Paul Krugman | When a Pandemic Meets a Personality Cult

02 March 20

It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News

---

Paul Krugman | When a Pandemic Meets a Personality Cult

Paul Krugman, The New York Times
Krugman writes: "So, here's the response of the Trump team and its allies to the coronavirus, at least so far: It's actually good for America."
READ MORE

Democratic presidential candidates speak after the Democratic presidential primary debate at the Charleston Gaillard Center on February 25, 2020 in Charleston, South Carolina. (photo: Win

Trump Says Buttigieg's Exit Is Start of "Dems Taking Bernie Out of Play." Polls Tell a Different Story.
Daniel Politi, Slate
Politi writes: "President Donald Trump is continuing his role as commentator in chief of the Democratic presidential contest and was quick to react to word that Pete Buttigieg is dropping out of the race."
READ MORE

Ken Cuccinelli speaks on Feb. 7 in Washington, D.C. A federal judge said his appointment to lead USCIS was unlawful. (photo: Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

Judge Says Ken Cuccinelli Was Appointed Unlawfully to Top Immigration Post
James Doubek, NPR
Doubek writes: "A federal judge ruled on Sunday that Ken Cuccinelli's appointment to a top immigration position in the Trump administration was unlawful, saying several directives issued by Cuccinelli to tighten asylum rules must now be 'set aside.'"
READ MORE

A US Marine Corps F-35B drops a laser-guided bomb during a test at Edwards Air Force Base in California. (photo: Reuters)

Mandy Smithberger | Creating a National Insecurity State: Spending More, Seeing Less
Mandy Smithberger, TomDispatch
Smithberger writes: "The Trump administration continues to give the Pentagon free reign over taxpayer dollars."
READ MORE

A delivery person leaves a DoorDash Kitchens location last year in California. (photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg News)

Gig Workers Face the Spread of the New Coronavirus With No Safety Net
Nitasha Tiku, The Washington Post
Tiku writes: "Some workers here who provide on-demand rides and delivery services, but are independent contractors without many protections, are bracing for the spread of the novel coronavirus."
READ MORE

Relatives mourn Mohammad Mudasir, 31, who was killed in rioting in Delhi. (photo: Manish Swarup/AP)

Inside Delhi: Beaten, Lynched and Burnt Alive
Hannah Ellis-Petersen, Guardian UK
Ellis-Petersen writes: "He lay in a bloodied ball on the floor, but the baton blows kept on coming. As the 30 strangers beat him without stopping, Mohammad Zubair closed his eyes, brought his forehead to the ground and prayed."
READ MORE

Elon Musk. (photo: Mike Blake/Reuters)

Elon Musk Is Not the Climate Leader We Need
Brian Calvert, Slate
Excerpt: "His ideas are certainly ambitious. They're also misguided, and actively dangerous."

ack in 2009, nearly 3 in 4 Americans believed climate change was real. In the runup to the 2008 presidential election, Sen. John McCain, a Republican, even had climate action as part of his election platform. After Barack Obama’s election, however, Republicans changed their tune on the climate, to denialism. When the message changed, the number of those surveyed who believed “global warming is happening” plunged, from 71 percent in 2009 to around 57 percent the following year, according to surveys by the Yale Project on Climate Change. Anthony Leiserowitz, who directs the Yale program, told the Harvard Business Review recently that the drop was driven by “political elite cues,” which, he said, “is just a fancy way of saying that when leaders lead, followers follow.” 

That means we need good leaders, leaders who consider the consequences of their actions and rhetoric. Elon Musk, the billionaire businessman, is not that leader. But a look at his rhetoric can help separate big thinking from bad thinking. Musk’s two biggest ideas—electric vehicles and the settlement of Mars—are underpinned with fallacies as specious as those of land speculator Charles Wilber, who claimed in 1881 that the arid West could be colonized because “rain follows the plow.” 

Consider Musk’s electric vehicles. Musk regards technology as a kind of wonder, citing science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, who said, “A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” But tech isn’t magic; it’s material. And it requires material resources. A world full of electric vehicles (which, granted, would have some environmental benefits) would also demand a massive power grid, and that would require either burning more fossil fuels, building more nuclear facilities, or plastering open spaces with solar panels, wind turbines, and hydrodams. It would also require huge amounts of rare materials, aggressively mined at great cost to landscapes, wildlife, plants, and people. 

Tesla is currently being sued, along with Apple, Dell, Google, and Microsoft, for allegedly contributing to dangerous forced child labor in the cobalt mines of Congo. Musk’s massive battery factory east of Reno, Nevada, meanwhile, will use as much water as a small city. A recent USA Today investigation found a high rate of injury in the so-called Gigafactory, which has also strained Reno’s first responders, exacerbated a housing shortage and, ironically, clogged roads with traffic. Musk has suggested “high-quality” mobile homes as an answer, but so far, none have been built. 

Musk, who was born in South Africa in 1971 and arrived in California in 1995, made a fortune with digital endeavors, including the development of PayPal. Like many successful entrepreneurs, he espouses a jingoistic brand of Americanism. In explaining his desire to expand into space exploration, Musk expresses a deterministic view of American greatness that is deeply problematic. “The United States,” he told Caltech graduates in 2012, “is a nation of explorers … [and] a distillation of the spirit of human exploration.” This romantic view of imperialism echoes John O’Sullivan, the man who coined the term “Manifest Destiny” and who declared in 1839: “The expansive future is our arena. … We are entering on its untrodden space, with the truths of God in our minds. … We are the nation of human progress, and who will, what can, set limits to our onward march? Providence is with us, and no earthly power can.” Such thinking was used to justify the genocide of North American Indigenous peoples. 

Musk’s romantic worldview holds another assumption: that humans would be inherently better off as a multiplanet species, rather than a single-planet one. Thus colonization of other planets will help us in case this planet fails. “I think things will most likely be OK for a long time on Earth,” Musk told the Caltech graduates (a dubious claim in itself). But on the small chance that Earth won’t be OK, he said, we should “back up the biosphere” and create “planetary redundancy” on Mars. That’s not great thinking. Consider the stellar wisdom of astronomer Lucianne Walkowicz, at a 2015 TED Talk: “For anyone to tell you that Mars will be there to back up humanity is like the captain of the Titanic telling you that the real party is happening later on the lifeboats.” There is no reason to assume a cosmic destiny toward expansion, just as there is no reason to assume that American colonialism is attributable to an inherent benign spirit. 

Musk’s “elite cues” are misdirections. They may not be as despairingly cynical as the GOP’s climate denialism, but they are dangerous nonetheless. Those of us concerned with the climate crisis need a vision of the future that admits the trouble humanity is in and understands the myth of progress. We need a vision that does not require magic vehicles or the settlement of inhospitable planets. We need to seek out and support leaders who point us in the right direction—and that direction, I suspect, is earthbound. 

READ MORE

---

Contribute to RSN 

Update My Monthly Donation