  In this note we observe that positive runaway potentials can generically be
stabilized by abelian $p$-form fluxes, leading to parametrically controlled de
Sitter solutions after compactification to a lower dimension. When
compactifying from 4d to 2d the dS solutions are metastable, whereas all higher
dimensional cases are unstable. The existence of these dS solutions require
that a certain inequality involving the derivatives of the potential and
$p$-form gauge coupling is satisfied. This inequality is not satisfied in
simple stringy examples (outside of the scope of Maldacena-Nu\~nez), which
unsurprisingly avoid this route to dS solutions. We can apply our techniques to
construct $dS_2$ solutions in the Standard Model plus an additional runaway
scalar such as quintessence. Demanding that these are avoided leads to (weak)
phenomenological constraints on the time variation of the fine structure
constant and QCD axion-photon coupling.
