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Stephen Gottlieb: The Challenges

Looking at the New Year, there are two existential challenges that must be dealt with: global climate change and the threat to American democracy.

Global climate change has to be at the top of the agenda because scientists are telling us we are crossing tipping points. What is a tipping point? It is the point where the damage already done makes the process go out of control. You can’t stop a bomb once it starts – the explosion takes over. And tipping points are being crossed. As arctic ice melts, it’s not just that the earth got warmer already, it’s that the highly reflective ice was reflecting heat back into space and isn’t there to do that any more so without humans doing anything more, global warming speeds up. That’s a tipping point. Other tipping points are in the oceans and the food chain. Climate change threatens real doom, a mass extinction, and the creatures to be extinguished this time are us. So go ahead and throw your grandchildren into the fire and then see if you’re allowed into heaven. Folks, if we send our grandchildren to hell you can be sure that we’ll be right there burning with them.

American democracy is at risk because a foreign power has seen that it is possible to manipulate American elections and an American candidate has seen that it is possible to manipulate the people who are prepared to put weapons in the service of their hatred. And if Trump is half as venal as I think he is, and follows the path of demagogues and dictators, he will bribe members of Congress in order to have his way and to stay in office. Even worse, if he follows the pattern of dictators and demagogues, he will try to distract America with a war. I don’t want to think about the mem, women and children who will lose their lives for the glory of Trump!

We are not in good hands. Americans could be put to work to deal with the environment, build and rebuild our infrastructure, handle real threats to our country and to each other. But to save a few more dollars for the richest among us, people will not be put to work doing the things we need and the richest won’t have to share to take care of our country. That’s kleptocracy folks, it’s precisely the kind of behavior that we expect from Putin and the world’s most bloodthirsty dictators.

No, we are not in good hands because the evil in the Manhattan tower is a greedy grabber of money and power, a denier of global warming, corruption, how the economy works, and the common good.

This is a crisis as serious as World War II – an existential crisis. Will America survive, never mind greatness, if we succumb to a dictator? Will humanity survive, never mind flourish, if global climate change makes refugees and cadavers of us all – and who’ll take in refugees then? What will we do to reign in global warming, protect American democracy, and preserve the country we were blessed with?

Remember ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. We will be strangers – on the planet.

Steve Gottlieb is Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor of Law at Albany Law School and author of Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and the Breakdown of American Politics. He has served on the Board of the New York Civil Liberties Union, and in the US Peace Corps in Iran. Steve maintains a blog: constitutionalismanddemocracy.wordpress.com

The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.

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