Archive for the ‘Liberals’ Category

Liberals launch website to lure swing voters and take on activist groups – The Guardian

Outgoing Liberal party federal director Andrew Bragg (left) shakes hands with Andrew Hirst, the new party director in Sydney on Friday. Photograph: Dan Himbrechts/AAP

Australias Liberal party has launched a new website that it says will help seduce swing voters its way and challenge rival campaigning organisations such as Getup!.

The acting Liberal party director, Andrew Bragg, launched The Fair Go website on Saturday, which is operated by the party.

Bragg used his speech to the partys federal council as a call to arms to modernise or perish. He said the party had to deal with a cashed up cabal of opposition to its interests.

Senior members of government and Liberal figures have been taking aim at organisations such as Getup!, which have excelled at developing novel and effective digital campaigns at a time when the Liberal party has struggled to keep pace.

The Fair Go site appears to be, in part, a response to some of these new types of campaigning and, according to Bragg, will help bolster the partys efforts to seize the opportunities in the digital age.

The WordPress site includes posts with titles such as Women are just people, Whos your grand-daddy? and From laissez-faire to much, much fairer.

It also includes three words of the week that will change weekly. The inaugural locutions are needs based, union and slamming.

A review of the partys last election campaign by Andrew Robb set out a series of concerns with the Liberal partys election campaign efforts, and found they were being outgunned and outspent by Labor and progressive activist groups.

Bragg told the federal council: Publish or perish must be our credo.

He said the website will be a publication which reaches beyond the existing cohort of fellow travellers to speak to undecided and swing voters.

It is designed to support the Coalitions overarching narrative into social platforms and arm supporters with bottom up perspectives on public policy issues.

The website appears to feature a cast of characters mostly linked to the Liberal party.

Parnell McGuiness, a communications consultant who is the managing director of Thought Broker, is listed as the editor of the site. Penny Fischer, a Camden Liberal councillor and the daughter of Pru Goward, has also produced work for the site. Brigid Meney, a policy officer at Cornerstone Group Australia and former Liberal party political adviser, has contributed as well.

The sites privacy policy makes it clear that the Liberal party collects users personal information and may contact them if they sign up to the site.

It is Braggs final speech in his role as acting director of the party following Brian Loughnanes departure. Former Liberal party staffer Andrew Hirst has been named the new director.

It is not the first time major parties have attempted more aggressive communication strategies.

The Labor party launched the Labor Herald in 2015, which produced news and analysis for the party faithful.

It no longer publishes content, and the website now directs users to a page that says it is currently on hiatus.

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Liberals launch website to lure swing voters and take on activist groups - The Guardian

Liberals and Immigration – Mother Jones

Kevin DrumJun. 23, 2017 2:33 PM

A couple of days ago I wrote a post responding to Peter Beinarts recent article about Democrats and illegal immigration. It was a bit of a dogs breakfast. I intended to write one thing and then ended up writing something else, which made the post a little disjointed. Then it turned out Id made an arithmetic mistake, and had to rewrite a chunk of the piece on the fly. Blecch.

But I did promise to eventually write the piece I initially had in mind, so here it is. Im a little pressed for time, so Ill keep it short.

Statistics aside, one of Beinarts main points was not that liberals should become big opponents of immigration, but that they should be willing to admit that there are drawbacks as well as benefits to large flows of illegal immigration. Its complicated stuff.

I agree completely, and this is hardly a problem limited to immigration. Its the way almost everything has evolved. I blame it mostly on conservatives, but I imagine conservatives blame it mostly on liberals, so Ill skip trying to assign blame. Either way, the upshot is that there never appears to be any political advantage to admitting that an issue has both upsides and downsides. But every issue important enough to be worth talking about does. Its just that theres hardly any audience left that cares.

I have no idea what, if anything, we can do about this. But I will say this. I lurk on a number of message boards populated by liberals, and what they say privately is very often more nuanced than what they say publicly. On immigration, there are probably lots of liberals willing to concede that there needs to be a limit to the flow of undocumented workers. There are cultural, economic, and nationalistic reasons for this. But theres little benefit to saying so in public. It just invites massive, social media swarms insisting that youre a closet racist.

Ive long been on record as a moderate liberal on immigration. I think there are benefits to keeping illegal immigration to a moderate level, and details aside, I think the answer is a rigorous version of E-Verify along with tough employer sanctions. In my own personal utopia, Id pair this up with a national ID card. Basically, if undocumented immigrants cant get jobs, theyll stop coming. Theres no need for a wall.

I wonder how many liberals agree with me, more or less? I wonder how many are waiting for someone else to say it before they do? I wonder how many just flatly dont consider it worth the blowback, so they stay quiet? Questions, questions.

As you might imagine, this is partly because the boards Im attracted to arent run by shouters and nutballs. Still, Im curious: is the same true of moderate conservative boards? Any wingers out there care to comment?

And drawbacks to getting too tough on illegal immigration. There are good reasons to protect our borders, but there economic, humanitarian, and police state reasons not to have a goal of zero illegal immigration.

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Liberals and Immigration - Mother Jones

Griswold on Rise of Threats Against GOP Congressmen: Liberals Should Call It Out More – Washington Free Beacon

BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff June 23, 2017 5:05 pm

Washington Free Beaconeporter Alex Griswold discussed his storyabout the recent surge of threats on Republican congressmen Friday on Fox News, saying the political Left should do a better job of calling out illiberal behavior by their supporters.

Host Neil Cavuto introduced the topic by playing a recent recording of a Nebraska Democratic official who said he was "glad" House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R., La.) got shot last week and wished he was dead.

Griswold reported this week that 30 Republicans in Congress have been either attacked or received death threats since May. In addition to the shooting of Scalise at a Republican baseball practice, Reps. Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah), Steve Stivers (R., Ohio) and Claudia Tenney (R., N.Y.) have been among those getting death threats.

"Most liberals are better than this," Griswold said. "We talk about why isn't the media calling this sort of behavior out. Liberals, it's on you, too. You should be calling this out as well. This is not part of your tradition. It's not liberal at all. It's not even American."

Griswold said he couldn't believe how many GOP representatives had been under duress when he first looked into the story.

"It was just mind-boggling," he said.

Cavuto wondered how the media would treat the story if the politics of the shooter and victim were reversed, as last week it was a Bernie Sanders supporter attacking Republicans. Griswold pointed to how the press treated the shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords in 2011, leaping to blame of Republicans like Sarah Palin for heated rhetoric, when it was later revealed the shooter had been obsessed with Giffords for years.

He and Cavuto agreed the anger in politics was out of control, with some of it even coming from the celebrity community. The most recent performer to receive attention for charged language was Johnny Depp on Thursday after he joked about assassinating President Donald Trump.

"It is nuts," Griswold said. "I'd like to think it's probably the worst that we've seen since at least the Civil War, politicization of this factor. It's been fomenting for years as we all know, but this is the first time we've seen it get really as violent as it has."

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Griswold on Rise of Threats Against GOP Congressmen: Liberals Should Call It Out More - Washington Free Beacon

Clark’s left turn worries her party’s conservatives, could endanger Liberals free-enterprise coalition – Vancouver Sun

'I think theres likely to be some real angst today on the part of business and fiscal conservatives': former Liberal MLA Bill Bennett says of Thursday's throne speech. CHAD HIPOLITO / THE CANADIAN PRESS

Former B.C. Liberal cabinet ministers reacted with shock and worry that the partys free-enterprise coalition could be at risk at the abrupt policy turnarounds outlined in Premier Christy Clarks throne speech Thursday.

Bill Bennett, a former mining and energy minister who represented Kootenay East for the Liberals, said Friday the abrupt changes will put pressure on the free-enterprise coalition of centre-left liberals and right-wing conservatives.

I think theres likely to be some real angst today on the part of business and fiscal conservatives, said Bennett, who held his seat from 2001 to 2017, and chose not to run in the May election.

Clarks government which campaigned on job creation and fiscally prudent government borrowed heavily for the throne speech from the NDP and Green platforms, promising to roll out a $1-billion daycare program, to ban union and corporate donations to political parties, to increase welfare payments and to create a separate ministry for mental health and addiction.

In total, there were more than two dozen policy reversals and new policies not in the Liberals election platform.

In many cases, the Clark government adopted policies and positions that they had argued were fiscally irresponsible. For example, Finance Minister Mike de Jong had said removing tolls on the Port Mann and Golden Ears bridges would jeopardize the provinces credit rating.

The B.C. Liberals said an unexpectedly high budget surplus indicates B.C. has the money for the new spending.

The policy turnarounds were couched as measures to show the Liberals have listened to the voters and to potentially allow the Liberals to lead a minority government. But NDP Leader John Horgan and Green Leader Andrew Weaver say they still intend to bring down the government in a non-confidence vote next week and then call on Lt.-Gov. Judith Guichon to let them form a government with their slim one-seat majority alliance.

Bennett said the resource sector is likely to be particularly concerned about increasing the carbon tax by $5 a tonne starting in 2019, although the promise to offset it with provincial sales tax cuts may help. The Liberals had campaigned on a freeze until 2021.

The challenge will be to deliver the new promises while not compromising the basic principle to balance the budget, pay down debt and maintain the provinces AAA credit rating, said Bennett.That is going to be a tall order given some of the new commitments, he said.

Blair Lekstrom, who held a seat for the Liberals in the Peace River region from 2001 to 2013, said he was surprised by the policy turnarounds.

While he said he has no doubt the policy adoptions are well-meaning, the question is whether they are affordable.

Im not sure thats the case, said Lekstrom, a former energy and mining minister and now a business consultant.

Lekstrom said the government cant count on large budget surpluses to continue every year.

B.C. Premier Christy Clark speaks with colleagues before the speech from throne in Victoria on Thursday, June 22, 2017. JONATHAN HAYWARD / CP

He said he had little doubt the policy turnabouts would be viewed with cynicism by the public.

Former cabinet minister Kevin Falcon, who held a seat in Surrey from 2001 to 2013 and is now a real estate-development executive, said he has strong views but would not comment Friday on the throne speech specifics because was still in shock.

Falcon, who held transportation and finance cabinet posts, said he wanted to look deeper in the implications of the spending that would underlie the new policies.

Im still trying to deal with the magnitude of the shifts, said Falcon, who lost the Liberal leadership race to Clark in 2011.

Asked if he would consider attempting to lead the Liberal party, which has now shifted so radically from the business-friendly, small government policies that Clark ran on, Falcon said: Thats easy. No.

Max Cameron, a University of B.C. political scientist, said Friday its clear that on one level the sweeping realignment by Clark is a cynical move made for political gain, meant to rattle the NDP-Green alliance and set the Liberals up for the next election.

But the bald-faced turnaround could have major consequences if it signals a move of the B.C. Liberals to the centre, or centre-left, where they would join the NDP and Greens on the political spectrum, said Cameron.

It is now almost impossible for the Liberals to fight the next election on its earlier platform, said Cameron.

Either Clark transforms her party, or it will be her as there is a reassertion from within the party of the centre-right, free-enterprise coalition, noted Cameron.

I dont know which of those will happen, he said.

However, Liberal MLA Darryl Plecas said Friday that the sudden spending on social issues has been building inside the Liberal caucus for some time.

Plecas, parliamentary secretary for mental health, told supporters in his riding of Abbotsford South on election night that the Liberals needed to do more to help those in need and to do more on mental health and housing affordability, including increased spending.

The throne speech finally reflected that, he said Friday in an interview.

The business community had a muted response Friday to the abrupt policy changes and tax implications in the throne speech.

Chris Gardner of theIndependent Contractors and Businesses Association of British Columbia said his group was pleased to see Clarks re-commitment to construction of the $7.9-billion Site C hydroelectric project, as well as new promises for large-scale spending projects that would create construction jobs.

But he said no one in business is expecting Clarks throne speech vision to survive more than a week.

The Business Council of B.C. said no official was available Friday to comment.

Teck Resources, the Liberals largest political donor, declined to comment Friday.

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Clark's left turn worries her party's conservatives, could endanger Liberals free-enterprise coalition - Vancouver Sun

What conservatives know about climate change that liberals don’t – Vox

In the days after the 2016 presidential election, a theory emerged to explain why Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump: identity politics specifically Clintons routine appeals to women and racial minorities.

This charge was put perhaps most passionately by Mark Lilla, a humanities professor at Columbia University, in a New York Times op-ed called The End of Identity Liberalism. Lilla maintained that if the Democratic Party wants to appeal to more working-class white voters, it needs to treat identity liberalism with a proper sense of scale. For Lilla, focusing on diversity has meant that a generation of young Americans have shockingly little to say about such perennial questions as class, war, the economy and the common good.

Naomi Klein rejects such claims. In her new book, No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trumps Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need, the best-selling author and activist writes that its short-sighted, not to mention dangerous, to call for liberals and progressives to abandon their focus on identity politics and concentrate instead on economics and class as if these factors could in any way be pried apart.

Clintons loss, according to Klein, had to do with her track record, not her messaging. As Klein has it, it was the stupid economics of neoliberalism, fully embraced by her, her husband, and her partys establishment, that rendered Clinton without a persuasive case to offer white workers who previously voted for Barack Obama. For Klein, you cant fully grapple with class without also understanding the marginalized people the economy affects.

This is one of the many salvos Klein throws in her book. According to her, No Is Not Enough is one attempt to look at how we got to this surreal political moment; how, in concrete ways, it could get a lot worse; and how, if we keep our heads, we might be able to flip the script and arrive at a radically brighter future.

I recently caught up with Klein by phone while she was in Portland, Oregon, on her book tour. Among other things, we talked about Clintons "trickle-down identity politics, how some liberals fail to understand the implications of climate change, and why Trumps Make America Great Again brand makes him politically vulnerable. Heres our conversation, lightly edited and condensed.

In your new book, you write that its dangerous for progressives to listen to the call to do away with identity politics and instead solely concentrate on economic issues. Why in your mind cant these factors be decoupled?

Weve heard this message this analysis that identity politics is the reason the Democrats lost the recent election. That message of, Shut up. Stop harping on the issues that flow from your racial identity, gender, and sexual identity. You're slowing us down. That's a very alarming message to send at a time of surging violence by white supremacists, gender-based violence, and attacks on transgender people. That's why I say it's so dangerous. But it's also deeply dangerous politically.

It really is impossible to decouple all these issues. The United States, almost more than any other country, has relied on what is often called dog-whistle politics, or explicit or implicit appeals to race and racial division. The classic example of this was the Cadillac-driving welfare queen trope of the Reagan years. This idea that the reason welfare needed to be cut is because it was being taken advantage of by black and brown people. And it also presented people of color as exploiters of the public system. This has been the pretext by which that system has been attacked again and again.

I'm speaking to you from Portland, and this is a city that is still grieving from the recent stabbings on the light-rail train here. I was really struck by, in the accounts of what the attacker was saying to the two teenage girls, things like, "Go back to where you come from, and, Get off the train. You don't pay taxes." In other words, he had absorbed this key idea that people of color are exploiters of the public system. We even see these things from Attorney General Jeff Sessions, where he talks about how the reason cities like Chicago are falling apart is because of immigrants and immigrant crime overloading the system.

That's just a couple of examples of why I think it's really impossible to talk about economics in the US without talking about race. I agree with the late political science professor Cedric Robinson that it is probably best to describe the kind of capitalism that exists in the US as racial capitalism. And thats because the first inputs to the first industrial economy were the stealing of indigenous land and African labor. That was the backbone of the economy. So in order to do those two things, it required a theory of racial hierarchy. It required a hierarchy of humanity that discounted lives based on skin color. This is the roots of scientific racism, which was used to justify industrial capitalism.

Fast-forward to a more recent political moment. You write that Hillary Clinton, during the 2016 presidential campaign, was engaging in what you call "trickle-down identity politics. Could you talk about what you mean by that phrase and why you think that kind of politics is wrongheaded?

What I mean by trickle-down identity politics is the idea that high-end representation alone having more women and people of color represented in positions of power, recognized in culture and political office and in corporate boardrooms will lead to this trickle-down equality. And I'm not saying that symbolic victories and that kind of diversity is not important. It was tremendously important, for instance, for a generation of young people to see a black man as the US president and have that role model. I think the same is true in Hollywood, in culture, and having those cultural role models.

What's dangerous is the idea that this alone is going to erase, say, racial and gender injustice. That these images alone are going to fix people's reality. We need policies that are designed to close inequalities and inequalities are actually widening in this period. And changing the images is cheaper and easier. Changing the reality requires massive investments in education and services, and the symbolic victories, even though they are important, tend to not cost as much. Gay marriage is cheaper than major investments in the public sphere, which are going to tangibly improve people's lives. This is not to say it's unimportant of course its not it's just to say it's insufficient.

In the book, you have a section titled "What Conservatives Understand About Global Warming and Liberals Don't. What is that?

What I mean there is that the reason there is such widespread denial of the reality of climate change with power brokers in the Republican Party, and certainly within very right-wing, free market think tanks, is that they understand that if the science is true, then the political or economic projects they hope to advance, which is a radically deregulated market, must come to a screeching halt.

Climate change is true, and so it does mean we need to intervene very seriously in the market. It does mean we need to regulate corporations in a way that governments have been unwilling to do for the last 40 years. We have to place severe limits on further expansion of the fossil fuel frontier if we're serious about this. It means we can't develop new fossil fuel reserves and we have to manage a transition away from fossil fuels with existing production. This requires managing the economy, it requires planning, it requires major investments in energy, public investments, major investments in public transit. These things go against all of the economic trends of the past 40 years where we've been defunding the public sphere on so many fronts.

I think the right understands this, and therefore chooses to deny reality. Whereas one of the things we see on the liberal side is, instead of denying the science, they deny the implications of the science. I would put the New York Times columnist Paul Krugman in this category, where he's written so many columns about how easy it is to deal with climate change. We can do it and we'll barely notice. I think people should understand that it is a more fundamental challenge than that.

For decades, there was a huge emphasis on these just small consumer changes that you can make. It created a kind of dissonance where you present people with information about an existential threat and then say, Well, change your light bulb, or, Drive a hybrid. You don't talk at all about public policy. And if you do, it's a very tiny carbon tax and that's going to do it.

Then I think there are some liberals who do understand the implications of climate change and the depth of change it requires from us. But because they believe humans are incapable of that kind of change, or at this stage in human evolution, I suppose, they think we're basically doomed. I think contemporary centrist liberalism does not have the tools to deal with a crisis of this magnitude that requires this level of market intervention. And I worry that can lead to a kind of a nihilism around climate change.

Speaking of nihilism, lets talk about the heart of your book: Trump. You argue that he doesn't play by the rules of politics but instead the rules of branding. As you have it, his reality show The Apprentice was a game changer for him, one that allowed him to leap into the stratosphere of Superbrands and ultimately go on to be elected president.

Right. The Apprentice was a game changer in that before the show, Trump was a more traditional real estate mogul who happened to have this endless appetite for self-promotion. He was still kind of in the business of putting up buildings. But his business empire was in crisis, he had multiple bankruptcies, and The Apprentice really saved him. Thats because it came along and provided this priceless platform to build up the Trump brand. I think that Trump, going back to the 80s, had this intuition for lifestyle branding, and the way he turned his personal life into a live-action soap opera in the 80s with his extramarital affairs, that's really the stuff that built up his brand. But he was still more or less a traditional real estate guy.

What The Apprentice did was put him in the same stratosphere as these other hollow brands, companies like Nike, where they didn't own their own factories they saw themselves primarily as being in the business as selling a brand idea, a narrative, to the public. Their main production was design and marketing, and then selling their name to all these different brand extensions and so on.

Trump did this, and the big idea that he was selling this absolute freedom, arguably the impunity, that comes with great wealth, and just being the boss who can do whatever he wants to whoever he wants because he's so rich. This is a problem when it comes to a brand identity, because when we think of brands like Nike, or Disney, or Apple, they have an aspirational brand identity that has some ethics to it. But then we see the underbelly of these brands.

And Trumps brand is basically being an asshole.

Thats right. That's really a problem, because the only rule of branding is that you need to be true to your brand. You need to repeat your brand, you need to stay true to it, and so brands like Nike that have sort of presented themselves as being about women's empowerment, revolution, that have this kind of New Age feel to them, they are vulnerable to exposures that show that young women are being paid abusive wages under abusive conditions to make their products. That's a problem. Disney has this family-friendly image. You can hold them to account to it to some extent if you find that they are treating their workers poorly, for instance.

The problem with Trump's brand is that his brand is being the guy who can do whatever he wants. He said it on the campaign trail: "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters. Or the on the Access Hollywood tapes: And when you're a star, they let you do it. That's his brand, and this is a problem. All of these scandals are not doing all that much to cause Trump's core base to desert him, because what they see is they see their guy and hes getting away with it. They identify with him, and if he's attacked, they feel attacked.

Where I think Trump is vulnerable, and I've talked about how to culture-jam the Trump brand, and I think there are obviously things you can do to Trump's brand, like present him as a puppet, not a boss. You can try to make him less rich, but that's hard, because there are all kinds of ways that the Trump family is monetizing the presidency, and it seems to be working for them.

The brand that I think is most vulnerable is his political plan that is, "Make America Great Again." He devised a political brand, and he thinks he can apply the same roles to Make America Great Again as he has applied to the Trump brand, but he made some serious promises with that brand. One of those was how he was going to bring back jobs that pay a middle-class wage. He promised a return to an economy that is going to be very, very difficult to return to, and he promised to protect Social Security, protect health care, and renegotiate trade agreements in the interest of workers.

I think he is very vulnerable, and one of the things that really concerns me is that the Trump show, the endless show that surrounds this president, some of which he's directing, some of which other people are directing, is so addictive to particularly TV media that there is barely any time left to focus on the betrayals of the Make America Great Again brand.

You can see it physically pains news anchors when they have to spend two minutes on what the Senate is trying to do with health care, because it takes them away from the investigations around Trump. News media ratings have never been so high. They are still addicted to the Trump show, just as they were during the election, and it's coming at the expense, I think, of the kind of journalism that is much more likely to peel away some of Trump's support. I think it's the economic betrayals that are more likely to do that.

You've, of course, written a lot on shock politics. Do you see Trump providing a new type of shock tactics?

He is. Because what I've reported on before is how actual external shocks to societies such as major terrorist attacks, a market crash, a war, and the disorientation and interruption and state of emergency that follows these events can become a pretext to very rapidly push through pro-corporate policies that you wouldn't be able to advance otherwise. This is because people are so focused on the emergency. Trump is different because he is the shock, and there are new shocks every day. There's just a constant state of gasping and, I would argue, an addiction to this show being put on, the Trump Show, as he called in the 80s. The show is Trump, and it's sold out everywhere.

I would also argue that he's an entirely logical extension of many preexisting trends. This is part of the reason why it really is important to put Trump in context, in political, historical, economic, and cultural context, and say, No, his products may be made in China, but this guy's made in America. Because that makes him less shocking, and when we're not so busy being shocked, we can be more strategic.

This is different than what I have written about before, but what I am really worried about is that there may very well be a major external shock on Trump's watch. They're deregulating their markets. They're dismantling the Dodd-Frank rules for Wall Street, or trying to, which is something that, were it not for the Trump show, would be front-page news on an ongoing basis. It would be getting a lot of analytic energy, but [it] barely merits a footnote in the current climate.

That of course makes market shocks more likely. That is the kind of pretext under which I think we can see even more radical economic policies being put forward if we look at who he's surrounded himself with. Think about what Betsy DeVos would like to do to the US education system, or what people around Trump would like to do to Social Security. They're in a position where Trump did make some pretty clear promises on the election campaign, but if there is an economic shock they'll say, "We have no choice.

Then he's already shown his hand during the London terror attacks, and the Manchester attacks. He will not waste any time if there is an attack like Manchester in the US, to use that to push what I call his toxic to-do list. He's already made it clear that he will blame the courts. He's already made it clear, the night of the London attacks, when he said that this is why we need our travel ban.

He blamed immigrants for the Manchester attacks even though the bomber was born in the UK. As bad as we've seen Trump is, there is worse. Trump has openly talked about it. Hes talked banning entry to the US by all Muslims. He's talked about bringing back torture; he's talked about filling up Guantanamo. These are not conspiracy theories this is just taking the guy at his word.

Finally, you say that politicians need to lead with values not policies. Could you talk about what you mean by that?

I think policies reflect values, so it's not a clear dichotomy. I think there is a shift in values that needs to happen, that this system that values money over all else, that is willing to discard so many people based on a crude cost-benefit analysis, is really reaching its breaking point.

Just look at what happened in London with the Grenfell Tower fire, where we find out that there were repeated requests from coroners to retrofit these public housing buildings with sprinkler systems, and it was deemed too expensive. By one estimate I saw it would've cost 200,000 pounds to install sprinklers in the building. This is in the richest neighborhood in the UK, where I'm pretty sure there are people who would spend that on a kitchen renovation.

This really is about whether we're going to have an economy, have a society, that values human life, that does not dispose of people because they are seen as not economically valuable enough, whether those people are living in island nations that face extinction because we are doing so little in the face of the climate crisis, or whether it's people living in public housing whose lives are not valued enough to save.

We saw the impact of that during disasters like Katrina, Sandy Hook, and we're seeing it now with London. I think it is about policy, but more than policy, it is about whether we're going to become a society that puts the value of human life at its center, and indeed all life.

Eric Allen Been is a freelance writer who has written for the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, Vice, Playboy, the New Republic, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and TheAtlantic.com.

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What conservatives know about climate change that liberals don't - Vox