Yes, here’s another American with a “what [the bleep] is going on in America???” blog. Let’s just get to the point, and then you can be done and move on to the next one. I believe it is, at least partly, the Yellow Vests, or “gilets jaunes” in French.
I first wrote about the Yellow Vests in December 2018. It was a massive strike in France, ostensibly about a carbon tax that President Macron had levied, but more broadly about economic issues, and the strikers wore bright yellow vests as they shut down roads, etc.
In that 2018 post, I stated that the media often confuses the populist movement with the right-wing. I believed that the right-wing would love to co-opt the movement, but that the movement is not necessarily right-wing (authoritarian). Sadly, the left-wing populist movement in the U.S. is very weak, and unable to get its message out. I said:
Moderate liberals were often put off by [Senator Bernie Sanders’] “angry” tone. But Sanders’s followers asked why should they project a “happy” tone, when they feel that their country’s major institutions are failing them? These left-wing populists often expressed frustration with the 2016 neoliberal-moderate candidate, Hillary Clinton, and her Vice Presidential pick, Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), who told them to calm down, everything was just fine. At least it was for them and their mostly comfortable upper middle class supporters. That election outcome shocked the establishment, which still struggles to understand the depths of voters’ discontent.
Now in 2024, we had an unfortunate redux, with Vice President Kamala Harris projecting “joy” and her running mate Minnesota (“nice”) Governor Tim Walz presenting upbeat messaging while the non-coastal parts of the country felt their complaints were unheard. Instead, a billion-dollar advertising blitz focused on superficial topics (“good versus bad”) and failed to even attempt to educate voters about what inflation is, or provide an economic theory around how to create a fairer economy where we are all in this together. They didn’t even try to move beyond trite clichés (aha, a French word, how appropriate!).
But this post is actually not mainly about the U.S. election, or worries that Federal action on climate change will be delayed for years, or the future of American democracy, or any of the other reasonable worries that 74 million Americans have. The point is that carbon dividends, and universal basic income, could provide a democratic form of populism that would address economic concerns of a majority of Americans and stave off the move toward authoritarianism that is rising not just in America but around the world.
Feasta is currently rewriting its organizational Strategic Plan. In it, we refer to our Theory of Change. As we continue to work on projects such as the Wellbeing Economy, Cap & Share, and Basic Income, it is important to remember how our proposals can help everyday, working-class households and families, and how those ideas can provide hope to part of my country or parts of the world that are lacking hope, lacking resources, and lacking political imagination, which are pre-requisites to being able to address “luxury goods” such as climate, biodiversity, and the environment.
Bonsoir!
Mike Sandler is the current Chair of FEASTA’s Board of Directors and is a climate change and sustainability professional with experience working for nonprofits and government. In 2001 Mike co-founded the Center for Climate Protection based in Sonoma County, California. Inspired by Peter Barnes and Richard Douthwaite, he has advocated for revenues from a price on carbon to be returned back to the public as a per capita dividend or share. He actively promotes CapGlobalCarbon and he has written on green monetary reform and basic income, some of which is archived on his author page on HuffPost.
