Dave Gardner for President of the United States
Dave Gardner and I have appeared on each other’s podcasts and have become friends. He is one of the few people who understands our environmental problems and works on it.
I learned about him from his documentary Growthbusters (my comment is the first on its YouTube release), which showed him running for office in Colorado on a platform to shrink the local population and economy. He didn’t win the election, but showed strong.
He’s decided that no politician will acknowledge or even see our environmental problems so he’s running for President. He doesn’t pretend to have a strong chance, though people ask him what if he takes enough votes from Biden as a third-party candidate to change the outcome.
I trained with him on early debates. He recently posted his State of the Planet address. I read the text before he recorded it and thought it sounded too fact-based and negative, but when I saw it, I found it compelling. He’s not just predicting future problems we could speculate might not happen. He’s sharing what’s happening now. I don’t consider saying what’s happening that never happened before and puts lives (and humanity) at risk doom and gloom.
Do I think he’s going to win? It’s too early to talk about. The point at this stage is to put the issues causing the problems into conversation and to act on them to resolve them, not keep saying “Our environmental problems are important. We just have to resolve these other things first, then we’ll get to them.”
Here’s his campaign page. Here’s his National Project to Get the U.S. Out of Ecological Overshoot. Below is the video of his State of the Planet. It’s sobering. I recommend it. Then check out his campaign page.
His comments to introduce the video:
President Biden can’t tell us the full truth in his State of the Union address this Thursday. The Republican Party, in their response, won’t be truthful, either. I’m not sure Biden or GOP officials know the truth. But even if they did, it’s just not politically possible for them to tell the voting public that things look bad – especially approaching an election. I understand that, but 50 years of that very political practicality is the reason our kids’ bright future is in jeopardy.
We were warned in 1972 that continuing “business as usual” would likely result in dire consequences 50 years later. About the same time, a chorus of warnings arose that accumulating greenhouse gases in the atmosphere were beginning to destabilize our climate. We could have taken appropriate action back then. But we didn’t. Policymakers ignored the warnings.
Now, after decades of pandering to voters, deference to big donors, compromise, and reluctance to question the gospel of everlasting economic growth, what is the state of our planet?
This question is about much more than the climate crisis, by the way.
I offer my assessment, and prescription for action, in this State of the Planet address.
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