@simon_brooke @ksaj

(There's haiku/senryu/poetry at the end here. Those who tuned based on hash tag, feel free to scroll down.)

Actions still matter. Leadership matters.

In the US, I think with Bernie or Warren at the helm, we might have bent capitalism more. Biden wasn't up to that. He's not the guy that's best for the job. But two party democracy without rank order voting makes it not about what's best but what's better. The choice in 2024 in the US is only how not to slide backward, as we would under Trump, not how to best move forward, as neither really promises. Still, even this matters.

Biden is the must-vote-for option in the US. Third parties have no chance. Not voting or voting for a third party, is equivalent to a half-vote for Trump and a half-vote for Biden. That's a TERRIBLE way to protest.

The slim hope is that Biden will change, learn, grow. Or if he passes, maybe Harris will be less centrist. There is no similar hope from the GOP.

Other countries face differences in detail, but there are analogs globally. We need to support the best political voices that will help us more, but only to the extent those voices can be elected, not so as to get distracted about getting the electable-but-only-better-not-best candidate from getting in.

And we need to support democracy, because under democracy there can be dissent, and climate leaders who are unelected can still influence. Under autocracy, as Trump promises, and others elsewhere do too, such thoughtful climate dissenters will be silenced.

Get the word out. Find doable options to suggest or do. Contribute how you can. Bolster others who can do more.

Yeah, it's hard some days to know if there's hope, but don't let that worry distract you. I recently wrote this haiku, hoping to provoke folks a bit:

Climate work to do.
But, to paraphrase Zevon,
We'll do it when dead.

But maybe the tone was wrong. Maybe instead I should have channeled Zevon differently, in a more upbeat way:

Climate work daunts us.
May be already pointless.
Ponder that when dead.

In other words, let's just presume there's hope, as we can't prove there's not. Hope isn't a probability, it's a oath. Erring on the side of defeatism, presuming there's no path when maybe there is, is a risk of giving up unnecessarily. There's time enough for being defeatist once we've killed ourselves from being hopeful.