Andy Revkin writes:

Last night, walking over to our neighbors to watch the election returns, I looked up at the star-filled darkness of a Downeast night and was reminded that the Solar System and wider universe wouldn’t be anxiously trying to peak in at the big-screen TV to catch the tally over our shoulders.

Standing in the chill dark, I was reminded of Carl Sagan’s wisdom reflecting on the 1990 “pale blue dot” Voyager 1 image of Earth as pixel: “every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam….”

This morning, the gathering fleets of migrating bufflehead ducks congregating on our inlet busily sparred and fed, simillarly uninterested in the outcome. The day before the vote, I’d posted that this was a good time to have a mind like those of our wonderful newly adopted dogs – living in the moment, playing, eating, cuddling.

But this is not just any moment.

With the Senate and Supreme Court behind Trump, and the House conceivably as well depending on 20 or so vote countdowns [I’ll update this shortly], the range of possible consequences is profoundly wider and more unnerving than in his first term – from more women facing mortal peril in pregnancy to Ukraine succumbing to Russia to complete reversals of gains on a post-fossil-fuel energy future. (I’m actually least concerned about the last one given the established trajectories for energy systems.)

But this was clearly an election “of the people, by the people, for the people” – in Lincoln’s terms – a populist proclamation if ever there was one. Trump didn’t win because of more money or better organization, that’s for sure, given the Harris-Walz campaign’s cash and ground game. [Continue reading…]