American cities, counties and states have offered a crucial
counterweight to the White House on the issues that really matter
by Rebecca Solnit
San Francisco
The centre cannot hold, and that's the good news in the United States
these days. Quietly, doggedly, cities, regions, counties and states
have refused to march to the Bush administration's drum when it comes
to climate change, the environment and the war. Some of the recent
changes are so sweeping that they will probably drag the nation along
with them - notably efforts by Vermont, Massachusetts and California to
set higher vehicle emissions standards and generally treat climate
change as an environmental problem that can be addressed by regulation.
The Bush administration has notoriously dragged its feet on doing
anything about climate change, and it will now be dragged along by the
states, themselves prodded forward by citizens.
It wasn't supposed to work that way. States' rights was a rallying cry
for conservatives for much of the 20th century, first in allowing
segregation and racial discrimination across the south and then in
allowing environmental destruction around the west. Rightwingers have
usually believed in a weak federal government - except when they run
it; and that weakness, or rather the strength of the local, has been
one of the bright spots during the seven bleak years of life under Bush...
counterweight to the White House on the issues that really matter
by Rebecca Solnit
San Francisco
The centre cannot hold, and that's the good news in the United States
these days. Quietly, doggedly, cities, regions, counties and states
have refused to march to the Bush administration's drum when it comes
to climate change, the environment and the war. Some of the recent
changes are so sweeping that they will probably drag the nation along
with them - notably efforts by Vermont, Massachusetts and California to
set higher vehicle emissions standards and generally treat climate
change as an environmental problem that can be addressed by regulation.
The Bush administration has notoriously dragged its feet on doing
anything about climate change, and it will now be dragged along by the
states, themselves prodded forward by citizens.
It wasn't supposed to work that way. States' rights was a rallying cry
for conservatives for much of the 20th century, first in allowing
segregation and racial discrimination across the south and then in
allowing environmental destruction around the west. Rightwingers have
usually believed in a weak federal government - except when they run
it; and that weakness, or rather the strength of the local, has been
one of the bright spots during the seven bleak years of life under Bush...
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