Pirate's Cove

It’s so horrible!

The Earth is sizzling, but climate isn’t a hot topic for Democrats in this year’s campaigns

Climate change has been the backdrop to Charles Hughes’ entire life, from kindergarten lessons about disappearing habitats to wildfire smoke billowing through the air he breathed while growing up in Colorado. But now that he’s a college student in Massachusetts, he said global warming is rarely a top issue.

“Honestly, it doesn’t come up as much,” said Hughes, who chairs the state’s chapter of the College Democrats.

What a difference six years makes.

It’s rarely a top issue in most polls, not when matched against real world issues

During President Donald Trump’s first term and especially during the Democratic primaries to determine who would run against him in 2020, Democrats spoke constantly about climate change. They used it to rally young voters such as Hughes, fueling protests and sweeping demands to remake the economy with proposals like the Green New Deal.

But there has been a national shift in the conversation that is sharp enough for some researchers to coin the term “climate hushing” to describe it. The Searchlight Institute, a Democratic think tank, urged the party to stop mentioning climate change because it is not a priority for voters. The Sunrise Movement, a left-wing group that pushed global warming as a top issue for young people, switched its mission last fall to a broader mandate of fighting the Republican president.

See? Trump Derangement Syndrome is more important to them than ‘climate change’.

The shift is encapsulated by the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts on Tuesday as the incumbent, Ed Markey, 80, tries to fend off a challenge from U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, 47. Although Markey still talks about sponsoring the Green New Deal, his campaign is more focused on other issues to burnish his left-wing bona fides and prove to voters that he is not too old for the job.

It is the latest example of how climate change has been eclipsed by issues such as affordability, U.S. support for Israel and, above all, how to confront Trump.

Also, all the complete insanity being driven by the Theater Kids running as DSA members.

The Sunrise Movement, founded in 2017 to mobilize young voters over climate issues, announced in October that it was shifting to a broader fight against “fascism.” The group’s executive director, Aru Shiney-Ajay, said that was a prescient move because of reports that federal agents infiltrated protest meetings during Trump’s immigration raids in Minneapolis.

“We just live in a significantly more authoritarian country. Because of that, a lot of the Democratic primaries are about more existential questions,” Shiney-Ajay, whose network generally backs left-wing Democrats, said in an interview. “It has felt less like people care less about climate and more like people are increasingly freaked out about other issues.”

It’s so Fascist and authoritarian that they are….able to do all this protesting and stuff. But, yeah, the article mentions if the Dems will the House and/or Senate they’ll get back to beating the bandwagon, because, really, the climate scam is all about government dominance.

Read: Bummer: Democrats Aren’t Talking About Global Sizzling »

I’d suggest that all those who Believe stand up, make themselves known, and get taxed out the ying yang

With federal aid dwindling, how can cities embed climate resilience in their budgets?

Over two decades, Geography Professor Mark Davidson of Clark’s School of Climate, Environment, and Society has emerged a leading expert on the municipal budgeting and fiscal health of cities grappling with shifting economic, demographic, and political realities.

Working in international finance in London and obtaining a Ph.D. from King’s College, Davidson observed the city’s exploding housing crisis and wealth inequities of the 2000s.

The urban geographer then turned his attention to the U.S. At Clark since 2010, he has examined U.S. “donut cities” like San Francisco and San José, with downtowns hollowed out by the global pandemic, growing homelessness, and fleeing businesses and customers; the gentrification of historically industrial cities like Detroit and Clark’s host city of Worcester, Massachusetts; municipalities’ Chapter 9 bankruptcies after the 2008 Great Recession; and local governments’ responses to ever-growing public pension liabilities.

So, basically Democrat run cities destroying themselves

Yet, Davidson says, cities now face an additional, unpredictable and daunting fiscal pressure layered onto all of these existing obligations: climate change.

“When I look at the obligations that cities have — the bonds they have outstanding, the pension promises they’ve made, the OPEBs [other post-employment benefits] that they carry, the deferred maintenance, there’s a big debt stack there,” said Davidson, whose current book project, “Red Ink Urbanism” (University of Minnesota Press), examines how accumulated fiscal obligations in Nashville, Buffalo, and San José shape urban governance and capacity.

Or, they could just say “weather happens, let’s not freak out.” Of course, all that money is ripe for being spread around to friends, family, associates.

In Massachusetts, Hoffer said, the Healey administration identified $90 billion to $130 billion worth of investments needed to address extreme-climate-related issues, including improving culverts, dams, and other infrastructures and maintaining natural carbon sinks — trees and wetlands — to prevent coastal and inland flooding. The administration created the Massachusetts Community Climate Bank to preserve and retrofit affordable housing for energy efficiency.

“It’s now achieving 70 to 100 percent-modeled energy reduction, which is incredible because that means lifetime energy cost savings for the inhabitants of that housing,” she said.

Residents also can obtain low-interest loans from the Community Climate Bank to fortify or replace their roofs and add solar panels, as well as install energy-efficient heat pumps.

I’d love for the whole program to be audited just like a private business, see where that money is actually going.

Hoffer acknowledged the lack of funding as well. “There will never be enough public dollars,” she said. “What we had previously in the IRA was a good accelerator. But now without that, we have to figure it out.”

Tax the Warmists!

Read: Say, How Can Cities Make Up For All That Missing Federal Money To Fight Climate Doom? »