After writing a few over the nearly 20 years he's been blogging, @sullydish picked one of my dissents for his newsletter this week: https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/why-is-wokeness-winning
Alas, he missed—or dodged—the point. A thread. (1/n)

Rather than engage him on the issues of "wokeness", I tried to get him to focus on what I think is (pretty unarguably) the greatest issue of our time: climate change. But his response utterly avoids the plain facts of the situation. (2/n)

. @sullydish said "I agree with swift, practical action on climate. But I’m not an extremist, sorry." But if we define "practical" to mean "likely to preserve the ecological basis for human civilization", then the only practical action *is* extreme action. (3/n)

Certainly if it is to be sufficiently swift! If you genuinely engage with the scope and urgency of what is necessary, not being an extremist is, sadly, no longer an option. (4/n)

Literally: you are either a climate extremist—which (and he didn't notice this sub-point either) means to be a political extremist, because *only* the far left is engaging with the problem at anything like an adequate scale—or… (5/n)

… you're simply in denial about reality, or you're willing to sail rapidly into climate collapse. Since the latter two positions are, in the end, "extreme", the only question now is what sort of extremist you want to be. (6/n)

Sullivan, unsurprisingly, has made the wrong choice— not wittingly, I don't think, but by not confronting the terrifying, undeniable scope of the problem. He doesn't *want* to be an extremist; and in order to avoid it, he has to avoid looking at the issue. (7/n)

To anyone who looks clearly, wanting "swift, practical" action while also saying "I'm not an extremist" is self-contradictory. If @sullydish truly grappled with what's necessary, he would HAVE to be an extremist, one way or another. So he keeps his eyes shut tight. (8/n)

Naturally it was foolish to expect a brief email (he insists on brevity these days) to change his mind. But I hoped it might set him thinking about who is calling for the scale of changes that are necessary to avoid horrific suffering. No luck. But maybe a reader might. (9/9)