CC Innocent to Insidious Controlled Burn
( elder stretch )
itta melay ee ahh
build towards decarbonization
Build a world that doesn't run on burning ...
Doesn't run on oil and gas to ... move things ... heat houses and buildings ... cook food ... manufacture plastic ... Doesn't run on coal to make electricity ... The burning releases invisible carbon dioxide ... into the air ... The gasses build up ... the sky's blanket thickens ... the earth grows hotter ... the weather grows stranger ...
"decarbonization" means doing without burning ... We are not there yet ... the new ways have to be made ... sun panels catching light ... wind turbines catching wind ... houses, cars, farms, factories ... all of them remade ...
These words are the spoken language of people in meetings ... planners, governments, engineers ... It points to something real ... from far away ...
puta illa mehj ...
Proud eco socialist
Someone who believes the earth and the people have to be cared for together ... and who says so openly ... with the label out front ...
Earth, land, water, plants, animals, weather ... how they are unified as one ... And a person who believes the biggest things ... land, water, energy, medicine, food ... should be held in common ... run for everyone ... not just a few rich people ... or companies run for profit ...
The way wealth is now wounding the earth ... To care for the earth and share the wealth are the same ongoing struggle ...
Saying it openly has been mocked ... The word "socialist" carries heat ... some people use it as an insult ... especially in America ...
The phrase is a banner ... The person carrying it wants us to see who they are even before a conversation begins ...
um aye doop a plah ...
biggest fires that people are dealing with today
The biggest problems people are facing right now ... most urgent ones ... ones that demand our attention ...
Fire as a picture for problems ... In cities and workplaces, people say "we're putting out fires" handling whatever is burning hottest first ... A fire in this sense is anything that feels like it will destroy something if not stopped ...
Firefighter, not firekeeper ... The phrase carries an assumption that life is a series of emergencies, not a steady tending ...
Wildfires are larger and more frequent than they used to be ...
shel doe sho da nare ...
real cost of living issues and energy affordability
Actual problems people face paying for daily living ... rent, food, gas, electricity, heat ...
What it costs to live a normal life ... housing, food, transportation, clothes, medicine, child care ... "issues" are political topics or problems ... "energy affordability" is whether people can afford to heat their homes, fuel their cars, keep their lights on ...
"real cost of living" implies that other concerns ... climate, identity, foreign matters ... are less pressing ... The word divides public concerns into what people pay for and everything else ...
The hardship is genuine and felt ... People are squeezed by housing, food, gas, electricity ... But in climate conversations ... the phrase is often used to push the big climate question off the table ... It's a sorter and the word doing the sorting is "real" ... money out of pocket ... actually happening ... true ... Cost of living is all three and climate is none of them ...
lef ay doo eh za ahh
what are the biggest core material costs of living concerns right now for Americans?
What worries Americans most about paying for life? ...
"core" means at the center ... "material" means money and stuff, not feelings or ideas ... "costs of living concerns" means worries about what life costs ... The stacked adjectives — biggest, core, material — are doing the same job three times ...
Groceries, housing, gas, electricity, heat, health insurance, medical bills, childcare ... About three-quarters of Americans now name cost of living as the top economic problem facing their family, with worries about food and gas especially prominent ... Gas prices have surged ... grocery prices are up ... 250 million Americans face health insurance premium increases far exceeding inflation ... Roughly three in ten people have delayed or gone without medical care in the past year to save money ...
The phrase comes from someone making a chart or memo ... heavy with insulation words ... "material" there to fence off the spiritual and psychological ...
neu daye loot chaye zwa
inflation is hammering the poor and middle class and cost of living is skyrocketing
Prices are rising fast and hurting people who don't have very much money ... and people with some money but not as much ...
Inflation is prices going up over time, so each dollar buys less than it did before ... A hammer hitting again and again ... heavy, blunt, painful ... The poor and middle class represent most of us ... A repeated blow ... and a rapid climb ... Groceries are up ... housing is harder to afford ...
It's the language of someone making a point ... a campaign speech, an opinion column, a populist line ... The pressure is intense ...
bufa topa paw ...
why are many Democrats shifting and drifting away from publicly talking about climate change
A question about a pattern ... Why are politicians from the climate-friendly party saying less about it than they used to? ... Historically Democrats have been associated with climate concern ... "shifting and drifting" describes their slow, gradual movement away ... not a sudden break but a quieting ... What's said in public ... separate from what they believe ...
Polling shows voters ... especially the working-class voters that the party needs to win ... rank cost of living and housing higher than climate ... After recent election losses, the party is recalibrating who it speaks to and how ... Strategists are persuaded that apocalypse-talk does not move voters and may turn them away ... Some calculate that quietly passing climate policy is more effective than campaigning on it loudly ...
tee mo la tung
what started as majoritarian politics that could appeal to working class people became yet another kind of polarized culture war issue
A political concern that began as something most people could support ... including working-class people ... turned into another fight splitting the country in two ...
"majoritarian politics" is politics aimed at winning a majority of voters, as opposed to a smaller coalition ... working-class people don't have much wealth and feel economic pressure ... "polarized" means divided into two opposing camps ... a "culture war issue" is a topic that runs along identity and values lines ... what kind of person we are, which team we belong to ... rather than along material interests ...
The phrase tells a before-and-after story ... Something most people could support becomes a tribal marker ... we are with this concern or against it depending on our team, not depending on whether the concern affects us ... In the conversation this phrase comes from, the unstated subject is climate change ...
"yet another" carries weariness ... suggesting this is a pattern that has happened before ... issues that began as shared problems and ended as identity battles ... The speaker is naming the pattern with some tiredness, having watched it happen more than once ...
The turning is real and belongs to a wider pattern ...
ploo laye say loe beh twan
Fox News culture war machine
Fox News as a factory ... the way a real factory makes cars or cans of soup ... but instead the product is content ...
Fox News is the most-watched cable news network on the political right in the United States, shaping conservative opinion for almost thirty years ... "culture war" is the public fight over moral and social questions ... race, gender, sexuality, religion, immigration, schools, what counts as American ... News goes in, culture-war stories come out ... outrage about a school book, sports team, holiday display, curriculum ... day after day ...
In climate conversations, the same factory is accused of taking climate concern and turning it into team-against-team fights ... Climate becomes a left-wing identity, not a shared problem ...
This is not journalism in the ordinary sense ... It's a manufacturing process ...
Whether the frame fits depends on what we think Fox News is actually doing ... reporting on conflicts, or manufacturing them ...
en shu la par laye flaw
talking about the apocalyptic existential nature of the climate crisis is not going to inspire and motivate people
Describing climate change as the end of the world will not get most people to want to act ...
"existential" for us means a threat to whether something can continue existing ... The climate crisis is earth's weather and systems changing because of humans burning fossil fuels, with hard consequences ... "inspire and motivate" means provide people the energy and direction to act ...
When we describe a problem as the end of everything, people don't get fired up to fix it ... They freeze or look away ... because they feel nothing can be done ... So speaking in apocalypse language is not the best way to move people to change ...
What's said is a sound and an attitude talking about voices ... A strategist's voice or campaigner's voice are not the voice of the thing itself ... It is the voice of someone watching and offering advice about the delivery ...
foe meh tahn eh klare
discourse style is producing the politics
Discourse style is producing our politics ... The way we talk about something is what is causing the political situation around it ...
"discourse" is formal for talk, public speech, the way things get said ... "style" is manner ... formal or casual, urgent or measured, full of jargon or plain ... "producing" means making, causing, generating ... "politics" is the situation ... who wins, who loses, what gets done ...
The normal assumption is the other way around ... People fight about things, then talk about the fight ... talk produces politics ... How we describe a problem shapes what becomes politically possible ...
In the climate conversation, this means climate politics is not just being described ... it is being made ... by the choice of how to describe climate ... The style is part of how the politics is built ...
shar mon loc tee leh
bold statements let the shouting stand
Making strong, confident declarations does not quiet the shouting ... It lets the shouting continue ...
"bold statements" are declarations made without hedge, taking a clear position ... "let" ... permit, allow, do not interfere with ... loud, urgent, emphatic speech ... voices raised, people not listening to each other ... "stand" ... remain in place ...
A bold statement is not the same as a brave and clear response ... They are not the response that ends all shouting ... They are an answer that leaves the shouting in place ...
In the climate conversation, this means declaring "the ability to live is what is at stake" ... pointing toward some other mode of speech ... slower, more engaged ... that might do what bold declarations cannot ...
These phrases are short and shaped like a verdict ... judging a failure of one particular style without saying what would succeed in its place ... The naming leaves room for the other ways to be found ...
shaley sha mahche sheh mea
existential threat is one framing among several ... civilizational challenge ... long term emergency ... the framing is doing some of the political work ... and might be what makes the call and cry register what it is
Three ways of naming the climate situation, set side by side ... none chosen as the answer ...
"existential threat" produces an urgent, frightening politics ... the weight of life or death ... "civilizational challenge" produces a larger, less personal politics ... scale rather than urgency ... "long term emergency" produces a patient, attritional politics ... duration rather than panic ...
The framing is not a neutral wrapper sitting on top of the situation ... It is part of how the situation becomes political ... and might be what makes the call and cry register what it is ... If we describe something as life-or-death, what comes back is not policy but cry ... The register is the natural answer to that framing ...
The phrase itself pauses, lists, trails off ... thinking out loud, holding several framings at once, naming what each does, not yet choosing ... a working ...
sa fi con misah toen
