Modi has lost it. "The govt has responded by massively increasing the security presence in the capital. Around thirty thousand police and paramilitary personnel have been deployed, internet services have been disrupted, trains to Delhi have been cancelled, metro stations and roads have been closed."

Climate & Community Action let’s get it

Lfg

So is this housing policy, econ policy, climate policy? It's all three. You can say the same about Will Lawrence connecting the dots between data centers and climate. Or Dan Osborne centering "right to repair" without talking up its climate dimensions, in a context where that wouldn't make sense.

Proposals like Jane Kim's terrific single-payer disaster insurance would tackle that head on with a public insurance model that lowers costs *and* invests insurance premiums in collective climate risk reduction. And running on this bold platform, Kim finished first in her primary.

The problem with polling is that people rank "climate" as an isolated issue lower than others, like "the economy" and "housing." But climate and economy and housing are inseparable! As Dharna's story explains, climate disasters are spiking insurance costs.

“Nobody really experiences everyday life like walking around the world rank-ordering the things that they care about,” said Cohen... “What’s important is to learn how to embed the climate issue organically amidst the other issues that people care most about.”

And let's reground ourselves in the overall political economy. The US can muster a grand investment stimulus in data centers, or building a genuinely green economy. The Green New Deal is the only real alternative to the AI development machine. Eyes on the prize, people!

And btw, once you anchor yourself in reality, you can let go of the negative polarization frenzy of AI-centric debates. Instead of "owning" AI overlords by pretending their technology is a scam, focus on concrete fights to take away their power, while taking that power seriously.

The task of leftwing politics—and of critical thinking—is to situate the AI project in its material context. And to fight for a different political economy that's oriented to meeting our real material needs—ecologically sustainable human flourishing for all.

And we can notice the oldest story ever at the core of AI ideology: it's a mystification machine. It is misdirecting attention from an objectively given material emergency, which AI itself is worsening, to a completely vague and abstract debate about a fictional future.

Obviously, we have to wage the political battles that are in front of us, we can't just post our way to better ones. But we can insist on anchoring our concept of reality... in material reality.

And it's the struggle to literally maintain the living conditions of billions of people that creates the most important filter for even determining what "good AI" can be. "Pro-human" AI that breaks ecosystems *cannot* be good, bc breaking ecosystems is materially anti-human.

A lot of smart ppl have let themselves be bullied into retreating from climate concern. They're letting AI structure the narrative terrain of political struggle. The struggle of our times isn't no AI vs bad AI, or good AI vs bad AI, but a livable planet vs mass death.

It's science 101 that ecological breakdown is more dangerous to billions of humans than anything else. Every kind of cancer is horrible. Runaway climate breakdown and collapsing biodiversity are an existential threat to everyone. But AI's offer there is minimal—at best!

Objectively, humanity's greatest challenge is to combine shared prosperity for all humans with ecological sustainability. But AI boosters offer way vaguer visions of making things "better." That's the tell—they don't care about concrete, material problems.