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Chicken little forecast

Still Chugging Along

Volcanoes are erupting in The Philippines, but on-fire Australia received some welcome rain. The Iran war cries have been called off and The Donald’s military powers are about to be hamstrung by the Senate. Meanwhile, his impeachment trial is starting, and we’re all on Twitter for a front-row seat.

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What Could Go Right? OK, doomers

We’re paralyzed if we think everything is falling apart around us. It isn’t.

Emma Varvaloucas

Emma Varvaloucas

Read Time:12 minutes
| May 12, 2022

This is our weekly newsletter, What Could Go Right? Sign up here to receive it in your inbox every Thursday at 6am ET. You can read past issues here.

OK, doomers

These days, the narrative that the United States is circling the drain is common to hear. Add together the pandemic, the invasion of Ukraine, inflation, supply chain issues, and the polarized political climate, and you have easy pickins for anyone looking for evidence as to why the vibes are so dismal right now. The Justice Alito leak revved up that feeling even more, at least on the left.  

But is the “failed state” rhetoric justified? Economist blogger Noah Smith thinks not. He starts his new piece on why America is not, in fact, collapsing with some tough talk that we probably need to hear:

Yes, I’m upset that the Supreme Court looks set to overturn Roe v. Wade. I believe in abortion rights, and at some level most other Americans do too. I think there’s going to be a big, long, and 100% justified backlash over it, and if activists play their cards right, they will eventually prevail. I’m obviously unhappy about the number of Americans who will suffer in the meantime, but living in a democracy is tough, and sometimes things that should take a day end up taking decades.

He then offers countervailing evidence to the dismal vibes list. Inflation sucks, but there’s also low unemployment coupled with rising wages, especially for the lowest-earning workers. Crime is rising, yes, but the levels are nowhere close to what we had in the 1990s. The Russian war is ongoing, but so far the Biden administration has been skillful in sending support without escalating the violence or edging the conflict toward a nuclear meltdown.

And what about perhaps the biggest item on the list, the Big Lie itself? Smith writes: 

It’s true that the risk of a second attempt at election theft remains high in 2024. And Trump might very well be legitimately elected to a second term, which would indeed put us in grave danger of further democratic erosion. These are threats we should absolutely worry about. But we’re simply not there yet, and to act like these threats have already come to pass both devalues the hard work of all the people who stopped Trump from usurping power and reduces the motivation to fight for our democracy in 2024.

The motivation reduction argument is close to our hearts here at The Progress Network. It’s critical to set what’s going wrong in context as well as highlight what’s going right, because the type of doomerism Smith is talking about muddies our ability to respond effectively to things we care about and often leads to apathy. What’s the point of doing anything if we think everything is falling to pieces around us? As Smith puts it, “What we Americans need is a way to recognize problems without thinking that we’ve already lost and been overwhelmed.” 

It is well within our power to talk ourselves into a collapse we can’t get out of before a collapse actually comes. Let’s sharpen our view and refocus that energy.

Is gay marriage next? Not so fast

Since last week there have been plenty of takes that the legal reasoning in the Alito draft sets the stage for the reversal of rights around same-sex marriage and individual sexual privacy. Scott Shackford, writing in Reason, doesn’t think those fears are well-founded, for reasons both legal and social. “While Alito may not agree with previous LGBT rulings from the court, this opinion is careful not to question their validity,” he says.

There is also the fact, as we mentioned last week, that the American public opinion on gay marriage has become more and more progressive over time—in fact, support keeps reaching record highs. It is moving upward in all age groups, and there is now, for the first time, majority support across voters of both parties. Opinions on abortion, on the other hand, have not changed much since the 1970s. So a reversal on gay marriage from the Supreme Court would be wildly unpopular across the whole of the American public in a way that abortion is not. Not to mention, as Shackford points out, “the kind of legal and contractual problems that would take place should the Supreme Court suddenly decide that states can simply refuse to acknowledge more than half a million same-sex marriages.”

Sharpen and refocus: the fight has moved to abortion pills and over-the-counter, affordable birth control. 

Something else we’re chewing on is this Quartz piece on another way a post-Roe US isn’t the same as a pre-Roe one: the role of fathers. The article is old, but the point holds. Fatherhood was once easily escapable. “How can you prove I’m the one who got you pregnant?” But now the prevalence of DNA testing means that, well, it’s not only Maury—and the woman—who knows that you are the father. “Every one of the US’s 50 states,” says the article, “has some form of child support law saying the biological parent of any baby needs to financially support that child, whether he or she wanted to be a parent or not.” What kind of ripple effects would a Roe v. Wade overturn have?

Clean energy, powered by geopolitics

One thing we did not have on our 2022 Bingo card was a war driving all kinds of clean energy adoption. 

Portugal is setting up a floating solar park the size of four soccer pitches, thanks to Europe’s—and other nations’—burning desire to rid themselves of dependency on Russian oil and gas.

And Finland is turning on a nuclear power reactor, the first in Western Europe in at least 15 years, that will provide the country with almost 15% of its electricity. The reactor comes with a solve for storing the toxic waste, one that has existed for years but hasn’t before been implemented. The waste gets buried under the earth’s bedrock and sealed with clay, where it will lie, corrosion-free and safe from earthquakes, for 100,000 years. (We’ll set up a toxicity alert for the humans around in Year 102,022.) France, Sweden, and Canada are looking to do the same. Even Japan is taking another look at nuclear.

Speaking of such timeframes, Alex Trembath and Seaver Wang of The Breakthrough Institute are playing the long game—although not 100,000 years long—in their reminder in Persuasion that clean energy will not necessarily free us of geopolitical risks and tensions. We get polysilicon from China, lithium from Argentina, nickel from Russia, and cobalt from the Democratic Republic of Congo, they write, and the long view of future energy deployment should take this into account as well as labor and human rights standards. “In the short run, that will mean displacing Russian oil and gas production with production in Europe, Africa, the United States, and elsewhere. In the long run, it will mean building more globally distributed supply chains for the metals, minerals, and fuels that will drive a low-carbon energy economy.” We recommend bringing this point up at cocktail parties in order to sound extremely smart.

If you’re craving a long read/listen, TPN Member Yascha Mounk interviewing David Wallace-Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth, about the recent shifts in the climate conversation and what that means for the future is excellent.

Before we go

We are wildly applauding this report that more employers—and not just the gigantic ones like Citi or Goldman Sachs—are offering child care benefits to lower-wage and hourly workers, including subsidies and access to platforms that help parents “find available, licensed family child care programs with availability during their scheduled shifts.” More, more, more, please!

Norms are changing as the conversation around ethics and past inter-country harms moves forward. The Smithsonian will return items that were looted or acquired unethically to their country of origin, and they are hoping to inspire copycats. 

We missed this amazing invention in the hubbub of the abortion news last week, but it was a big hit on our social media. (Have you followed us yet?) Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have built a portable desalination unit that produces clean, drinkable water without the need for filters—it uses electrical power to remove particles instead. You put your sea water into the “suitcase-sized device,” press a button, and you’re done. You can even buy a portable solar panel along with it as a power source.

A final note on the state of the US: the American dream is alive and well for immigrants. Most American millionaires are first-generation, and the children of immigrants generally are upwardly mobile in American society.

Below in the links section, the (ancient) future of water access in Peru, food delivery workers are organizing, and more.

Because we thought you deserved a photo of adorable pandas today. But also because these pandas are being protected—along with other animals—with the help of a smart tech system in China’s new national park. CNN has the story.

Robin the Robot

An AI creation brings smiles to the faces of sick children—and plugs the current gap of care providers. | Read more 

Global Trade: The Race to the Top | S2 Ep. 7

Are we in an unprecedented era of military peace on the seas? Gregg Easterbrook, a prolific author and a writer and editor at The Atlantic for over 40 years, shares how the Navy, innovation, space travel, and prosperity go hand in hand. | Listen to the episode

Progress, Please

(Found good news? Tweet at us @progressntwrk or email.)

Other good stuff in the news

Environment:

Politics & Policy:

Economy:

Covid & Public Health:

Society & Culture:

Human Rights:

TPN Member originals 

Behold, this week’s long list of progress links.

New Book Alert

The black and Latina daughter of a working-class family, TPN Member Victoria Pratt learned to treat everyone with dignity, no matter their background. When she became Newark Municipal Court’s chief judge, she knew well the inequities that poor, mentally ill, black, and brown people faced in the criminal justice system. Pratt’s reforms transformed her courtroom into a place for problem-solving and a resource for healing. She assigned essays to defendants so that the court could understand their hardships and kept people out of jail through alternative sentencing and nonprofit partnerships. She became the judge of second chances, because she knew too few get a first one. The Power of Dignity shows how we can transform courtrooms, neighborhoods, and our nation to support the vulnerable and heal community rifts. 

Learn more about the book and buy it here. (P.S. Pratt will be a guest on our podcast soon. Subscribe so you don’t miss it!)

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Emma Varvaloucas

Emma Varvaloucas is the Executive Director of The Progress Network. An editor and writer specializing in nonprofit media, she was formerly Executive Editor of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review and is the editor of two books from Wisdom Publications.