​The COP-26 summit brought parties together to boost action towards the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Anticipation of the Glasgow meeting raised expectations that the 197 nations present would actually achieve something concrete that would keep global warming from exceeding 1.50C (2.70F).
 
It was not to be. The UN report on COP26 paints a far rosier picture of what was actually achieved than a realistic assessment supports. It borders on irresponsibility because it claims that “the Glasgow Climate Pact keeps 1.5 alive.” After that opening statement, everything that follows must be taken with an ocean of salt. COP-26’s failure means that the world must turn to another strategy. More on that below.
 
Glasgow attendees heard a great deal of soaring rhetoric from world leaders about the gravity of the problem. However, nothing resulted beyond the usual pledges of billions of dollars of transfer payments to developing nations staring the devastating effects of climate change square in the face. Nice words. But if the past is any indicator, words will speak volumes louder than any follow-up actions. The lofty rhetoric of world leaders was just that. Real action was nowhere to be found.
 
Glasgow glossed over some of the core climate change issues. For example, nothing was said about carbon capture. Similarly, the world’s nations were silent about nuclear power, an essential transitional energy source if we are to phase out fossil fuels and move to renewables.
 
The leaders of two of the world’s foremost greenhouse gas polluters—China and Russia—did not even bother to attend COP-26. Absent Presidents XI and Putin, the conference outcomes border on the meaningless.
 
Without itemizing the pledge particulars, suffice it to say that the planet can no longer limit temperature rises to 1.50C since the Industrial Revolution by the target date of 2030. The political will to do that simply does not exist. Temperatures are certain to smash through that barrier, which climate scientists have earmarked as the point of no return. Once crossed, what that means is that the climate will be out of control.
 
COP 26 was full of “urgings,” but not much that was tangible or enforceable. Telling was a statement in the official Glasgow report: “Countries have raised their ambition….” This may be the finest example of diplomatic clap-trap in history.
 
As in the previous 25 climate conferences, Glasgow kicked the can down the road once again. Going into Glasgow, half of the world’s major economies had not even met their previous 2015 Paris Agreement goals. And there are no sanctions for these failures, not even a gentle tap on the wrist.
 
With this non-approach, the 1.5 goal is now permanently out of reach. Natural disasters—more and greater storms, floods, forest fires, mudslides, droughts, heat waves et al.—will reach unheard-of intensity. Entire communities will be swallowed up by rising seas. Crop yields will decline. Water shortages will become more widespread. Population displacement will affect millions of people. The world will be forced to deal with this destruction accompanied by enormous increases in the costs of cleanup and in lives and livelihoods lost.
 
Add to the climate chaos that many nations have been over-reporting their carbon savings, a fact that came to light in Glasgow, but did not make it into the UN report. There are no sanctions for climate reporting fraud.
 
What this all means is that it is time to turn attention from halting and reversing global warming to mitigation. In other words, learning to live and cope with climate change and the escalating havoc it will inflict. Translated, that means constructing barriers against rising sea levels in places like lower Manhattan; vastly increasing federal and state budgets for agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Guard; enacting laws restricting residential construction in places highly prone to forest fires and beach erosion; and encouraging “climate migration” from areas at high risk to safer locales.
 
Dick Hermann
November 28, 2021

​President Biden has inexplicably fallen into the Trump Saudi Dumpster. This is disappointing in the extreme. 
 
Donald Trump’s first overseas trip as president was to Saudi Arabia. It was the first, but by no means the last time he toadied to the kingdom’s dictator, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS).
 
His one-way love affair with the Saudis and MBS was a constant of Trump’s presidency. He did not waver even when MBS directed the murder and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Trump’s justification for condoning this butchery was that the Saudis were going to pay American firms billions of dollars in return for armaments. That those weapons were used to rain death on thousands of innocent Yemenis was no deterrent to Trump’s shameful veneration of the kingdom.
 
It was thought that, once the U.S. achieved energy independence in the 2010s, 65 years of being the Saudis’ doormat would end. Despite no longer needing to rely on Saudi oil for the U.S. economy to function, Donald Trump enthusiastically prostrated himself and allowed MBS to walk all over him.
 
Thus, it was with great relief that, with Trump gone, it appeared that our relationship with this repressive regime that murders its citizens and enslaves its female population would finally be rebalanced. On assuming office, the Biden administration announced that it would only sell defensive weapons to Saudi Arabia. While even this modest policy retrenchment was insufficient, at least it was a modest step toward terminating America’s Saudi servility.
 
Not so fast.
 
President Biden has just approved a $650 million sale of arguably offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia. There is absolutely no justification for the U.S. to continue Trump’s misbegotten policy of fawning over this corrupt, homicidal regime that continues to wreak havoc on both its own population and Yemen, and makes a mockery of human rights.
 
The counter-argument from the State Department’s Arabists who have apparently captured Biden is that Saudi Arabia is the offset to Iran’s regional aspirations. The implication of this is that, absent U.S. military support, the Saudis would be unable to counter Iran. That is ludicrous. The Saudi military is brimming with both offensive and defensive weaponry that is more than adequate to give Iran pause.
 
It is now up to Congress to stop this misguided missile sale. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has filed a “joint resolution of disapproval.” I don’t find myself typically agreeing with this radical anti-Semite on any issue. This time, however, she is absolutely right.
 
Unfortunately, prospects for stopping the sale are poor. Even if the measure receives congressional approval, Biden is likely to veto it.
 
So here we go again, continuing to knuckle under to Saudi demands for more arms, weapons they could easily deploy in Yemen despite their assurances to the contrary. Someone please inform Biden that the balance of oil intimidation that governed U.S.-Saudi relations ever since President Roosevelt and King Abdul Aziz Ibn-Saud met in Egypt in 1945 and signed the pact that kept the oil spigot open to the West, has changed in our favor.
 
Dick Hermann
November 19, 2021

​The 2021 election results in Virginia, New Jersey and around the country might have appeared to signal that Donald Trump’s direct efforts at subverting democracy and replacing it with extreme right-wing authoritarianism are no longer working. With Trump out of power and banned from major social media, he himself has become, for the moment anyway, a has-been.
 
But that does not mean that the Trumpist threat is behind us. In fact, what was the top-down nature of the danger has morphed into a bottom-up menace that may be more dangerous. As has become the norm, defenders of American democracy are slow to realize the peril and take the necessary steps to counteract it.
 
This is not unprecedented. Once again, history tells a similar story.
 
Following Adolf Hitler’s release from prison, to which he had been confined after his failed “Beer Hall Putsch,” his National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) Party changed tactics. Instead of beating its head against the wall in futile, top-down efforts to seize power, it switched to a bottom-up strategy. It intimidated thousands of local government officials to resign or take the equivalent of early retirement due to a barrage of death threats and violent assaults. Death threats were often aimed not only at these officials, but also at their families, children included. These officials quite properly concluded that their personal and family safety was paramount. In many cases, the vacancies created by their departures were filled by Nazis.
 
This “bottom-up” strategy proved hugely successful. By the time Adolf Hitler got himself appointed German Chancellor, the ability to control both the electoral environment and local populations made it easy for him and the Nazis to rapidly and seamlessly take control of all of the levers and levels of power. We all know what happened next.
 
Disturbingly, something similar is now happening in America. Trump true-believers, enraged and enflamed by vaccine mandates, mask requirements, and the non-issue of Critical Race Theory, even though it isn’t being taught in K-12 schools anywhere, are (1) threatening school board members, school administrators and educators, and (2) moving into the vacancies created when school board members resign their positions or opt not to run for re-election due to fear.
 
A growing number of the 90,000+ school board members in the U.S. are leaving their positions, opening the door to MAGA zealots as replacements. No job or volunteer position (a number of school boards are comprised of volunteers) is worth a life.
 
The new MAGAverse strategy designed to subvert the country and transform it into an authoritarian state bereft of the rule of law does not stop at the schoolhouse door. It also extends to state and local election administration. A similar attrition is going on among county and city election officials. Fourteen states, all controlled by Republicans, have recently enacted laws empowering state legislatures to overturn election results, i.e., the will of the voters, if they don’t like the results. Moreover, just like school board member attrition, local election administrators are quitting in droves due to death threats aimed at them and their families. They too are being replaced by Trump partisans.
 
Little is being done to counter this bottom-up subversion. The Justice Department has directed the FBI to work with local school boards to try to figure out ways to protect board members. Although no action has yet been taken to implement any protective measures, Republicans are screaming “foul,” turning this too into a culture war battleground. Unfortunately, Attorney General Merrick Garland is emulating the kumbaya, “play nice” inclinations of his boss, President Biden, instead of coming down hard on those who threaten local officials.
 
Dick Hermann
November 12, 2021

​The resounding Republican victory in the Virginia gubernatorial election should be an object lesson to Democrats nationwide on how not to run a campaign in the (hopefully permanent) post-Trump era, and a wake-up call looking ahead to 2022.
 
Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe ran an off-target campaign that, from the outset, forgot what almost always decides elections: “kitchen-table” issues. Or, to quote Bill Clinton, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Exit polls revealed that the economy was issue number one in the minds of Virginia voters.
 
For months, kitchen-table issues have been hitting even closer to home than usual. Every time voters go grocery shopping and encounter both suddenly higher prices and empty shelves, or fill up their gas tanks for twice as much as it cost them a year ago, they obsess over how the economy is affecting their pocketbooks and quality of life. Politicians who do not address this ignore the kitchen table at their peril. McAuliffe never addressed these close-to-the-vest matters that were paramount voter concerns. In contrast, Republican Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin hammered them home daily.
 
Instead, McAuliffe tried to nationalize the campaign through “Trumpification.” This worked for Democrats in 2018 and 2020 when Trump dominated the daily news cycle and was a clear and present danger. But Trump is now gone and to a large extent rendered irrelevant, primarily because he has been kicked off social media and is no longer the lead story on the nightly news and 24-hour cable channels. His feeble attempts at relevance through his press releases are not even seen by the vast majority of voters.
 
Consequently, elections once again turn on kitchen-table issues that resonate with the vast majority of Americans. How Democrats could ignore this is incomprehensible.
 
The other key lesson deriving from this election is that it is the center that is almost always determinative. And suburban women represent the center more than any other demographic. Also, they more often than not do the family budgeting and can see that their hard-earned dollars do not go as far as they did even a few months ago. Despite the trend toward a more equitable sharing of household duties, they are most often the ones who do the grocery shopping. While in 2018 and 2020 they could be swayed to vote Democratic because they abhorred Trump’s boorish behavior and overt misogyny, now they have reverted to what passes for electoral normalcy.
 
In addition to misreading the minds of voters, McAuliffe suffered from his terrible gaffe—“parents should not be telling schools what to teach”—a faux pas his opponent immediately jumped on and constantly emphasized in his shrewd TV ad campaign. McAuliffe also went way beyond what was necessary and emphasized his close connection with teachers’ unions, apparently unmindful of the fact that parents view these organizations with some suspicion.
 
While, heaven forbid, Trump may be back on the ballot in 2024, he won’t be next year. Democrats need to take away from this off-off-year election that it is bread-and-butter issues that they need to emphasize. If they are actually able to enact both the Infrastructure and Build Back Better bills over which they have squabbled for months, they will have something tangible to take to voters next year. Meanwhile, in 2022 they need to forget Trump, as have the majority of suburban women, who swung from Biden to Republican Youngkin by an astounding 15 points.
 
Finally, Democratic Progressives have to abandon dumb slogans like “Defund the Police” that turn off the vast majority of voters. If they want their policy positions to prevail, they first need to elect Democrats. They won’t be able to do that if they offend the electorate. As Barack Obama once said: “Don’t do stupid stuff.”
 
Dick Hermann
November 5, 2021