Hi friends,
The word moonshot is now understood to mean a monumental effort directed at a lofty goal. For some of us who remember watching in awe as Neil Armstrong walked on the moon 54 years ago, there was an abiding sense of wonder, achievement, and possibility.
It was years before I understood that not all Americans felt as I had watching the culmination of the moonshot for which all the others are named.
In the summer of 2021, reveling in the moonshot of the first Covid vaccine, I went to a theater to see Questlove’s brilliant documentary, Summer of Soul.
One especially insightful segment is devoted to the Apollo 11 moon landing nationally televised during the summer of 1969. Questlove cuts away from grainy black and white NASA videos to show Walter Cronkite and other TV reporters interviewing unimpressed black festival goers. [A] young man cooly condemns the waste of taxpayer money on space exploration when it could be used to eradicate poverty and racist oppression here on Earth.
At Cape Canaveral, Americans were being ushered to look to the stars to imagine the utopic future of humankind in space, while in the streets, they were confronting the country’s dystopic underbelly of anti-Black racism. . . .
[F]or African Americans, among others around the globe, the insecurity and inhospitableness of life on Earth is not imagined as a future eventuality. Rather, it is already being lived as a present-day reality.
Many of us are feeling the inhospitableness of life on a planet we have taken for granted. James Hansen, the NASA scientist who warned of the dangers of a heating planet in the 1980s, commented recently,
“Things will get worse before they get better.”
We want a moonshot to arrest climate destruction. Incredibly, we have one major political party that just voted for a provision to block the Defense Department from taking climate action.
(Unsurprisingly, none of the Republican candidates for president has a page on their campaign website dedicated to climate change. The former president claims that climate change will just go away on its own; he said the same thing about Covid, also without any basis in scientific fact.)
We knew that losing the majority in the House of Representatives would make climate action more difficult. Nonetheless, in the face of things getting worse, it is hard to accept.
We must use the tools at our disposal, which brings to mind the scene in Apollo 13 in which the astronauts construct a CO2 filter from cardboard and duct tape. Right now, the tools at hand are state and local governments.
Time to make a CO2 filter out of what’s at hand.
New York’s Climate Action Plan calls for a cap-and-invest program to set a limit on emissions and require revenue-generating permits for corporate polluters. This will require polluters to pay into funds that will enable the state to address climate impacts on the communities most affected.
NY Renews has three quick climate actions on one page — one on cap-and-invest, one to eliminate the loopholes so that emissions are effectively capped, and one on decreasing our reliance on dirty energy sources.
You don’t have to live in NYS to take action. Climate destruction disrespects political boundaries, as should climate action.
Tell NYS agency heads to scale up renewable energy to meet growing electricity needs. Hit the tabs for all three quick actions from NY Renews.
This is duct tape and cardboard where we should have coordinated federal action and investment.
Congress must end the childcare crisis now! This quick action is from Moms Rising.
I was pleased to read that there’s one House Republican working to drum up support for a bipartisan effort to restore the Child Tax Credit (CTC).
If you live in a Republican district, urge your representative to support expansion of the Child Tax Credit.
I’m taking Monday off. Back on Tuesday with the best news I can find.
with love,
L