Horowitz: Five Reasons for New Year’s Optimism

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Wednesday, January 01, 2020

Rob Horowitz, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

For the past 7 years, I’ve written a New Year’s column listing reasons for optimism (click here to see how I did last year). This year I do the same. It remains the nature of news and opinion writing that positive developments get short shrift.

As 2020 begins, 5 reasons for optimism are outlined below:

• The courageous, thoughtful and highly credible testimony of top National Security Council staffer, Fiona Hill, Ambassador William Taylor, Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman, and Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, among others, demonstrates the willingness of some of our best civil servants to put country first and to do so at considerable risk to their careers. They taught all whose minds remained open of the consequences of the president putting his political interests ahead of the national interest in Ukraine and reminded all of us of the hard work and dedication of men and women who commit their professional lives to the service of our nation. Contrary to the misleading spin of the President and his enablers, their nationally televised appearances before Congress struck a highly responsive chord with nearly 6-in-10 Americans now believing President Trump committed an impeachable offensive and about 7-in-10  believing he did something seriously wrong.
• The costs for renewable non-carbon producing energy, particularly solar and wind, continue their rapid downward path, making the speedy transition away from fossil fuels required to limit the increase in global temperatures sufficiently to avoid the worst consequences of climate change doable, assuming we can get the politics right.  Two-thirds of the global population resides in nations where renewable sources are already less expensive than fossil fuels, according to BloombergNEF.
• The world continues to make marked progress in reducing poverty and illiteracy, along with many other hopeful benchmarks, as Nicholas Kristof pointed out in his column in the Sunday New York Times. “As recently as 1981, 42 percent of the planet’s population endured ‘extreme poverty’ defined by the United Nations as living on less than about $2 a day’ Kristof wrote. “That portion has plunged to less than 10 percent of the world’s population.”
• The recently unveiled proposal to bring a professional soccer franchise to a new riverfront stadium in Pawtucket as the centerpiece of a $400 million downtown redevelopment project provides new hope, and more importantly, the potential for robust new economic development, in a City that was reeling from losing its minor league baseball team.
• The prospect of building around promising second-year quarterback Daniel Jones and emerging superstar running back, Saquon Barkley provides the New York Giants with a path back to recapturing this storied franchise’s former glory in the years ahead.  After the last few seasons, there is really only one place to go

 

{image_2}Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, various non-profits and elected officials and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island.

 

PHOTO: Munich Security Conference

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