Regardez la France!

Immediately following my Climate Reality training in Denver, I found myself being inundated by email communications from both the organization and excited fellow members of the new class of CR leaders.  I managed to adjust some preferences in order to quell the flood, but I still receive one daily summary of traffic on the organization's main site - Reality Hub - which gives me a glimpse of the activities of CR's thousands of activists.

From what I can determine, the vast preponderance of these activities involve meetings, group activities, and educational outreach.

All of which, no doubt, will be highly gratifying to the sort of folks I met in Denver - earnest, educated, middle-class folks who love to be on the right side of the issues.  Folks who will happily drive hundreds of miles to march or attend a rally.  Folks who will gladly gather to discuss the things that must be done, and deplore the fact that they are not being done.  Folks who regard it as supremely important to educate people - particularly children and young people - about the reality of climate change.

Folks, in short, who love getting together with others who already believe what they believe, or teaching people who are not that likely to argue back.

Folks who, in the personal lives, are trying very hard not to be part of the problem - by recycling, driving hybrids or EVs, and reducing their carbon footprints - or buying carbon offsets when they cannot.

Folks who will, at election time, vote for Democrats.  Perhaps even get out and campaign for Democrats.  Because Democrats say the right things about climate change.  Because Democrats are not, thank Heaven, Republicans.

Since Denver, I have been thinking a good deal about doing my bit as a Climate Reality leader.  I've started working my way through the massive, two-hour PowerPoint "slide show" we've been trained on - editing it down to lengths suitable for presentation to groups of interested adults.  I suspect I'll end up with three versions - 15-20 minutes, 30 minutes, and 45-50 minutes.  But this will take some time.

As for the rest of the things which seem to excite my new colleagues - attending marches or getting together for meetings - I've pretty much ruled that out.  At 66, I'm not looking for new ways to spend my free time.  I'm looking for ways to maximize my remaining years (I hope) in getting things done.

With regard to combatting climate change, that boils down to one thing:  Working to create a third party.

A third party which is neither particularly liberal nor conservative; which focuses on what the Founders called "the general welfare", or the "commonwealth", rather than the interests of particular groups; and which places a high priority on combatting AGW (anthropogenic global warming) as the greatest challenge facing the United States and the world.

I have written before, on this blog and elsewhere, about my complete lack of confidence that the Democratic Party will do anything meaningful to address climate change.  I need not waste time or space arguing that the Republican P.arty will not.

For me, only a third party will do.

It is a truism of American political science that third parties cannot succeed - despite the historical evidence that one third party (the Republicans of Abraham Lincoln's time) managed to take a newly-organized third party and make it a governing party in just over six years.

If history is not sufficiently persuasive, I urge my readers to consider that - at a time when discontent with the political and economic Establishment is higher than at any time in memory - other countries are seeing established parties suddenly crumble into the dust.

In Britain, for example, the Labour Party seems on the verge of shattering into two or more small, ineffectual groupings.

And in France, where the first round of the Presidential election is less than two weeks away, the current favorite to win, Emmanuel Macron, is a 39-year-old who started his own party little more than a year ago.

And the rising challenger, whose last minute surge makes him a contender, is Jean-Luc Melanchon - a sort of French Bernie Sanders, who is likewise the leader of a new organization.

Meanwhile, the candidates the two major parties, the Socialists and the Republicans, seem increasingly irrelevant.

Watch France.  There are lessons to be learned there - especially by those who have any interest in doing something about climate change in this country - before it is too late.

The only reason we are stuck with the Democrats and Republicans is that we have not yet found the energy to say what the French are saying, "A plague 'o both your houses!"

It's time we did.