a phaseout of livestock production would, through the end of the century, have the same cumulative effect on the warming potential of the atmosphere as a 25 gigaton per year reduction in anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, providing half of the net emission reductions necessary to limit warming to 2°C.

Update (November 6):  WMO further reports that the past eight years are the warmest period on record.

The global mean temperature in 2022 is currently estimated to be about 1.15 [1.02 to 1.28] °C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average.

Update (December 10):  In conjunction with the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the Washington Post examined 1200 scenarios produced by climate models. Pathways to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celcius by 2100 narrow as realistic assumptions are considered. And those generally include dramatic carbon dioxide removal or significant overshoot of 1.5 degrees until temperatures come back down late in the century.

Not everybody will agree with these models — or, the cutoffs imposed by the Potsdam Institute researchers. Some experts are more optimistic about technology and humanity’s ability to innovate. Others point out that it is easy to imagine countries failing to achieve what is necessary to stay below 2C at all.

In the end, these are simply well-informed models of how the world will work. What’s more, we still have a limited understanding of how the climate system will respond to emissions.

At the U.N. Climate Change Conference late last month, world leaders reaffirmed the 1.5C goal. But these scenarios show that without dramatic action — action the leaders did not commit to taking — it most likely will not be possible.

The Evils of Capitalism

A study published in World Development disputes the notion that capitalism has produced a dramatic decrease in extreme poverty over the past 200 years.

The rise of capitalism caused a dramatic deterioration of human welfare. In all regions studied here, incorporation into the capitalist world-system was associated with a decline in wages to below subsistence, a deterioration in human stature, and an upturn in premature mortality. In parts of South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America, key welfare metrics have still not recovered.

Where progress has occurred, significant improvements in human welfare began several centuries after the rise of capitalism. In the core regions of Northwest Europe, progress began in the 1880s, while in the periphery and semi-periphery it began in the mid-20th century, a period characterized by the rise of anti-colonial and socialist political movements that redistributed incomes and established public provisioning systems.

Future Tipping

A study published in Science updates previous climate tipping point analyses. Greater amounts of warming lead to additional irreversible changes and any effort to reduce emissions matters.

Current global warming of ~1.1°C above pre-industrial already lies within the lower end of five CTP uncertainty ranges. Six CTPs become likely (with a further four possible) within the Paris Agreement range of 1.5 to <2°C warming, including collapse of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, die-off of low-latitude coral reefs, and widespread abrupt permafrost thaw. An additional CTP becomes likely and another three possible at the ~2.6°C of warming expected under current policies.

Currently the world is heading toward ~2 to 3°C of global warming; at best, if all net-zero pledges and nationally determined contributions are implemented it could reach just below 2°C. This would lower tipping point risks somewhat but would still be dangerous as it could trigger multiple climate tipping points.

Update (September 23):  Simon Clark calls it the "scariest climate science paper" he's read. 

Update (October 2):  The report Climate Dominoes published by Breakthrough - National Centre for Climate Restoration concludes:

At just 1.2°C of global average warming, tipping points have been passed for several large Earth systems. These include Arctic sea ice, the Greenland Ice Sheet, the Amundsen Sea glaciers in West Antarctica, the eastern Amazonian rainforest, and the world’s coral systems. The world will warm to 1.5°C by around 2030 with additional warming well beyond 1.5°C in the system after that. Yet even at the current level of warming, these systems will continue to move to qualitatively different states. In most cases, strong positive feedbacks are driving abrupt change. At higher levels of warming, the rate of change will quicken. The meme that "we have eight years to avoid 1.5°C and tipping points" should be deleted from the climate advocacy vocabulary. It is simply wrong: 1.5°C will be reached around 2030 regardless of the emissions path, and some tipping points are already here.

Update (December 12, 2023):  The Global Tipping Points report shows that five thresholds have been exceeded with three more possible if warming goes past 1.5 degrees Celsius.