I usually avoid "Morning Joe" on MSNBC. I almost always find it horribly annoying, especially Joe Scarborough. On occasion his co-host Mika Brzezinski makes some good points. And unlike Joe she doesn’t make my ears bleed.
This morning, however, there was a momentary glitch in the toxic "Morning Joe" formula. A glitch in the good sense of the term, that is. So I decided to watch...
Jeffrey Sachs, the Director of the Earth Institute and a noted spokesman on environmental preservation and ending global poverty, was being interviewed about his new book, Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet.
The part of the discussion I saw centered on the ongoing shift in the global economy – from a US-dominated system to a system dominated by a variety of powers including China, India, and the European Union. Sachs argued that the US is falling behind, $4 per gallon gas or higher is on the near horizon, and the US is losing its edge by not making itself the engine for the next new wave of technology that will be needed to address the climate crisis – alternative fuels, etc. He specifically referenced the rising price of grain that is not being helped by the ethanol gambit. He noted the huge increase in the commodity price of wheat and other grains – and basically made the point that grain-based alternative fuels are not the answer and, in fact, may make our problems worse.
All good points – and he had Joe AGREEING with him, emphatically. (I know -- it was something to witness.)
So then Joe "I heart those Reagan Democrats" Scarborough proceeds to lament that we’re not innovating our way out of this crisis, since innovating is what we in the US do best. He and Sachs both cited the tech boom of the 1990s as an example of the US’s strength in this area, and agreed that we could use our innovative skills to improve our economic fortunes.
As an aside, I love how people like this harp on how we in the US are soooo clever and innovative, as if other societies aren’t just as or more innovative than we are, but whatever, American exceptionalism, blah blah blah. It was also telling that the source of the tech boom – i.e. massive government investment over many years, probably decades -- went unmentioned.
Anyway...Joe wound up his lament by imploring Sachs to explain why this sorry state of affairs exists. Why oh why isn’t the US the leader in alternative energy technology? Why aren’t we investing in science? Why are we ignoring the climate crisis?
And rather than answer these questions, Jeff Sachs said HE DIDN’T KNOW WHY.
Seriously.
So there I was, yelling at the teevee.
Jeff Sachs is a smart guy, apparently. He's on TV a lot as an expert on these issues. He was alive when Ronald Reagan was first elected. Does he not recall "Government isn’t the solution to our problems. Government is the problem."? Has he missed the anti-science, anti-government, fundamentalist takeover of the Republican party, the media, much of our government, and parts of the Democratic party?
Here’s what super smart guy Jeffrey Sachs should have said:
"Three decades of extreme anti-government ideology has infected our public discourse and our society from top to bottom. Three decades of fundamentalist anti-science ideology has infected every layer of our society. This is the result. The reason we had a tech boom was massive and sustained government spending over many years. If we want to foster a thriving alternative energy sector, our government needs to invest significant resources in that endeavor. And if we want to have a country that embraces science and isn’t in denial about the climate crisis, then we will have to take back our public discourse and our political parties from the forces of fundamentalism and ignorance."
How hard is that?!? Oy...
There’s no transcript or video up at MSNBC yet, so this is all based on my memory. Any mistakes are therefore my own. I’ll try to update when the transcript/video become available.
Peace.