Crisis of Confidence: the climate edition

On July 15, 1979, Carter said in his “Crisis of Confidence” speech:

“The energy crisis is real. It is worldwide. It is a clear and present danger to our nation. These are facts and we simply must face them … I am tonight setting a clear goal for the energy policy of the United States…. I will soon submit legislation to Congress calling for the creation of this nation’s first solar bank, which will help us achieve the crucial goal of 20% of our energy coming from solar power by the year 2000… To give us energy security, I am asking for the most massive peacetime commitment of funds and resources in our nation’s history to develop America’s own alternative sources of fuel — from coal, from oil shale, from plant products for gasohol, from unconventional gas, from the sun… I will urge Congress to create an energy mobilization board which … will have the responsibility and authority to cut through the red tape, the delays, and the endless roadblocks to completing key energy projects. We will protect our environment…. I’m proposing a bold conservation program to involve every state, county, and city and every average American in our energy battle. This effort will permit you to build conservation into your homes and your lives at a cost you can afford…. Every act of energy conservation like this is more than just common sense — I tell you it is an act of patriotism.” 

When the Reagan administration removed the solar panels in 1986, Reagan’s Chief of Staff commented that, “he felt the equipment was just a joke.” 

Death Addiction

Oh, for fuck’s sake, can I get through typing a single essay without another alert from CNN coming across my desktop that there is a shooting going on, being contained, finally over? This is ridiculously coincidental; if I wrote this into a script, it would be considered too contrived to be allowed.

This whole month has been nothing but one piece of breaking news after another of shootings, violence, protests, wrong-doings on a horrible scale, injustice in the extreme playing out on screens and phones all around the world.

I have known since my teens that the rule of news is that “If it bleeds, it leads.” But this is going much further than mere sensationalism and human interest. This is the obsession with the ultimate expression of toxic masculinity. It’s as though we are craving seeing the violence, addicted to nodding our heads and saying, “Yes, it really is bad out there.” We have gotten to the point where tragedy and death are out entertainment of choice, and we need more and more of it, in ever-increasingly violent and dramatic forms, to satiate our itch.

We are death addicts. Trauma drama is our currency, and we trade it through the social media channels like money lenders in front of a temple, only in this story there is no outraged teenage messiah to pull down the pillars and run the offenders off, all while delivering an impassioned shaming about how we ought to behave.

On one matter I can agree with the moral majority and the Reaganites: We seem to have lost our core values. When in the world did we decide that death and destruction were entertaining? When did we decide that matters of fashion trumped matters of family, that there is no societal responsibility, that greed is its own reward?

Stuck Between the Me Generation and the Not You Generation

Alexa von Tobel seems to think Millennials created the on-click, streaming universe in which they swim so well.

Fiftysomethings now enjoy bingeing on Netflix, texting that they’re running late and trolling Facebook as much as their kids do. “It’s beyond the tipping point,” says von Tobel of her generation. “[We] are the decision makers, the influencers.”

Bitch, please.

Do you have any clue that when the first of your generation was being conceived, your Gen X cynical, detached, risk-taking parents-to-be were rejecting the hyper-traditional model being forced upon us by our resource-pillaging, nostalgia-laden, responsibility-adverse Boomer parents who were crafting a stricter, more conventional climate than any we had seen in this country as the Hippies-turned-Yuppies--who once rallied behind the call to trust no one over thirty--set themselves up as The Authority on Everything(tm), especially morals? The Reagan years made McCarthyism look tolerant: at least it only cared about your political affiliation.

We of Gen X, born between the assassination of JFK and the election of Reagan, were the first to have no hope of achieving a standard of living of our parents, and we knew it long before we graduated from increasingly defunded schools where ketchup was a vegetable and arts were too expensive, trying to find work despite two million jobs being shipped overseas during the bust of American Manufacturing. When we got accepted to college, the tuition was out of sight, and we didn't qualify for loans on our own - our parent's income(s) were the basis for determining need until we were 24 or made $8,000 in a calendar year, more than we could gross at $3.35 minimum wage, even if we worked 40 hours a week.

The Millennial Generation needs to stop being impressed with itself. You are are really cool, and we love you, except for when you tell us how cool and loveable and hip you are.

Gen X created Netflix - a DVD by mail service - to accommodate our transient and erratic lives. We worked weird hours, whenever we could get them, and frequently had more than one job. We didn't have time to participate in a brick-and-mortar schedule, and we were often spending more on late fees than we did on rentals, with little time to watch a show.

We created PayPal, Google, and Amazon and had web logs crafted by hand before Steve Jobs got hired back to Apple to make an iPod or Mark Zuckerberg got dumped. We truly dig that you have embraced the digital universe into which you were born, but please stop being so impressed with yourselves. We made it up out of thin air, because we had nothing to lose.