Look
I understand too little too late
I realize there are things you say and do
You can never take back
But what would you be if you didn’t even try
You have to try
So after a lot of thought
I’d like to reconsider
Please if it’s not too late
Make it a cheeseburger
—“Here I Am,” Lyle Lovett
Lyle Lovett used his third album, released in 1989, to introduce his durable “large band” concept, but the album’s second track, “Here I Am,” delivered a notably small ask: Lyle just wanted a cheeseburger. Still, the pre-punchline lyric, with its emphasis on the existential import of effort and change, kept cycling through my head as I read Naomi Klein’s new On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal.
The Green New Deal, supporters and detractors agree, is a remarkably large ask. That may be the only thing on which supporters and detractors do agree.
