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USA is politically sustained on cheap credit, cheap gas, and cheap meat.

Take those away and it explodes.

www.ft.com/content/9e367a80-82b3-11e9-b592-5fe435b57a3b
2/ Cheap credit = Housing as Savings
Cheap gas = cars & sprawl as way of life
Cheap meat = red meat as American

FARM is a handy mnemomic for the big bosses of US decarbonization -Fossil fuels, Autos, Real estate, Meat. Thread on their political economy:

3/ United States of Cows, Pigs (soy) & Timber?

How america uses its land tells you who has power.
@laurenleatherby @merrill_dave
bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-us-land-use/

Thread on US Agriculture's political geography

4/ On š˜¼, Autos: Hard to understand how deeply Cars shape cities; how much oil demand will fall; # of jobs in servicing at stake when China-led EV's get as cheap as combustion engines.

Thread on the politics of 2010s SUV boom. cambridge.org/core/journals/business-and-politics/issue/7876B721FB6324D7B75798D3EB568067?utm_source=H...

5/ R for Real Estate. Everyone knows BigOil holds Mitigation hostage.

Adaptation to Floods though, is held hostage by FIRE industryā€”Banks, builders, insurance & Realtors.

Democrats and wealthy homeowners block reform. Thread

6/ M for meat: ā€œWhat have the natives of South America, the savages of Africa, the stupid Greenlander, the peasantry of Europe, all combined, done for civilization, in comparison with any single beef-eating class of Europe?ā€
@joshspecht on Meat Populism
lithub.com/why-are-american-men-so-obsessed-with-steak/
7/ Oil shapes US political landscape. Its not just about Rockefellers & Kochs. But about Belief in Christianity and crude. The historian Darren Dochuk shows in his book that the oil-patch evangelicals in Texas and California fueled rise of American right.
washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/07/15/oil-patch-evangelicals-how-christianity-crude-fueled-rise-ameri...
8/ F for Fossil. US ideology of Carbonism, much like Nationalism has deep roots & is held far outside America's borders. It has a powerful worldview (carbon produce human flourishing) & a theory of value (carbon powers growth) theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/11/ideology-behind-donald-trumps-paris-withdrawal/601462/

12/ In US, a single senator empowered by a fossil fuel boom in Appalachia stopped Bidenā€™s Climate bill. Other senators insist on destructive corn ethanol subsidies

I review Carbon Power ie FARM (Fossil, Autos, Real Estate, Meat) power @rupert_russell
prospect.org/culture/books/how-high-energy-prices-emboldened-putin-russell-review/
13/ "The American way of life is not up for negotiation. Periodā€œ George Bush Sr famously declared at Rio Earth summit in '92. Since then that carbon-intensive way of life spread worldwide & create FARM power everywhere.

Fossils, Autos, Real estate, Meat

14/ Carbon power is FARM power (Fossil fuels,Autos,Real estate,Meat). That way of life & political power is entrenched worldwide but US is special case.

Existing models of US politics are wrong. Hereā€™s how the system really works. ht @thoatley @mkblyth foreignpolicy.com/2021/02/12/carbon-coalition-median-voter-us-politics/
15/ Pricey gas blows up Biden. Trump nearly won in 2020 coz of Carbon anxiety. As Mike Davis said "ā€˜Millions of green energy jobsā€™ is an abstraction that utterly fails to connect to the concrete circumstances of Rustbelt" lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n22/mike-davis/short-cuts
Thread

16/ Britainā€™s coal mines,steamboats,railways,canals, telegraph lines,factories were sinews of British empire

Pax Americana is oil rigs,power lines,highways,airports, military bases,container terminals,telecom towers, satellites,fibreoptic ht @JeromeRoos
www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/ideas-international-politics/2022/06/new-world-order-how-...
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Venkatesh Rao @vgr Ā· Jun 21, 2022
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Interesting thread