A few months ago, I wrote about student loan forgiveness, and I commented that let's not even talk about forgiveness; let's talk about a dignified bankruptcy, because if we can't get that – and we can't, those options were steadily taken away – we can't get loan forgiveness. So now I'm thinking about reducing carbon output. We have all these grandiose schemes, and we still have not been able to kill the huge tax breaks given to fossil fuel drillers. Yes, we need to do more. But if we can't do at least that, how can we even hope to do more?
There's something wrong with our whole policy-making process. We focus on complex ideas which are ever so difficult to do, and simple small ideas, yet if we can't pass the small ideas we don't even need to worry about the big ones – they've going nowhere. There's nothing complex about "allow graduates drowning in debt a dignified bankruptcy." There's nothing complex about "stop supporting fossil fuel extraction and refining, it's changing the climate." Yet we can't pass either of them.
Maybe if we can win on the small things, we can win on the big ones.
No comments:
Post a Comment