The United States has been through a massive roller-coaster over the past month. The events of Four Wednesdays in January have been momentous:
- Wednesday, January 6th: Insurrection: At the instigation of Donald Trump, insurrectionists assaulted the Capitol and put the survival of U.S. Democracy on a knife’s edge.
- Of course, that first Wednesday began with the terrific victories in Georgia moving from two incompetent, unethical crooks to two uber-competent, ethical, decent, substantive Georgia Senators and coming Democratic Party control of the Senate.
- Wednesday, January 13th: Impeachment: A week after seditious Donald incited insurrection, Trump became the first President to be impeached twice.
- Wednesday, January 20th: Inauguration: With a huge security presence to dissuade and deter another Cult 45 assault on the U.S. government, President Biden was sworn in as the 46th President.
- Wednesday, January 27th: Innovation+: President Biden is to, after a week of executive orders/actions related to climate (rejoining the Paris Accords, mandating the U.S. government buy (US-made) electric vehicles, reinstituting a social cost of carbon, ...) and a raft of Climate Hawk appointments throughout the Biden-Harris Administration, add even more executive orders related to climate. Expected actions include
- Directing government agencies to
- Set down the path for banning new oil and natural gas leases on federal lands — and, potentially, reducing existing leases.
- conserve 30 percent of all federal land and water by 2030,
- create a task force to assemble a governmentwide action plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions;
- Will create new offices, commissions, and positions for arenas like environmental justice and environmentally friendly job creation (with at least some focus on helping displaced coal communities), and,
- Declare the climate crisis a national security priority
It has been a momentous month (so far) and, of course, the four Wednesdays, the 4 Is, only begin to touch the surface of what has happened / is happening over the month (from COVID19 to unemployment to …). However, consider the four and it does say much about the moment and the potential for positive action to come.
The Insurrection, that first Wednesday in January, represented the nadir of the truly horrific Trump regime as his words and actions sparked a murderous crowd to attack the Capitol. After months of illegal surreptitious and overt efforts to overthrown the election and establish a Trump autocracy, Trump and his cult followers took to the streets with violence and murderous intent.
With Impeachment, the second Wednesday in January, a path toward accountability was set even Senator McConnell refused to allow a trial to go forward to remove seditious Trump and the odds of a conviction of the former occupant of the Oval Office seem dim in the face of Republican Senators’ continued fear of crossing Trump and the Cult45 Republican base.
Inauguration, the third Wednesday in January, brought signs of relief and cries of joy across the nation and the globe. Competence, sanity, ethics, and decency returned to the White House. Sane Americans went to sleep more at ease (even with COVID19, the climate crisis, unemployment, the domestic terror threat) than had been possible for the previous four years.
Innovation, the fourth Wednesday of January, provides a signpost that government has again become part of the solution and that the President will be leveraging all tools of governance (with the sad constraints of continued climate denier power in Congress ready to fight to stymie action) to address the imperative for serious climate action (along with other serious problems and opportunities).
Four Wednesdays … a journey from
- the nadir of thugs assaulting the Capitol to
- the painful necessity for accountability to
- the joy of positive chain in government to
- the promise that government will be there for us (the U.S.),
And, reason for hope that President Biden will be the Climate Hawk that the U.S. and the rest of humanity requires.
Notes:
+ Okay, striving to stay with “I” is a bit of a stretch for Wednesday’s anticipated climate executive orders. Innovation? Sure, in some ways but more simply sanity from the Oval Office. Welcome hearing a better “I” to provide an I for each of the four Wednesdays in January.