Kalmar

Almost a year to the day later, I am back walking around Kalmar pretending that I still have Instagram. While Eddie is hanging out with my parents, I sit down for a coffee to catch up on some overdue e-mail correspondence about my research. Obviously, the election of Trump has created a lot of uncertainty in the whole climate policy research community. In the best of worlds, this could be a time when old truths are finally reconsidered. Yet, threatened by this wave of irrationalism, it is possible that the Green Left will instead double down on climate moralism and identity politics. Whereas someone like John McCain proposed building 45 new nuclear reactors in the United States as an alternative (and probably much more effective!) response to climate change, Trump and the arch-climate denier Myron Ebell whom he has appointed to lead his EPA transition team, are more like anti-vaxxers who occupy a parallel universe in which scientific evidence plays no meaningful role.

Outside climate policy, my main worries of course have to do with Iran and the Middle-East more generally, to say nothing of the Ukraine or Korea. I guess the key thing at this stage is to not rush ahead too much but to take each issue when the time comes. If nothing else, it will be funny to see how progressives everywhere will suddenly start loving the Senate filibuster…