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Simply put, we would ask for more rigor from the wonks who would like a say in how we redesign America’s energy systems. The challenge is massive, yes: to better serve more people with more efficient, less wasteful, less toxic energy infrastructure, while restraining the human footprint on the planet, so that other forms of life can also thrive. But it is also an energizing challenge, and eminently worthy of human effort. Any theory of climate change mitigation that is inflexible and unimaginative enough to involve bulldozing those who stand in its way is just another partial paradise, a green veil thrown over the same extractive relationships that got us here. 

If rail workers are so important to our economy that a single week of striking could cost the economy $1 billion, and if their demands are so modest that any decent employer would easily exceed them, then meeting their demands seems like the obvious solution. But the American balance of power is such that railroad bosses have the allegedly most pro-labor president in history doing their dirty work for them.

The political world is looking altogether different today than it did last week. With the midterm vote counts and global climate conference wrapping up, while one billionaire throws lighter fluid on the long-smoldering fire that is Twitter1 and another billionaire-no-longer’s crypto exchange goes up in smoke, attention is spread thinner than Lauren Boebert’s apparent margin of victory. (The race is headed to a recount.) 

Much has been made of recent polls showing the erosion of support for Democrats ahead of the midterms, tied to voters’ profound economic pessimism. As always, wading through the morass of bad takes (looking at you, Ross Douthat) can put many off the task of meaning-making about public political opinion altogether. Our line of thinking in these final weeks before the election remains much the same as it was back in January, when our Jeff Hauser and Max Moran outlined an argument for what Biden’s message should be.

Last week, a new comprehensive study of almost 32,000 populations of 5,230 species around the world estimated that wildlife on earth has decreased by almost 70 percent since 1970. The mind can’t really wrap around the scale of loss conveyed by this number.

If Congress regularly met its own deadlines, then October—the first month of the fiscal year—would also be the first month when federal agencies could implement their new and improved budgets. Unfortunately, the modern Congress regularly fails to pass an omnibus spending package for the next fiscal year, which bundles several appropriations bills for different parts of the federal government into one whole-of-government budget, by the end of the previous fiscal year. This autumn is no different.

October means a lot of things in the political world: the end of a fiscal year and the beginning of a new one; SCOTUS returning from a long recess; and, every two years, the final stretch before a general election. If the congressional appropriations process worked as designed, October would also be the month when federal agencies began implementing their new budgets for the next fiscal year. If only things could work so smoothly.

We certainly haven’t missed parsing the legal hocus pocus of this extremist SCOTUS over the past couple months of summer recess. Tragically, we’re now only days out from the beginning of the 2022-2023 term on October 3. Heedless of John Robert’s pleas to treat his overwhelmingly distrusted council of nine as a legitimate authority, we expect he’ll find as SCOTUS returns to the news cycle that the public has yet to get over the ongoing consequences of the Court’s betrayal of the public interest. Another nightmare term might just hasten Democrats building the power and will to actually reform a broken SCOTUS. 

For all the hours that people spend at work, stories about working (and working people) rarely get the spotlight. Labor makes headlines mostly when it’s no longer guaranteed. That pattern is clear in the headlines of late, with teachers in Columbus striking for air conditioning and teachers in Seattle striking for raises that barely keep up with inflation; with Minnesota private sector nurses striking to protest understaffing and safety issues that hurt both nurses and patients—all long-standing issues that have seen no national traction for years. Currently, the big labor story is that of the barely-averted freight worker strike, whose demands include such basic requests as not being disciplined for going to the doctor.