environment: hydroflourocarbons Montreal Protocol
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 9: The Air, The Air is Everywhere
The New York Times offers an alternate route to the regulation of some types of greenhouse gases. The international agreement to phase out ozone-depleting gases in order to protect the ozone layer (so we wouldn’t all get skin cancer) may be applicable to hydroflourocarbons as well. That would be a nice piece of news.
It seems entirely reasonable that the Montreal Protocol should expand its scope to include hydrofluorocarbons. While the agreement was originally developed to limit the atmospheric release of ozone-depleting chemicals, signatory nations should focus on the larger objective: protecting the planetary ecosystem and the human civilization it supports. When the threat to our ozone layer was first discovered, of course, there were both political and industry voices raised in denial — but decades later scientific modeling has demonstrated conclusively that the Montreal Protocol was implemented just in time to allow our atmosphere to restore itself. Expanding the scope of the treaty may give us a precious few years’ worth of breathing room in which to develop meaningful actions on atmospheric CO2 emissions — and ways to convince the ideologically driven “climate zombies” who are entering the House of Representatives that climate change is a genuine threat to us all.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes good guys idiots media irresponsibility
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 8: High Noon!
The Cleveland Plain Dealer runs an McClatchy article about climate scientists preparing to enter the media circus.
“This group feels strongly that science and politics can’t be divorced and that we need to take bold measures to not only communicate science but also to aggressively engage the denialists and politicians who attack climate science and its scientists,” said Scott Mandia, professor of physical sciences at Suffolk County Community College in New York.
“We are taking the fight to them because we are . . . tired of taking the hits. The notion that truth will prevail is not working. The truth has been out there for the past two decades, and nothing has changed.”
Poor bastards. I’m going to send them all some letters of support; they’ll need all the help they can get.
It is terrific news that climatologists are preparing to challenge climate-change denialists. With the GOP takeover of the House, we can look forward to a long two years of anti-science theatrics, like Representative Darryl Issa’s promised hearings on the “climategate” non-scandal. Climate denialism is a linchpin of Republican ideology; these politicians insist (despite mountains of evidence and an overwhelming scientific consensus on the reality of anthropogenic global warming) that the problem either: A – doesn’t exist, B – exists but isn’t caused by humans, C – was fabricated by Al Gore and an international conspiracy of climate experts, or D – is too expensive to address. Each of these positions has been debunked many times over, but the minds of GOP politicians are, alas, closed to persuasion. I hope that the members of the proposed “climate rapid response team” are ready for the most exasperating and baffling arguments they’ll ever experience.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Barack Obama
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 7: Sunday POTUS
The concert went off well; I’m back at home and decompressing from a fabulous evening of drumming. I’ll have photos online within a day and video/audio soon after that.
Meanwhile, my letter to President Obama:
Dear President Obama,
As a Massachusetts resident, I am proud of my own state’s results in the recent midterm election. I was a teenager when we were the only state to support George McGovern in 1972, and I’d like to think that we continue to recognize the value of progressive politics and policies (several Republican governors and the recently elected Scott Brown notwithstanding). About the rest of the country, I’m pretty depressed.
In particular, I find the election of so many “climate zombies” to be a terrible blow. In case you’re unfamiliar with the term, it refers to a politician whose ideologically driven rejection of the facts of global climate change remains impervious to any and all scientific evidence. These people got elected, and they are going to do their best to stop all progress on combating global warming over the next two years.
They must not succeed. While on a philosophical level I applaud your bipartisan instincts and your readiness to compromise, this is one issue where that can’t be allowed to happen. Because the ultimate conflict is not between Republicans and Democrats, or conservatives and liberals — it is between the forces of human ignorance and the terrifying facts of the greenhouse effect, and in this theater, there can be no bipartisanship.
I’m a progressive liberal, and I worked hard to get you elected. I’m one of those voters that makes up your “base.” It was pretty clear when I was phonebanking during this election that your base (all those liberals all over the country) weren’t happy about the way things were going in your administration. Over and over again, people said there had been too many compromises on the wrong sorts of issues, and too many missed opportunities to show strong leadership. Well, this is a chance to lead strongly.
Climate change is the defining issue of our time; our handling of this will determine whether our descendants praise us or revile us, or indeed whether our descendants remain alive on Earth at all. Mother Nature won’t compromise; it’s her way or the highway. There can be no bargaining with big oil and big coal; their moral credibility is in the negative numbers, and if you compromise with these forces, your moral credibility will be dragged down with them.
Don’t do it. Please. We need you.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes Food Security idiots United Nations
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 6: It’s Always A Good Day When I Discover a Good Word
Business Week runs a short AP squib on a plea from the UN Conference on Food Security, asking that the potentially devastating impact of climate change on agricultural systems be taken into account in developing a meaningful climate treaty.
This letter introduces a new and useful word: veriphobia. It means “fear of truth.” Use it in good health.
The message from the UN Conference on Food Security inadvertently provides an excellent illustration of the extraordinary disconnect between reality and the Republican Party. The actual facts show conclusively that climate change is real, it’s causing huge damage already, and it’s going to have a devastating effect on agriculture all over the world. But the facts are no longer relevant to today’s GOP, which is deeply invested in an irrationally anti-science ideology built entirely on opposition to ideas or policies suggested by its political opponents. Does anyone think it’s likely that Republican politicians (even those from farming states which will bear the brunt of global warming’s effects over the next century) will acknowledge or accommodate the needs of climate-threatened farming nations? To do so (alas for the rest of us) would threaten these veriphobic denialists with a terrifying fate: having to admit error.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes greed idiots lawsuits
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 5: Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves
The New York Times notes that post-election, we’re likely to see more lawsuits challenging climate change laws at the state level, as corporate players are emboldened to act even more stupidly.
If the business community’s attention span was somewhat longer, many of the lawsuits aimed at neutralizing state climate change laws would be seen for what they are: desperate attempts to change the subject. The truth is simple: global warming is real and humans are responsible; the planet is already experiencing its effects everywhere from Moscow to Manhattan, and things are going to get worse before they get better no matter what we do. The orchestra of chaos is only tuning up, and if we don’t cut our carbon emissions drastically and immediately, we’re in for a world of hurt. Prioritization of short-term profits will play a major part in the demise of many corporate players over the coming decades. It is a sad commentary on our country when both the investment and manufacturing sectors have replaced fact-based institutional policy with petulant demands that reality be repealed.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Arnold Schwarzenegger Proposition 23
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 4: NOW You Tell Us?
I’m glad Jerry Brown won in CA. I’ve always liked him, and Meg Whitman’s plans to sell off the state on Ebay were hard to swallow.
The San Francisco Chronicle posts an AP article which carries the somewhat hard-to-believe news that Arnold Schwarzenegger and George Schultz are going to try and persuade Republicans to do something about climate change. They also quote the big cheese from the NPRA about how Proposition 23 was badly misunderstood and all the environmentalists were mean to them:
The National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, which contributed $100,000 to the yes vote, called the measure’s defeat “tragic.” The association blamed it partly on the voter wave that elected Jerry Brown governor, re-elected Barbara Boxer to the U.S. Senate and sent their fellow Democrats to several other statewide offices.
The association’s president, Charles Drevna, also accused the measure’s opponents of leading a “sophisticated multimillion-dollar misinformation campaign” that he said would ultimately drive companies out of the state.
Schwarzenegger and Schultz both agree that climate change is real, and they think this is the perfect time to bring it back on the national stage.
Good luck with that, guys. I’m afraid that your party may have gone too far in deliberately cultivating stupidity as an ideology for that to work. But if you try, I’ll write letters in support, OK?
It is a glimpse into true bizarro-world when the head of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association can state with a straight face that the opponents of Proposition 23 ran a “misinformation campaign.” The initiative’s resounding defeat is more than just good news for California; it’s a rebuke to the anti-science agenda promoted by the Koch brothers and their associates. Governor Schwarzenegger and Secretary Schultz are members of an increasingly small and exclusive group: Republicans who recognize the severity of the threat posed by global warming. It is heartening to hear that they’re planning on pushing for legislative action on climate change at the national level. However, given the House takeover by GOP legislators who reflexively dismiss scientific expertise when it is inconvenient to their ideology, the “Governator” is going to have his hands full. Meanwhile, steadily increasing atmospheric CO2 is bringing the planet ever closer to the precipice.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes Darryl Issa idiots
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 3: This Is Awful.
In the wake of the bloodbath, I wrote the following to the Boston Globe, hanging it on a generic article about how having a Republican-controlled house will slow President Obama’s agenda.
Gee, ya think?
The bright spots are few and far between. As of this writing it looks like California is safe and the odious Proposition 23 has gone down. But given the post- Citizens United climate in our country, I am not sanguine about our future. If you thought the last two years were ugly, just watch the next two.
With the Republican takeover in the House of Representatives, we can look forward to a long two years of show trials from luminaries like Darryl Issa and James Sensenbrenner. These two worthies have already announced their intentions to hold hearings into the multiply-debunked “Climategate” non-scandal; like the rest of the GOP caucus, they are ideologically wedded to the notion that climate change is a liberal conspiracy cooked up by Al Gore and his henchmen in the scientific establishment. The climatologists who are working around the clock on the dimensions of global warming (arguably the worst threat humanity has ever faced) are now going to have their time squandered on empty theatrics by a group of anti-science congressmen. It would be nice to imagine that these politicians could have their minds changed by scientific evidence, but given the troubled relationship between reality and these Republicans, I wouldn’t count on it.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes Deepwater Horizon EPA idiots
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Month 11, Day 2: An Election Day Letter
The Guardian comments on the expected barrage of Republican idiots investigating things. If I were a believer, I’d be praying. If you’re a believer, please pray…but GOTV either way! I’ll probably be driving people to the polls tomorrow at some point…not sure how that’s going to work with a kid in tow, but wotthehell.
It is surreal to imagine Republican congressional inquiries into the Obama administration’s inept handling of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. How would these anti-environmental zealots keep the scope of their investigations from moving back to the Bush-era EPA’s carefully nurtured culture of incompetence and corruption? Given that the Tea Party Republicans are overwhelmingly ready to reject scientific evidence, it should be no surprise that they are anti-reality in other areas as well. While their handling of the Gulf catastrophe was hardly the Obama team’s finest hour, it’s incontrovertible that the Bush/Cheney administration laid the foundation for BP’s destructive and callous behavior. The spill in the Gulf may have poisoned multiple ecosystems beyond recovery, but the behavior of Republican politicians demonstrates that oil kills rationality, logic and accountability just as thoroughly as it wipes out fish, turtles and sea birds.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes climate zombies idiots
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 1: Evidence? We Don’t Need No Steenkin’ Evidence!
The L.A. Times runs an article by Neela Banerjee noting that the Republican climate zombies are in a position to screw everything up should they (as seems distressingly likely) gain power in this election.
GOTV! GOTV!
When Republican congresspeople dismiss the scientific consensus on the role of carbon dioxide in global climate change, they selfishly sacrifice the long-term health of the country and the planet for the sake of immediate political expediency. Their readiness to declare that climate science is not “settled” demonstrates a distrust of expertise that runs counter to their ideological slant — and they’ve been equally ready to dismiss expert information in other areas — as in the run-up to the Iraq war, where the Bush administration and their enablers in the Republican caucus systematically cherry-picked intelligence to support their predetermined policy objectives. That debacle cost us the lives of thousands of soldiers, countless Iraqi civilians, and our country’s credibility in the eyes of the world. It’s time for climate deniers to listen to the experts: the evidence for human causes of global warming is far, far stronger than that for Iraqi WMDs.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Citizens United climate zombies corporate irresponsibility
by Warren
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Month 10, Day 31: It’s Halloween! I’m Going As David Koch!
Tim Rutten writes in the LA Times about the corporate role in creating the current army of climate zombies who threaten to derail our already pitiful progress on getting a law in place to deal with GHG emissions.
Voters are regularly told that experience in business is a political plus; the notion of running the state or the country “like a company” is extolled. But tobacco companies conspired to hide a fact: their product killed people who used it, and oil companies have likewise conspired, hiding the reality that their product is rendering our planet uninhabitable. Apparently corporations are not only prepared to ignore facts if they get in the way of a healthy quarterly report, but they haven’t yet figured out that killing your customers is bad for business. If we elect corporate CEOs to public office, we should not be surprised if they behave like corporations, employing mendacity, avarice, and short-sightedness to the detriment of our common welfare. The fossil fuel interests’ fixation on denying the existence of the gravest threat humanity has ever faced makes the big tobacco companies look like a bunch of pikers.
Warren Senders