USA is politically sustained on cheap credit, cheap gas, and cheap meat. Take those away and it explodes. www.ft.com/content/9e367a80-82b3-11e9-b592-5fe435b57a3b twitter.com/70sBachchan/status/1538993712897851393/photo/1

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USA is politically sustained on cheap credit, cheap gas, and cheap meat.

Take those away and it explodes.

www.ft.com/content/9e367a80-82b3-11e9-b592-5fe435b57a3b

2/ Cheap credit = Housing as Savings
Cheap gas = cars & sprawl as way of life
Cheap meat = red meat as American

FARM is a handy mnemomic for the big bosses of US decarbonization -Fossil fuels, Autos, Real estate, Meat. Thread on their political economy:

3/ United States of Cows, Pigs (soy) & Timber?

How america uses its land tells you who has power.
@laurenleatherby @merrill_dave
bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-us-land-use/

Thread on US Agriculture's political geography

4/ On 𝘼, Autos: Hard to understand how deeply Cars shape cities; how much oil demand will fall; # of jobs in servicing at stake when China-led EV's get as cheap as combustion engines.

Thread on the politics of 2010s SUV boom. cambridge.org/core/journals/business-and-politics/issue/7876B721FB6324D7B75798D3EB568067?utm_source=H...

5/ R for Real Estate. Everyone knows BigOil holds Mitigation hostage.

Adaptation to Floods though, is held hostage by FIRE industry—Banks, builders, insurance & Realtors.

Democrats and wealthy homeowners block reform. Thread

6/ M for meat: “What have the natives of South America, the savages of Africa, the stupid Greenlander, the peasantry of Europe, all combined, done for civilization, in comparison with any single beef-eating class of Europe?”
@joshspecht on Meat Populism
lithub.com/why-are-american-men-so-obsessed-with-steak/

7/ Oil shapes US political landscape. Its not just about Rockefellers & Kochs. But about Belief in Christianity and crude. The historian Darren Dochuk shows in his book that the oil-patch evangelicals in Texas and California fueled rise of American right.
washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/07/15/oil-patch-evangelicals-how-christianity-crude-fueled-rise-ameri...

8/ F for Fossil. US ideology of Carbonism, much like Nationalism has deep roots & is held far outside America's borders. It has a powerful worldview (carbon produce human flourishing) & a theory of value (carbon powers growth) theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/11/ideology-behind-donald-trumps-paris-withdrawal/601462/

12/ In US, a single senator empowered by a fossil fuel boom in Appalachia stopped Biden’s Climate bill. Other senators insist on destructive corn ethanol subsidies

I review Carbon Power ie FARM (Fossil, Autos, Real Estate, Meat) power @rupert_russell
prospect.org/culture/books/how-high-energy-prices-emboldened-putin-russell-review/

13/ "The American way of life is not up for negotiation. Period“ George Bush Sr famously declared at Rio Earth summit in '92. Since then that carbon-intensive way of life spread worldwide & create FARM power everywhere.

Fossils, Autos, Real estate, Meat

14/ Carbon power is FARM power (Fossil fuels,Autos,Real estate,Meat). That way of life & political power is entrenched worldwide but US is special case.

Existing models of US politics are wrong. Here’s how the system really works. ht @thoatley @mkblyth foreignpolicy.com/2021/02/12/carbon-coalition-median-voter-us-politics/

15/ Pricey gas blows up Biden. Trump nearly won in 2020 coz of Carbon anxiety. As Mike Davis said "‘Millions of green energy jobs’ is an abstraction that utterly fails to connect to the concrete circumstances of Rustbelt" lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n22/mike-davis/short-cuts
Thread

16/ Britain’s coal mines,steamboats,railways,canals, telegraph lines,factories were sinews of British empire

Pax Americana is oil rigs,power lines,highways,airports, military bases,container terminals,telecom towers, satellites,fibreoptic ht @JeromeRoos
www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/ideas-international-politics/2022/06/new-world-order-how-...

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Venkatesh Rao @vgr · Jun 21, 2022

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Interesting thread

Thread by Albert Pinto

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