The Green New Deal is not radical, but let me tell you what is: A president who rejects science and calls climate change a hoax while unprecedented hurricanes batter the Gulf, wildfires rage in the west, an 800-mile derecho destroys towns and the Arctic melts. That’s radical. Bernie Sanders @SenSanders U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is the longest-serving independent in congressional history. Vermont/DC sanders.senate.gov
@SpeakerPelosi please apologize for condescendingly saying “green dream or whatever.” We need a GreenNew Deal to halt rapid irreversible climate and ecological breakdown. Decisions we make over the next few years will affect humanity and the living Earth for millions of years. Peter Kalmus (climate scientist) @ClimateHumanClimate scientist terrified by what I see. Shifting norms & living on 1/10th the fossil fuel. BLM. Book: Being the Change (link) #NotMeUs Views me not NASA Altadena, CA…according to Wikipedia, Peter Kalmus is a climate scientist, writer and climate activist based in Altadena, California. He is a data scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory as an Associate Project Scientist at UCLA’s Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science & Engineering.
I just got a new Green New Deal T-shirt through Ocasio Cortez’s website and I am pleased to report that it is on brand.
On brand for AOC because the T-shirt is made in America and has an Union Bug1 on it. The shirt is made by Bayside, a company I have never heard of before and, when I Google Bayside T-shirts, the first site to come up is not Bayside but ssactivewear.com, then Amazon, T-Shirt Wholesaler, ClothingShop On Line, BlankApparel, blah, blah, but no Bayside. My guess is that Bayside is a manufacturer who only sells to wholesalers. Whatever , or whoever Bayside is, they really, really, really, want us to know that the shirt is Cotton harvested in USA, Cotton grown in USA, Yarn spun in USA, Knitted in USA, Fabric Dyed in USA, Sewn in USA, Made in USA.
On brand for the Green New Deal because this is the most uncomfortable T-shirt I can remember ever wearing. It is rough and scratchy, sort of like a hair shirt2 (although, I have to admit, I’ve never worn a hair shirt before and always considered them a strange, outdated, religious tradition). I have nothing against rough cloth, I enjoy using towels that have been line-dried, and I don’t like super high-quality sheets that feel slick, so the uncomfortableness of this shirt has surprised me. Where it is most uncomfortable is by the back of my neck because the the huge, stiff, tag, telling me all the ways it is made in the USA, keeps rubbing me there. In that way, I am constantly reminded that The Green New Deal is not going to be easy, it will entail massive discomforts.
Our society, our world, really, is based on the massive burning of carbon based fuels, turning the carbon into CO2, which, in turn, is heating up our planet and, increasingly, making it uninhabitable. Uncomfortable is not fun, but it is better than uninhabitable and those are our only choices. We are going to have to stop burning coal, the worst offender, which we all know is bad, but also, burning Natural Gas, and barbecuing with briquets, and having comforting wood fires. We are going to have to cut way back on meat which is a staggering inefficient way to provide calories, and air travel (at least, short term). We are going to have to radically change our lives and that thought is uncomfortable.
- A Union Bug is also known as a Union Label and it means that the item has been made/printed by Union workers.
- According to the Collins English Dictionary, 1. A hair shirt is a shirt made of rough uncomfortable cloth which some religious people used to wear to punish themselves. 2. countable noun. If you say that someone is wearing a hair shirt, you mean that they are trying to punish themselves to show they are sorry for something they have done.