environment Politics: Barack Obama executive orders MA-Sen Robert Gibbs
by Warren
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Day 20: A Fax to the White House
Very busy tonight. Took a break and started to write a 1-paragraph fax to the WH (black ball-point pen on unlined paper) but it got away from me and ended up two pages long, and tackling two separate subjects. The first is of course the environment, and was specifically referencing the excellent record President Obama has built up (largely inconspicuously) of environmentally positive executive orders, but the second is the astonishing statement by Robert Gibbs that the President was “surprised and frustrated” with the outcome of the MA election. Normally I try to avoid jamming multiple subjects into a single letter or fax. Not tonight; I was just too pissed off.
Dear Mr. President,
Two things:
First, despite the lack of legislative action on climate-change issues and the disappointing outcome of the Copenhagen Conference, your first year in office has soon some good results in environmental areas through your use of executive orders. Thank you.
Second, I gather that you told Robert Gibbs that you were “surprised and frustrated” by the outcome of my state’s recent election. As a MA-07 resident and a lifetime progressive Democrat, I was certainly frustrated, but I wasn’t surprised. You need to get some new advisors; the ones you’ve got are hiding the truth from you. We are the people who worked to get you elected, donated beyond our budgets, called till we were hoarse. And what have we gotten? Geithner. Bernanke. Summers. Howard Dean excluded. Surrender fromthe Administration, on almost every front. It’s a politician’s prerogative to change his mind, but it is buzarre that after this past year you could not be aware of the growing despondency of the (formerly energized) progressives. And in a nutshell, that is what lost MA-Sen. Martha Coakley ran a terrible campaign, but her failure is a local one by comparison. November 2010 is going to be very unpleasant if you and your senior staff continue through the next six months as you have over the past twelve.
We need an aggressive president who will tackle these issues without a need for the conforting illusions of “bipartisanship.” We elected YOU president, not Olympia Snowe or Joe Lieberman.
Anyway, congratulations on your many successful executive orders on the environment, including increased mpg standards, protecting many Federal sites by blocking Bush rules, strengthening the EPA, establishing the new Wilderness Area, toughening smog rulings, and many others. I applaud this aspect of your presidency without reservation.
Thank you,
Warren Senders
No fancy verbiage there.
Day 19: A Post-Election Missive
Too tired after watching Coakley’s unbelievable shambles of a campaign crash and burn to do much more than fire off a short one to the Boston Globe.
Massachusetts has officially elected a climate-change skeptic to the Senate. Among other things, this illuminates an unbelievable lack of scientific literacy in our schools, in our media, and in our politics. It is long past time for the White House to point out that denying something doesn’t change scientific facts. The Earth’s biosphere is in serious danger from decades of unregulated emissions of greenhouse gases; it’s not just humans who are moving rapidly toward a catastrophic evolutionary bottleneck, but millions of other life-forms as well. The Bush administration addressed climate change by denying its origin, its severity, and sometimes its existence — while passing cynically titled anti-environmental legislation with a bare majority in the Senate. The Obama administration seems to address climate change in the opposite way: by acknowledging its origin, severity and existence, while timidly refraining from using the Presidential bully pulpit to educate the public about the most severe existential threat ever faced by humans. Scott Brown may think atmospheric CO2 concentrations soaring to Mesozoic Era levels is a sign of economic growth, but his descendants, and ours, will judge us very harshly for our failure to act effectively while we still had the time.
Warren Senders
I phonebanked for Coakley, donated and did a bit of sign-holding at the polls. I think she would have been an excellent Senator. But…By Grabthar’s Hammer, that was the worst clusterf**k of a political campaign I’ve ever seen or heard. Martha made John McCain’s presidential run look like a finely polished gem.
environment Politics: filibuster Joe Biden
by Warren
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Day 18: Joe Biden Hears From Me
This morning I read a nice piece at Kos, titled “Vice-President Biden Bashes the Filibuster.” Better late than never, I suppose. I still cannot believe it’s taken the Administration this long to figure out that they’re dealing with an opposition party that is entirely composed of people who think Fox News is genuinely Fair and Balanced; an opposition party of delusional sociopathic denialists, actually.
So I wrote Joe a letter. I emailed it to him at the WH website, and I’m going to print it out and mail it to him tomorrow.
It was interesting to craft a letter in which climate-change issues were the secondary theme rather than the primary focus. This will open up more possibilities on the days when I have time to compose new material rather than just recombine my old verbiage.
Dear Vice-President Biden,
I was deeply gratified to read that you recently made the statement that, “As long as I have served … I’ve never seen, as my uncle once said, the constitution stood on its head as they’ve done. This is the first time every single solitary decision has required 60 senators. No democracy has survived needing a supermajority.” The supermajority requirement has effectively stifled participatory democracy in our country. When a single senator from a low-population state can hold up a bill which is supported by the vast majority of the nation’s population, we no longer live in a democratic republic.
While this situation has been made obvious by the continuous wheeling and dealing over health-care legislation, the supermajority requirement will stand in the way of meaningful action on another policy initiative, one that is even more important for our long-term viability as a nation and as a planet. How can genuine action on climate-change legislation take place in the face of the 60-vote requirement?
Our oceans are becoming acidified, with potentially catastrophic results for the billions on Earth who depend on the seas for their food. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations are already above the levels Dr. James Hansen calls the maximum to “sustain the climate in which civilization evolved and to which all planetary life is adjusted.” America needs to assume the leadership responsibilities that go along with being a global superpower, and that means that passing a robust climate bill is essential at all levels: it’s essential for our economy; it’s essential for the health of our citizens; it’s essential for our country’s role in the world; it’s essential for the survival of our planet.
I urge you to suggest to Majority Leader Reid and other members of the Senate that they adopt the proposal of Senator Tom Harkin, in which a gradually decreasing majority would be required for cloture. It is my understanding that this could come up for consideration at the opening of the next session of Congress, when the Senate Rules Committee can institute changes to the Senate’s rules of procedure. We need to reform the abuse of the filibuster as soon as possible, so that a tiny minority of lawmakers can no longer effectively paralyze the Senate, making progress impossible.
Thank you.
Yours sincerely,
Warren Senders
I’m pretty tired. I did 5 hours of phonebanking for Coakley today and will be helping voters get to the polls tomorrow morning. If you live in Massachusetts, REMEMBER TO VOTE!!!
music: Middle-Eastern music muezzin Sabri Moudallal Syrian music
by Warren
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Syrian Classical Music
Many years ago there was a store in Harvard Square that specialized in Middle-Eastern music. I went in there pretty frequently; the music is close enough to Hindustani tradition that I felt a great aesthetic consanguinity, but different enough that I never knew what was going to happen. I got to know the proprietors casually, and they began recommending items to me when I dropped in.
One day the primary storekeeper pulled out a CD and said, “You must hear this!” It was “Sacred and Profane Songs of Syria,” a recording of Sabri Moudallal, the principal muezzin of the Great Mosque at Aleppo, Syria. I was riveted. Amazing breath control, vocal projection that suggested a lifetime of sending sound over long distances…and a level of passion that I’d rarely heard anywhere. So I bought the record, and I bought a subsequent recording, “The Aleppian Music Room” a couple of years later.
Here’s a page with a bio and a photograph.
Moudallal was very old at the time of the recordings. I can only imagine what he sounded like as a young man. Every so often over the years I’ve checked YouTube for some of his music… And today?
Enjoy. Although the sound on these uploads is pretty crappy, the music is exquisite. The second piece is especially beautiful. Moudallal has some solo interludes about five minutes in; they tear me to shreds every time. Check out the long embellished phrases that begin at 5:47.
Day 17: Do You Seriously Think Newsweek Would Actually Print This?
I did 7 hours of phonebanking for Martha Coakley yesterday. You can read the story here if you’re interested. Today I was teaching most of the day, so I didn’t have time to write my letter until now. You’ll note that I took the Brian Aldiss quote I’d used a few days ago and built a new edifice around it.
Do I actually think Newsweek will publish this letter? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
If you live in Massachusetts, remember to VOTE on Tuesday.
The science-fiction writer Brian Aldiss described civilization as “the distance man has placed between himself and his waste,” and by this criterion ours is the most advanced civilization in human history. But it is increasingly obvious that when we are this distant from our waste, we are at best oblivious to it and at worst openly contemptuous of efforts to reduce it (as witness Dick Cheney’s sneering remark that “Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy.”).
The problem is, simply, that the laws of physics are oblivious to our posturing. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and when the CO2 output of our civilization overwhelms the absorptive capacity of our oceans and forests, the earth’s atmosphere will heat up. Let it get warm enough, and the frozen methane under the Arctic Ocean will enter the atmosphere, triggering a terrifying positive feedback loop. The best-case result of that is what is euphemistically called an “evolutionary bottleneck.”
But it is much easier to fixate on the latest celebrity scandal du jour than it is to confront catastrophic climate change while there is still time. If the public understood the difference between denialism and scientific fact, it would be simple to recognize lies and debunk them. Instead, while the world’s ecosystems collapse under the strain of our accumulated waste, irresponsible broadcast and print media bombard us with a steady stream of celebrity scandals, distractions and irrelevancies. Albert Einstein put it very clearly when he said, “We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.” What we need is nothing more or less than a new definition of civilization, one which embodies a wholly different attitude towards waste. If we do not act now to redefine civilization for ourselves and our descendants, our great-great-grandchildren will curse us for blighting their lives with a cultural and environmental heritage that amounts in the end to a world full of toxic trash.
Warren Senders
Please feel free to cut and paste parts of what I’ve written into your own letters to our media and politicians. If you have suggestions for people and/or organizations I should write to, I would welcome them.
environment Politics: copenhagen Desperation New York Times Pi***ng into the wind Todd Stern
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Year 1, Month 1, Day 16: The Gray Lady
The New York Times has a length limit of 150 words; I managed to get it down to 149. Tomorrow I’ll be out most of the day making calls for Coakley at a local phonebank. I hate doing it, but it’s not something I feel a lot of choice about. My voice will be wrecked by the evening…with luck I’ll recover before a full day of teaching on Sunday.
Another of the Times’ stipulations is that letters have to explicitly address an issue discussed in a recent article. Fortunately, a few seconds of searching their site found me a recent piece on the possibilities of post-Copenhagen progress on climate, and I framed my letter around that. It was fun getting it trimmed to fit a 150-word maximum; I’ll try again in another week or so.
If you have suggestions for other journals, papers, magazines or forums I can write to, I will be interested in hearing them!
American climate change negotiator Todd Stern’s is cautiously optimistic (“U.S. Official Says Talks on Emissions Show Promise” – John M. Broder, January 14). Unfortunately his caution is more reality-based than his optimism. Stern’s statements are full of conditionals, as witness the end of the first sentence: “…if countries followed through on its provisions.” The dilemma lies, as do so many of our problems, in the Senate, where a significant number of lawmakers have abandoned any notion of crafting policy around scientific consensus, basing it instead on poll numbers or ideological opposition to the current administration. And because our mass media has for years downplayed the threat posed by global climate change, the public has not grasped the terrifying reality of anthropogenic climaticide for what it is: a planetary emergency of unparalleled scale. Our failure to address this crisis with the requisite urgency may be the final failure of our species.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Desperation glacial melt methane washington post
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Year 1, Month 1, Day 15: Chastising the Washington Post
Daughter announced this morning that she wanted to stay home, and “make up a school at home.” I agreed, with the caveat that she would have to spend a bunch of time alone, as I had work to do and some students later in the morning. In a minute or so I’m going to make some calls for the Coakley campaign. Today’s letter is a remix of several earlier items; I’m now at the point where I have enough material to dissect and reassemble my output in multiple combinations. It’s less work, or it would be if the prose wasn’t on such a harrowing topic.
Each day brings new news about the magnitude of the looming climate crisis; most recently we learn that the Pine Island Glacier, largest of the glaciers making up the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet, has passed a “tipping point” and is now inexorably melting. Simultaneously levels of atmospheric methane over the Siberian Shelf in the Arctic Ocean now range between a hundred and a thousand times normal, indicating that gigatonnes of this powerful greenhouse gas which have been frozen under the tundra for tens of thousands of years are now starting to enter the atmosphere. The most significant thing about the predictions of climatologists is that they are without exception too conservative; tipping points projected for the end of this century now loom at the end of this decade.
The best-case scenarios for runaway global warming lead to terrifying dystopias, with millions of displaced climate refugees, worldwide food and water shortages, resource wars and devastatingly unpredictable weather patterns. The worst-case scenarios could lead to global temperatures soaring to levels inhospitable to any life at all. Venus, in short. And the scientific evidence (again, based on conservative projections) suggests that the probability of bad-to-worst-case outcomes is statistically significant. This country’s rush to war in 2002 was based on evidence far less robust than that for human causes of global climate change: if the evidence of Iraqi WMD’s was as strong as that for anthropogenic global warming, our troops would have found stacks of nuclear weapons freely sold in the bazaars of Baghdad.
And where is the Washington Post in all this? Firmly ignoring science and continuing to publish the glib (albeit erudite) misinformation propagated by George Will. The Post should correct this shortsighted policy immediately; there has never been a time in human history when enabling ignorance could have such devastating consequences.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Desperation Ed Markey Pi***ng into the wind
by Warren
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Year 1, Month 1, Day 14: Ed Markey Hears From Me Again
Last night I was doing bookkeeping for 2009, so I didn’t write anything. This morning I’m strapped for time, so this letter came out kind of blunt. I also included some footnotes for the first time. This was prompted by the scariest thing I have ever read, over at Daily Kos.
January 14, 2010
Dear Representative Markey,
Thank you for your work in the area of climate change and environmental protection. As we are now discovering, the predictions of climate scientists have been profoundly erroneous. Without exception, climatologists’ projections of the rate and severity of climate change are turning out to be too timid. The world is heating up faster than they expected. Much faster. Much, much faster.
The latest news reveals that we face what is surely the most pressing existential crisis in humanity’s history. The recent discovery of atmospheric methane levels over the Arctic ocean ranging between a hundred and a thousand times normal is a terrifying augury of things to come (see below). Once the gigatonnes of frozen methane locked in the tundra begin to melt, climatic tipping points are going to arrive faster and faster, and the best-case scenarios will look like dystopian nightmares. The worst-case scenarios can be summed up in one word: Venus.
Unless we can learn to set aside international and intra-national differences of opinion and personality conflicts, the outlook for coming generations is dire. Your leadership is needed now more than ever.
Thank you again for your efforts in this field.
Yours sincerely,
Warren Senders
1. “Scientists have uncovered what appears to be a further dramatic increase in the leakage of methane gas that is seeping from the Arctic seabed.”
2. “Fairbanks, Alaska—A team led by International Arctic Research Center scientist Igor Semiletov has found data to suggest that the carbon pool beneath the Arctic Ocean is leaking.
The results of more than 1,000 measurements of dissolved methane in the surface water from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf this summer as part of the International Siberian Shelf Study show an increased level of methane in the area. Geophysical measurements showed methane bubbles coming out of chimneys on the seafloor.”
environment Politics: cowering before the apocalypse Hillary Clinton secretary of state
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Year 1, Month 1, Day 13: A Letter to The Secretary of State
In over ten whole minutes of web searching, I could not find a fax number for the Secretary of State’s office, so this one is going off by snailmail.
Dear Secretary Clinton,
Over the long run, there is no issue more likely to contribute to profound global instability than runaway global warming. Projections of the sociopolitical effects of climate change include severe disturbances to farming economies caused by erratic weather, increased risk of near-apocalyptic fires in forested areas affected by severe heat, “water wars” triggered by drought and the elimination of glacial melt as a source for important rivers and aquifers, and, of course, the inevitability of millions of climate refugees, many in the world’s poorest nations.
Add to this the increasing likelihood that oceanic acidification will profoundly affect the food chain of much of earth’s life, and the terrifying prospect of gigatons of arctic methane being released into our atmosphere and bringing a greenhouse effect of unimaginable magnitude, and the possibility of a planetary enactment of a Biblical apocalypse becomes disturbingly likely. While some Dominionists may view this as desirable, hoping for the Rapture is not a valid environmental policy.
As the leader of the free world, the United States needs a diplomatic strategy that simultaneously fosters long-term thinking among the world’s governments (because a multi-decade gap between cause and effect is inherent in the processes of climate) and prompt and vigorous action (because the window of time in which our actions can make a difference to our descendents is rapidly closing). It is absolutely crucial that we take the initiative to bring about a worldwide agreement to reduce atmospheric CO2 to 350 ppm or less, as recommended by Dr. James Hansen and other climatologists.
Please make sure the world knows that America is ready to lead, both in finding ways to mitigate the unavoidable effects of climate change and in preventing further catastrophic changes from coming to pass.
Failure in this area is a guarantee of failure for all of us — all six billion of us.
Thank you,
Warren Senders
A little long, but what the hell. Writing a shorter letter would have taken an extra fifteen minutes or so.
environment Politics: John Kerry Lisa Murkowski Paul Kirk
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Year 1, Month 1, Day 12 (a): a Quick Fax to Senators Kerry and Kirk
There’s some excitement about Lisa Murkowski’s proposed amendment to an upcoming bill dealing with raising the national debt ceiling, and CREDO sent out an email blast asking us to tell our Senators to oppose it. Her amendment will weaken the enforcement abilities of the EPA, making the Clean Air Act a hollow shell of its former self. Needless to say, that’s a bad thing, and Murkowski’s a bad influence.
This came concurrently with 1Sky’s “Day to Call the Senate” or whatever it was they called it, so I dashed off a quick fax covering both issues to my Senators, Kerry and Kirk.
Dear Senators Kerry and Kirk,
Please vote against the Murkowski amendment on the debt ceiling bill scheduled to come to the floor on January 20th. We need robust enforcement of the Clean Air Act!
Also, now is the time to move forward on meaningful environmental legislation to deal with the threat of global climate change. Kerry-Boxer and Waxman-Markey are good starts, but we need to reduce atmospheric CO2 to 350 ppm, not 450 as these bills stipulate.
Thank you,
Warren Senders
Not eloquent, but it said what needed to be said. Faxed to both of Kirk’s offices and all of Kerry’s, with the exception of the Springfield office, which appears to have been decommissioned.
Oh, and I also called Kerry’s offices and basically read this to his staffers over the phone.
Need I say that it is a terrifying thought that Republican buffoon Scott Brown is as close as he is to gaining control of Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat? WTF?