Sean Meriwether's Blog: The Green Economist, page 12

The Great Reverse Migration

NY Dispatch Day 124: The latest real estate trend in NYC—replicated in cities around the nation—is a reversal of the decades-long inward flux. A pandemic-fueled exodus is mounting. Many city dwellers use their overpriced shoebox-sized apartments like hotel rooms, a place to sleep and keep your stuff. Our lives are lived outside those four walls. Many of the amenities of city living are on hold and may not be coming back soon including: museums, theater, shopping, sporting events, gyms, and resta...

The Tannhäuser Gate

NY Dispatch Day 123: Over the last few years we have seen several serious proposals—made by men who have big wallets with egos to match—to mine the moon or live on Mars. Their plans range from aspirational to exploitative, but focusing on these outrageously expensive goals may divert attention, resources, and expertise from the very real problems here at home. Someday soon we may be living in a Blade Runner future where earthlings trapped on a depleted planet are encouraged to move to terraforme...

Turning Crisis into Opportunity

NY Dispatch Day 122: One of my strongest critiques of the Obama administration is that when he came into office, instead of taking the opportunity to rethink the economy his administration followed his predecessor’s; they continued bailing out the banks who had created the crisis in the first place. Many firms had swollen up on profits like ticks by taking on excessive risk with no safety net. The consequences of their gamble fell on the government when their lucky streak ended. The men who crea...

November 3rd, 2040

NY Dispatch Day 121: Today is Fête nationale, commonly known as Bastille Day. People around the world celebrate an afternoon in 1789 when the French Revolution took a decisive turn. France had been reeling from the economic consequences of their support of the American Revolution, which inspired the masses to rise up in protest against their own monarch. The people of Paris feared that the king would attack them with the royal army or foreign mercenaries in the king’s service. The Bastille Saint...

Vote Out the Hate

NY Dispatch Day 120: As a gay man with Polish heritage it was unsettling to learn that Poland has reelected Andrezej Duda by a narrow margin. The right wing candidate plans to enact ever more conservative policies that will negatively impact the judiciary and the media. What is more distressing is that he came to power by running a campaign that featured his anti-LGBTQ+ bias; he was elected because of his discriminatory beliefs. Duda has been openly homophobic and has claimed LGBTQ+ ideology was...

Sunday in the Park with George

NY Dispatch Day 119: After two days of heavy rain courtesy of Tropical Storm Fay, Sunday was a welcome respite with sun and fair weather. I made plans to see friends whom I have not seen since January. One of the pair has continued to commute for work through the pandemic and the couple has continued to limit their interactions with others just to be safe. We agreed to meet in Central Park on the upper east side, which is close to where they live and also less heavily trafficked. Outdoors with a...

The Week that Was

NY Dispatch Day 118: Every day we are bombarded with alarming headlines that come in waves, like the pandemic. It has been hard to turn away or disconnect for fear we will miss something critical, and yet tuning in may be impacting our mental health. I, for one, am feeling drained and distracted. It is hard to believe that multiple major stories competed for our attention in just the last 5 days.

According to scientists COVID-19 appears to be airborne, which makes wearing a mask even more critic...

Meet Me at the Crossroads

NY Dispatch Day 117: We once had a field of presidential candidates representing the broad political spectrum of the Democratic party, with the most women, non-whites, and non-white women running than at any other time in our history. We even had a token left of center gay man. Progress! We debated and chewed over their backgrounds, experience (or lack of), what they brought to the table, and how they might lead a nation that had become the house divided that Lincoln tried to warn us about. We h...

The Burning House Question

NY Dispatch Day 116: Some years back I was asked if my house was on fire what one thing would I bring with me? As a writer the only thing I could think of was my work. This was back in the ice age when my hefty desktop computer was the sole repository and trying to wrest it free from all the cables during an emergency didn’t seem feasible… or very romantic. This question haunted me until I found an antique suitcase at a thrift store and used it to squirrel away hard copies of my work. If ever th...

Breathing the Fall-out In

NY Dispatch Day 115: Let’s take a moment to level set. The common cold is a coronavirus that has no cure, and the world has never seen the novel coronavirus, commonly known as COVID-19, in humans prior to the end of last year. It is naturally occurring in bats and may have crossed into humans through a intermediary animal (cross-species transmission). As we have rushed to understand this new virus many concrete statements have been made and retracted. Unlike opinions, scientific understanding ev...