WAG THE DOGMA

Donald G. Reid presented "Social Policy and Planning Implications of the Green New Deal" at our GND Roundtable, March 21, 2019. A long-time member of American Resistance Sevilla, he's University Professor Emeritus in the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development at the University of Guelph in Canada.

​We are facing a crisis in the social and ecological environment that is engendering catastrophic challenges to the planet. The global warming crisis cannot be solved from an isolated policy focus but demands an integrated systems approach to change. There are many social issues connected to global warming, and if they are not resolved concurrently, global warming will only worsen. 
Inequality, poverty, migration, new digital technologies including artificial intelligence, and economic globalization are integral to the eventual resolution of global warming or its continuance. Global warming is part of an integrated world-system not a separate environmental issue to be addressed independently and in isolation to the other issues mentioned above.
The problems mentioned here are a result of the predatory corporate capitalist system that has evolved over time and taken us to where we are today. Think of the current world-system as your computer operating system. It dictates what you can or cannot do on your personal device. We need a new world operating system. 
The Green New Deal is one model that addresses climate change from a systems perspective and could provide some direction to the creation of a new world-system. There may be others. In my new book, A New World-System: From Chaos to Sustainability published by Routledge, I provide a cautionary interpretation of the present and vision for the future.
—Donald G. Reid
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Everybody's Coming to My House—An anthem for our jumpy times, from "David Byne's American Utopia". (Photo: David Lee/HBO)

Wag the Dogma
Is voter intimidation against the law? Can a president pardon himself? Is it wrong to separate children from their parents in order to deter immigration? Is climate change real?
Is a person who can’t answer these questions qualified to serve on the Supreme Court?
(By the way, I really wish I had come up with that title, but I stole it from this great discussion of the Barrett nomination hearings on Trumpcast this week.)
—Kathy Sherretts
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Getting Their Money’s Worth:
Mother Jones: Watch Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse School Amy Coney Barrett on Dark Money by Stephanie Mencimer
Instead of questioning the nominee, Sen. Whitehouse took his 30 minutes to explain the forces at work behind Barrett’s nomination. “A Republican president will appoint judges … who will reverse the long line of activist decisions—including Roe, Obergefell, & the Obamacare cases,” Whitehouse said. “That is their stated objective and plan. Why not take them at their word?”

Hot Topic:
The Atlantic: Earth’s New Gilded Era by Vann R. Newkirk II
Poor people are more likely to live in hot places and work in hot jobs. And the people who generated most of the emissions making those places and jobs hotter are likely to be wealthier, living with the AC on.

Put on your Big Suit:
HBO Culture Closeup: Spike Lee and David Byrne on “American Utopia”
(Video, 5 min)
A conversation about the sociopolitical climate in the US, and how David Byrne's Broadway show became a Spike Lee Joint. (See the trailer HERE.)
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