Bill McKibben: Pouring Literal Gasoline on the Flames of Hate

Not a metaphor, not at all

By Bill McKibben

It’s a mug’s game to try and figure out the lowest point of the Trump presidency, because he’s certain to go lower still, often in a matter of hours.

Still, yesterday for me can’t pass without comment, because it so perfectly reflects the hideousness of our moment. The picture above shows a circle of white people gathered around the president, listening to him rant about Somali-Americans. The day before he had called them “garbage,” and he was taking up the theme again, with vigor. Somalis had “destroyed Minnesota” and “destroyed our country.” The “Somalians should be out of here,” he said. I have tried to go back and at least as far as Woodrow Wilson and I don’t think any president has said any thing as clearly racist while in office, and I was not alone. Alvin Tillery, at Northwestern, told Reuters yesterday that Trump is “absolutely unique” among modern presidents in his racism—Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan made “thinly veiled” racial attacks but Trump has no interest in veils, nor do his supporters. His press secretary Karoline Leavitt called his remarks “amazing” and an “epic moment;” J.D. Vance, when the president was ranting about garbage the day before, banged the cabinet table to show his raucous appreciation. Let me say plainly—this is piggish behavior. One of my my most beloved colleagues is a Somali-American from Minnesota; she has more love, compassion and character in her little finger than our president has in his bloated sack of a body. He is simply a bad man, who—feeling a little cornered—heads for the hate that feeds his soul.

But what about those people gathered around him in the Oval Office? Therein lies a tale.

As it turns out, they were automobile executives, joining Trump for a happy moment where he told them that gasoline would be the fuel of the future. As he explained in his usual thoughtful manner

The greatest scam in American history, the Green New Scam, is a quest to end the gasoline powered car. This is what they wanted to do even though we have more gasoline than any other country by far.

It should surprise no one that these auto executives stood there simpering while the president launched into his racist diatribe. Black workers have, of course, been central to Detroit’s success. They faced discrimination from the start—among other things they were often sent to work in the fume-filled paint rooms of the big plants—but still they persevered. Detroit was eventually home to the country’s biggest branch of the NAACP; Dr. King previewed his I Have a Dream speech in a wild June day in Detroit in 1963, with Rev. C.L. Franklin, best known now as Aretha’s dad, presiding over much of the action. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, the chairman and CEO of Ford issued a statement saying “we cannot turn a blind eye” to racism, but that’s just what current Ford CEO Jim Farley, and all the other executives in that room, did yesterday.

But perhaps it might surprise some that they were standing there applauding as Trump rolled back fuel economy standards, from 50 miles to the gallon by 2035 under the old rules to about 35 miles a gallon. Those higher mileage standards were the tool the Biden administration was using to help nudge Detroit towards electric vehicles; without them, it will almost certainly backslide towards irrelevance. That’s because they will slow down their process of innovation; as the Times put it, the new policy

“frees automakers to sell more pickups and sport utility vehicles, which are usually much more profitable than smaller cars. It will be difficult for carmakers to resist pressure to sell these gas guzzlers.”

Here’s Lenny LaRocca, who leads the automotive practice at consulting firm KPMG:

“I would anticipate that more focus would be on the larger S.U.V.s and pickup trucks.”

So—more gas for consumers to buy (the cost of owning an EV is far lower than the cost of owning an internal combustion car), more carbon and particulates in the air, more people being run over by absurdly sized vehicles.

And much less chance that Detroit will ever be a leading force in the auto industry again. That was already seeming unlikely: China’s carmakers grow more dominant by the quarter. But the IRA support for EVs was the last real possibility, an infusion of funds to help underwrite the retooling for the world to come. But instead of fighting for that, these executives have truckled to the president, and sold the future of their companies for a few more years of turning out Escalades.

At some level these guys know what they should be doing. Jim Farley , the Ford guy who was making jokes with the president yesterday? In the fall of 2024 he said he’d been driving a Xiaomi Speed Ultra 7 for six months, and that it was “fantastic.” “I don’t want to give it up,” he added. Fourteen months ago he told the Journal that the Chinese automakers were an “existential threat” because their cars were so good. “Executing to a Chinese standard is going to be the most important priority,” Farley said.

But now that won’t happen, because these guys were more cowed by a racist president than by their Chinese competition. By the time another president with more sense makes it to the White House, the Chinese “juggernaut” (Farley’s word) will have had three more years to build up its lead; Detroit will be choking on its dust.

Hey, but at least we can tell ourselves that we’re cool in a retro kind of way. Let’s bring in another man in that picture, Sean Duffy, Trump’s Transportation Secretary, the guy right behind Trump who looks like he’s dressing for his part in Mad Men. (Gotta love the razor thin pocket square). Last month was admonishing airline passengers who dressed too comfortably; the result was the #pajamaresistance movement. Yesterday he was celebrating the new extra-pollution rules with this notion:

“This rule will actually allow you to bring back the 1970s station wagon. Maybe a little wood paneling on the side.”

Duffy’s eager to return to the 70s; Bobby Kennedy wants us back in the pre-vaccine 1940s; Trump wants to talk like a 19th century slave-trader.

The rest of us, who would like to participate in the future with the balance of planet earth, have a lot of work to do in the year ahead. Let us look on the abased truckling of the auto executives and resolve to not stay silent ourselves; we’ve got eleven months to win the midterms and break the political back of this retrograde ugliness. If you’re looking for some ways to join in, check out the work we’re doing at Third Act.

Please go here for the original article: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzQdzcwJhRcTTCWsnHGSrJXhNtdM