10. Can we put the polarization genie back in the bottle, on climate or anything else? I really don’t know. But I do wonder how those advocating further radicalization of climate advocacy imagine any of this ends.
11. Making ever more radical demands might be a fine strategy were there someone to negotiate with. But by the reckoning of most prominent climate hawks, there isn’t.
12. Nor does it appear that a more inclusive climate coalition is likely to bring larger congressional majorities. Any Democrat-only climate strategy has to be predicated on not only winning but holding purple/red districts over multiple elections.
13. These are precisely the districts that radicalized climate rhetoric alienates culturally and the green policy agenda punishes economically. Since the failure of cap and trade in 2010, climate activists have taken rhetoric to 11, and what it got them was Trump.
Some advice from Scott Hubbard. But here is the problem:
…the new administrator must provide NASA and the rest of the world much more clarity on the brief statement issued by Vice President Pence and the newly revived Space Council that the United States will “lead the return of humans to the Moon.” Studies of the future of human space exploration have for decades emphasized that Mars is the target of greatest interest for reasons of science and exploration.1–4 The last initiative that attempted to include both human landings on the Moon and eventually Mars, the so-called Constellation program, collapsed from its own budgetary (over) weight.
Two points: First, the assumption that human spaceflight is about “science and exploration.” I’ve written about this error at length. Second is the notion that Constellation collapsed because it was attempting to do both the Mars and moon. It wasn’t seriously trying to do either. NASA wasn’t seriously trying to do either.
The political ads on television in California have been quite bizarre. Here’s why. I don’t know what the voters were thinking when they came up with this crazy primary system.
I agree that it’s probably the best we can do under current political circumstances, but if that’s the case, we should stop wasting taxpayer money on human spaceflight.
And sorry for light posting, but last week (and weekend) was wall-to-wall space conferences, between Space Tech Expo in Pasadena, and ISDC by LAX. And now I have three weeks to write a proposal for the LEO Commercialization NASA Research Announcement that came out the week before.