(Essay #7)
After six completed essays, I want to report on three essay efforts that I started but, for various reasons, decided not to pursue to completion. I want to share these stories with you because I believe they each contain valuable nuggets.
Advertising
The first one is about advertising. Here is how the essay began:
I hate advertising, and this is my diatribe on the subject.
It is not just that advertising interferes with my TV viewing and other pleasures. If it were only that, I would be in a quandary since the ads sponsor many of the shows and games I watch. No, I hate it because of the deep damage it does to American society and its people. Advertising is one of the world’s most pernicious businesses.
In protest, I fast forward through ads whenever possible and mute others. And I have installed ad blockers. But that is like holding a little umbrella in one of today’s climate-fueled rain rivers.
Here is the good news: there are answers short of returning to the caves.
I thought I was off to a nice start. I had addressed advertising in my books, and I knew a few things, like that advertising to children was once tightly restricted in the United States. Then, in 1983 at the urging of the Reagan Administration the FCC deregulated it, and within a year the ten top toys all had ties to TV programs. By 2011 marketing to children had swelled to a $17 billion a year juggernaut. Children and adolescents now view 40,000 ads per year on TV alone. My plan was to develop the idea that advertising has been both key to our runaway consumerism and a huge barrier to needed transformations in our social values.
But I needed updating, so I started doing a little research—and my confidence fell apart. A decade or so ago, digital advertising in the US was a small part of the advertising industry. Now, it’s the mainstay, consuming almost 80 percent of rapidly swelling advertising expenditures, with mobile devices taking a major and growing share of that. Meanwhile, there are strange things going on. Tens of billions are being spent on influencer marketing, of all things. What’s driving this is not hard to figure. Screen time for US adults and teenagers is 6 to 8 hours a day. Digital platforms carrying ads typically get paid by how many clicks the ads get, so the platforms provide content that keeps eyes on the screen, no matter how socially destructive. Algorithms!
I realized that ancient I, who spends zero time on social media and almost none on a phone of any sort, had no insight into this new world or what to do about it. What good would it do to write about highway billboards or other traditional ads? I also discovered that the First Amendment is now being used in new ways to protect “commercial speech” from regulation, adding a whole new and complexifying area for this old law professor.
So, as much as I would dearly love to see advertising dramatically curtailed and reshaped by regulations, especially ads aimed at children and the vulnerable, I knew I was not the right person nor an essay the right format. As an alternative, do watch or rewatch the gripping, compelling Netflix doc, The Social Dilemma, available on the official Netflix site.
Advertising
The first one is about advertising. Here is how the essay began:
I hate advertising, and this is my diatribe on the subject.
It is not just that advertising interferes with my TV viewing and other pleasures. If it were only that, I would be in a quandary since the ads sponsor many of the shows and games I watch. No, I hate it because of the deep damage it does to American society and its people. Advertising is one of the world’s most pernicious businesses.
In protest, I fast forward through ads whenever possible and mute others. And I have installed ad blockers. But that is like holding a little umbrella in one of today’s climate-fueled rain rivers.
Here is the good news: there are answers short of returning to the caves.
I thought I was off to a nice start. I had addressed advertising in my books, and I knew a few things, like that advertising to children was once tightly restricted in the United States. Then, in 1983 at the urging of the Reagan Administration the FCC deregulated it, and within a year the ten top toys all had ties to TV programs. By 2011 marketing to children had swelled to a $17 billion a year juggernaut. Children and adolescents now view 40,000 ads per year on TV alone. My plan was to develop the idea that advertising has been both key to our runaway consumerism and a huge barrier to needed transformations in our social values.
But I needed updating, so I started doing a little research—and my confidence fell apart. A decade or so ago, digital advertising in the US was a small part of the advertising industry. Now, it’s the mainstay, consuming almost 80 percent of rapidly swelling advertising expenditures, with mobile devices taking a major and growing share of that. Meanwhile, there are strange things going on. Tens of billions are being spent on influencer marketing, of all things. What’s driving this is not hard to figure. Screen time for US adults and teenagers is 6 to 8 hours a day. Digital platforms carrying ads typically get paid by how many clicks the ads get, so the platforms provide content that keeps eyes on the screen, no matter how socially destructive. Algorithms!
I realized that ancient I, who spends zero time on social media and almost none on a phone of any sort, had no insight into this new world or what to do about it. What good would it do to write about highway billboards or other traditional ads? I also discovered that the First Amendment is now being used in new ways to protect “commercial speech” from regulation, adding a whole new and complexifying area for this old law professor.
So, as much as I would dearly love to see advertising dramatically curtailed and reshaped by regulations, especially ads aimed at children and the vulnerable, I knew I was not the right person nor an essay the right format. As an alternative, do watch or rewatch the gripping, compelling Netflix doc, The Social Dilemma, available on the official Netflix site.
Climate
Another essay effort began with the thought that, despite the media attention the climate issue is finally getting, most of today’s climate news and discussion is focused on the immediate effects of climate change and neglects the horrendous downstream consequences.
I hope it is clear why I would want to present such distressing information. Understanding the full dimensions of the climate threat can drive home the need to head off the worst. That much we can still do. It can spur crisis readiness for what is unavoidably coming and, importantly, encourage people to ask what's wrong with a society and a world that has brought the climate tragedy to our doorsteps.
Here is what I had prepared:
A new and frightening world is unfolding around us. It is difficult to face, but please do. The scenarios I describe here are likely, some inevitable and some more speculative than others. The question for us now is whether societies will act with swift determination to minimize their prevalence and severity.
Already underway, the first order effects of climate change are droughts, extreme heat, wildfires, severe storms, floods, unwelcome new weather patterns, melting of glaciers and landed ice, sea-level rise, and more.
You know this world. It's the world we see emerging today.
These effects will lead in turn to second-order consequences, what economists call knock-on effects. Entirely predictable are widespread biological losses and ecosystem degradation, the spread of diseases into new areas, water and food shortages, persistent crop failures and famines, large-scale economic disruptions, uninhabitable zones along coasts and elsewhere, scorched cities, and major loss of human life.
Simultaneously with these changes, we will likely see still more consequences such as climate refugees and mass migrations, resource and other disputes within and between countries, and costly efforts at adaptation, much of it futile, as well as risky geo-engineering.
These impacts will greatly stress governments around the world. They will struggle to cope. We could see police forces and militaries called upon for social stability and invoked as solutions. There are already a number of countries tallied as “failed or failing states,” and climate change will drive these numbers up. At the international level, the multiple inadequacies of global governance, never strong except in economic spheres, will be magnified by the international tensions and domestic preoccupations caused by climate change.
Equally telling will be the psychological burdens. The loss of homes, communities, and livelihoods; the many “excess deaths;” the destruction of much-loved natural and cultural resources including species, forests, and coastlines; the pall of grief, dread, and powerlessness—these will weigh heavily, especially on the young.
There's more, possibly worse, for example the tendency of frightened, overwhelmed people to reach for authoritarian, strong-man solutions, but I’ve said enough.
Why did I move on from this essay? I first paused because the draft was too bleak standing alone. As someone once said, things are much too bad for pessimism. An essay with this disturbing material would have to offer ways forward to contain the scope of climate disaster. And just then an invitation arrived from Yale University Press to reflect on my 2004 book, Red Sky at Morning, and that effort evolved into the vehicle to say better what I wanted to say about the climate situation. See the resulting Essay from the Edge No. 4. The above material didn’t make it into that essay, but it is important, so I present it here.
Here is a current assessment of the climate situation and what must be done from top experts, Bob Watson and colleagues. https://theconversation.com/the-overshoot-myth-you-cant-keep-burning-fossil-fuels-and-expect-scientists-of-the-future-to-get-us-back-to-1-5-c-230814. From the UN on through to the local level, I don’t think we are prepared for the climate impacts and calamitous changes that are coming, and there seems to be no concerted effort to get prepared at any level.
Federalism
A third essay I began and then halted was to focus on the possibility of shifting more of our progressive efforts away from the stalemate in Washington DC and towards other levels of government.
Here is a draft I started toward that end:
The United States is faced with the unsettling combination of unprecedented challenges requiring strong, effective governance and a politics so broken that Washington rising to multiple challenges seems remote.
An apt metaphor for America’s national politics is trench warfare. Both Democrats and Republicans are dug in, with hardened, almost unmovable attitudes and positions. Red and Blue forces face each other in stark opposition and mutual rejection. Massive efforts are expended for small gains that can be rolled back when power shifts.
This situation raises an important question: Is it time for progressives to adopt another, perhaps primary approach that involves shifting out of Washington? This alternative strategy might (1) identify what is most needed from Washington and devise and pursue strategies to secure these outcomes and prevent negative ones, (2) concentrate far more progressive energies on other levels of governance—international, state, regional, and local, and (3) seek a new level of non-governmental governance, for example involving civil society and enlightened elements of the private sector. The core idea is to locate public policy at the most effective level of governance, depending on the issue. The old saying that the nation-state is too small for the big things and too big for the small things doesn’t quite get it right, but you get the idea.
Already, many encouraging initiatives are underway across the country at the local and state levels. We recall the go-it-alone initiatives in California and elsewhere in response to the Trump administration. And perhaps there are things to be learned from other federal countries, like Canada.
Should efforts be pursued to bring together a new strategy for progressives of many stripes to get behind? Might progressives see enough positive in decentralization and a New Federalism to support such an approach? Might decentralization mean abandoning large numbers of people to reactionary state governments or diminishing our centuries long struggle for a more perfect union? There is sadness in seeing the national experiment come to the distressing situation in which we now find ourselves. Still, might it be that thinking, planning, and acting in a new way is now the best path for making real progress?
I halted on this one for two related reasons you may have guessed. First, I decided that a full essay would make more sense if—damn the thought—Trump were unfortunately to win the presidential election this year. That said to me: shelve the idea for now. And second, I am totally excited and energized by the Harris-Walz ticket, and I want to join with others now in focusing on building a new and positive era in our national politics! Still, it’s worth keeping this range of issues in mind as we proceed. For the period ahead, we will need vital governance at all levels, from local to global.
***
An apt metaphor for America’s national politics is trench warfare. Both Democrats and Republicans are dug in, with hardened, almost unmovable attitudes and positions. Red and Blue forces face each other in stark opposition and mutual rejection. Massive efforts are expended for small gains that can be rolled back when power shifts.
This situation raises an important question: Is it time for progressives to adopt another, perhaps primary approach that involves shifting out of Washington? This alternative strategy might (1) identify what is most needed from Washington and devise and pursue strategies to secure these outcomes and prevent negative ones, (2) concentrate far more progressive energies on other levels of governance—international, state, regional, and local, and (3) seek a new level of non-governmental governance, for example involving civil society and enlightened elements of the private sector. The core idea is to locate public policy at the most effective level of governance, depending on the issue. The old saying that the nation-state is too small for the big things and too big for the small things doesn’t quite get it right, but you get the idea.
Already, many encouraging initiatives are underway across the country at the local and state levels. We recall the go-it-alone initiatives in California and elsewhere in response to the Trump administration. And perhaps there are things to be learned from other federal countries, like Canada.
Should efforts be pursued to bring together a new strategy for progressives of many stripes to get behind? Might progressives see enough positive in decentralization and a New Federalism to support such an approach? Might decentralization mean abandoning large numbers of people to reactionary state governments or diminishing our centuries long struggle for a more perfect union? There is sadness in seeing the national experiment come to the distressing situation in which we now find ourselves. Still, might it be that thinking, planning, and acting in a new way is now the best path for making real progress?
I halted on this one for two related reasons you may have guessed. First, I decided that a full essay would make more sense if—damn the thought—Trump were unfortunately to win the presidential election this year. That said to me: shelve the idea for now. And second, I am totally excited and energized by the Harris-Walz ticket, and I want to join with others now in focusing on building a new and positive era in our national politics! Still, it’s worth keeping this range of issues in mind as we proceed. For the period ahead, we will need vital governance at all levels, from local to global.
***
Signing off for a while. Thank you for reading. I have enjoyed preparing these essays, and I hope you found them helpful.
It’s time now to go get out the vote. There are several great programs for writing postcards. Third Act has one. It is estimated that there are about 13 million environmentally inclined Americans who don’t vote regularly in federal elections. Check out the Environmental Voter Project for how you can help on that.
For more on the author, see www.gusspeth.org.
The Essays from the Edge are being posted at https://www.democracycollaborative.org/blogs.
