The 119th Congress should focus on the right to a healthy environment. Other issues do not matter if humanity gets this issue wrong. In order to make legislative progress with this issue, people must be convinced not only of the verity of the claims of climate scientists, but also of the immorality of climate change denial. The language used in combating climate ignorance has not, to this point, utilized the full extent of imagery and rhetoric available to achieve the latter aim. The left has avoided deploying statements which include heavy religious overtones, for reasons that can be sympathized with. But to achieve the sweeping change required to activate the railroad switch that the engine of humanity is bearing quickly down upon, one must pique the interest of even the people who are most opposed to progressive politics. This does not entail donning a religious facade while addressing congress or the public, but the common intertwining of morality and religion should nonetheless be leveraged to effect change. In other words, one should ask what denomination, what faith, what creed, etc. worships a God that would reward those who destroy the planet provided to us. Do people expect to go to Heaven after contributing unnecessarily to the destruction of God’s creation? How confident are people that the scientists are mistaken, that the greenhouse gas effect is a figment of our imagination, that the smog is benign? When people are cognizant of the stakes, will they continue to make these bets? 

Such tactics are somewhat off-putting, admittedly. They are similar to the fire-and-brimstone fearmongering that has been the bane of progress at times throughout history. Indeed, many have been taught to loathe this style of rhetoric, or have become desensitized to it due to its overuse. But this is not fearmongering; this is making people afraid of something they should be afraid of. This is the part of the intervention where the addict must be shown the spiritual jeopardy they are in. It is imperative to couch climate arguments in language that suits the peril humanity faces, not only to secure our planet, but also to save the souls of the perpetrators. This is compassion. And compassion must, at times, be harsh, especially when dealing with a populace that has shown it is reactive to brashness. 

Of course there is a separation of church and state, and there are agnostics and atheists one would not want to alienate, but any moral philosophy ought to respect the inhabitability of our planet. This should go without saying, but many Americans are unused to viewing the climate crisis as a moral sticking point. This is in part because the issues surrounding the climate crisis, coming as they do from a scientific realm, are presented in secular terms, i.e., not their terms. Climate justice is often being advocated for with the language of science and/or with the language of occupy-Wall-Street-style activism. That should continue, but we must additionally speak the language of those we seek to convince. People must know that their children will risk damnation if they are not taught the moral danger of climate change denial, that their grandchildren will curse them for the havoc they will inevitably experience. Americans must not be allowed to bask in wholesomeness even as they deny climate science.

Another issue the 119th Congress should address is that of the wealth distribution gap. McCarthyism is not an esoteric historical topic, confined to the 1950s section of the textbooks in which we learn about it. It is a thriving malignancy. Countless Americans claim to be anti-political. They claim to have merely a casual understanding of the way the government works, and they would admit they are not well read in matters of governing philosophy. Yet even these Americans seem to awaken like sleeper cells when they hear any variation of their key words: Marxism, socialism, communism, or collectivism. With dead certainty, they spit out canned arguments about how that stuff works on paper, but not in real life; or how communism always leads to Stalinism. They ignore the coups and invasions perpetrated by free market capitalism. They make arguments despite themselves. They make arguments that further entrench them in a state of being exploited. 

The heart of socialism is sound: it is not a good idea to allow for the private control of the resources that humanity collectively relies upon to survive. This error allows an elite few to profit immoderately from every human need. We are never offered a fair exchange, but must instead accept the market rate, or, in other words, the rate calculated to exact as much as possible from us. We are being exploited by the ones who do no labor all because we have humored the abstract notion of private property to a dangerous extent, allowing it to balloon such that it encompasses more than just our homes and personal effects. Instead, most of the world is for sale, greatly restricting the ability of people to be self-reliant, and forcing them to engage with exploitative entities. The owners of capital are not workers, but they have their names on the right slips of paper, so that those who would benefit modestly from the wondrously sustaining resources of our world must first pay enough to see the elites floating from yacht to yacht.  

Unfortunately, the right equates such insights with mental illness. Consciously or unconsciously, they argue for the rights of inheritors to expand profit margins to incredible proportions. They believe shareholders must be allowed to reap a ridiculous ratio of wealth, or else society will fall apart. They believe in these notions as if they are common sense. Failing to confront the absurdity of McCarthyism, while at the same time trying to get Americans to support taxing the rich and regulating industry is a contortionist act doomed to failure. Americans and the 119th Congress must realize that socialism is not lunacy.