environment: climate change pakistan
by Warren
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Month 8, Day 31: Can I Keep It? It Followed Me Home!
The New York Times is doing good reporting on Pakistan. Climate Change is of course the rhinoceros in the living room — rarely mentioned and carefully tiptoed around.
Tumultuous though it is on the ground, Pakistan’s disaster unfolds in slow motion from this side of the globe. A newly homeless population greater than New England’s, a nation’s resources destroyed, an epidemiology textbook’s worst-case scenario — these may seem abstract from a comfortable distance, but we ignore them at our peril. In our newly-created Anthropocene epoch, catastrophes like Pakistan’s can unfold anywhere. By definition, freakish weather events are unexpected; the conditions foretold by climate scientists will make accurate prediction increasingly difficult (which perhaps is one of the reasons many meteorologists are loath to accept the evidence for anthropogenic climate chaos). Pakistan’s suffering holds a message to all the nations of the globe: the storms of the coming centuries are here, and we must change our ways of living if we are to last them out.
Warren Senders
environment: economics sustainability
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Month 8, Day 30: Ka-Ching!
The Chicago Tribune appears to have discovered that sustainability is good for business.
What is mind-boggling is that this epiphany is not rewarded with a resounding, “Well, duuuuhhhh.”
But I guess everybody has to start somewhere.
It should not seem counterintuitive that ecologically sensible practices are good business practices as well. Environmental destruction is the worst possible corporate strategy — because ultimately all wealth is a function of our relationship to the natural ecosystems of which we are a part. Most contemporary economists assert that infinite economic growth is both possible and desirable, ignoring the fact that we live on a finite planet. As Edward Abbey famously said, “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”
The survival of our economic system is predicated on the survival of our species; even the largest multinational cannot outlast humanity. That’s why it makes absolute sense for business to embrace the disciplines of sustainability at every level, whether it’s implementing a careful recycling policy, adhering to green building practices, or supporting strong legislation to fight global climate change. Can someone tell the U.S. Chamber of Commerce?
Warren Senders
environment: false equivalence
by Warren
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Month 8, Day 29: Falls ekwivalents maykz jernalizm ezee!
The LA Times ran an AP story about this summer’s bizarre weather.
I also sent a copy of this letter to the Associated Press’ contact line, with a request that they forward it to the author.
Mary Esch notes that meteorologists don’t see the recent planetary heat wave as a sign of global warming, and also mentions that “atmospheric scientists” are increasingly concerned about anthropogenic climate change. This apparent conflict should have been addressed by the author, who fails to point out that while no single weather event can be unambiguously attributed to global warming, climatologists have been predicting for decades that the greenhouse effect would trigger weirder and weirder weather, world-wide. Climatic prediction is based on statistical analysis; weather prediction is based on local and regional measurements. Given that their predictions have been repeatedly vindicated, it is irresponsible to suggest an equivalence between the overwhelming consensus of thousands of climate scientists (a consensus decades in the making)…and the apparently contrary opinion of Accuweather’s Brian Edwards, a young man who (as a little research shows) received his B.S. in Meteorology two years ago.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: EPA hippie-punching regulation
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Month 8, Day 28: That’ll Teach You To Be Sensitive and Caring!
More hippie-punching from the current administration.
I expect it from my enemies. Getting hippie-punched by the Cheney administration was a badge of honor. Getting it from the Obama team is utterly dispiriting.
Dear President Obama,
Your administration’s brief in Connecticut v. AEP argues that regulatory action by Federal agencies negates the legal standing of states or private entities to employ common-law “nuisance” provisions to protect their interests. The Solicitor-General argues that since the EPA has begun addressing carbon-dioxide emissions, the use of nuisance law to create de facto regulation of polluters is superfluous and legally ambiguous.
That’s a pretty tenuous rationale for a legal position that amounts to siding with major polluters on the interpretation and implementation of the Clean Air Act — especially given that your Administration didn’t even need to intervene in the case to begin with. If you couldn’t see your way clear to supporting the rights of individuals to sue for regulation of nuisance pollution, why not just stay out of the way?
Yes, it would be better to have strong statutory language specifically delineating a robust regulatory policy on emissions of CO2 and other pollutants. But is climate legislation with any teeth actually going to happen in the current political climate? The chances are slim to non-existent.
Who decided to intervene in Connecticut v. AEP? And why did they not consult any members of your administration with scientific or environmental expertise?
Mr. President, I worked and donated to ensure your election. As an environmentalist, I had confidence that you recognized the genuine existential threat posed by global climate change, and would be prepared to utilize your considerable rhetorical and oratorical skills to marshal support for climate/energy legislation in the current congress. I expect to work and donate for Democrats this fall, but with greatly diminished enthusiasm; “vote for us because our opponents are even worse” is a weak political motivator.
Nuisance law has long been an important avenue for citizens to address corporate criminality on a local and regional level; your administration’s contribution to Connecticut vs. AEP is an advocacy of disempowerment — precisely the opposite of your message to the nation in the election of 2008! What (besides being justifiably concerned about the future of our species) have environmentalists done to merit such shabby treatment?
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment: climate change New York Times pakistan
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Month 8, Day 27: We Brought It Upon Yourselves
More misery in Pakistan. Another letter to the Times.
While America’s mass media look the other way, Pakistan’s tragedy grows ever more horrifying. Imagining the entire population of New England rendered homeless by climatic upheaval conveys the size of the catastrophe. But it is more than the people whose lives have been overturned; it is more than the shattered infrastructure and threat of disease; more than the likely political upheavals — Pakistan’s affliction is an ugly picture of a post-global-warming world. While those extreme monsoons cannot be specifically attributed to anthropogenic climate change, climatologists have long predicted upheavals of just this type as a consequence of an increased concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. As we begin to see the humanitarian consequences of climate change, it is no wonder our punditocracy usually chooses to look away. A final irony: unlike that of the USA, Pakistan’s contribution to atmospheric CO2 is negligible. They did not create climate chaos. We did.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Evil James Watt minerals management service
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Month 8, Day 26: Institutional Irresponsibility and the Culture of Malign Neglect
The Washington Post ran an article on the corruption in the Minerals Management Service — their willingness to let industry insiders write the regulations they were supposed to enforce. It’s infuriating.
The readiness of the Minerals Management Service to take dictation from corporate interests when it comes time to draft regulatory language is tragic but unsurprising. Republican appointees like James Watt are virtually without exception industry insiders who can expect to profit handsomely from their willingness to sacrifice the genuine environmental wealth of this country — wealth which by rights belongs to all of us. This affects every aspect of our government and our politics. Perhaps the most damaging manifestation of this systemic dysfunction is the inability of the U.S. Senate to pass meaningful legislation addressing climate change. By compromising, delaying and procrastinating, our politicians have enabled the continuing destruction of humanity’s common environmental inheritance in order to preserve the profits of some of the world’s largest corporations. The Senate is the Minerals Management Service writ large, and we are all of us the losers thereby.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: climate legislation corporations New York Times
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Month 8, Day 25: Hey, Exxon! I’m Talkin’ to YOU!
Abandoning world peace for the moment, I return to admonishing our Corporate Overlords. This one went to the NYT in response to a very good (read: very depressing) op-ed by Thomas Homer-Dixon.
The corporate sector’s inability to acknowledge the urgency of addressing the climate crisis may well doom them in the long term. While strong climate legislation may bring a dip in quarterly profits for a few of the world’s largest companies, failure will ensure that the only corporate entities remaining will be those whose profitability springs from worldwide disasters and misery. Any business serving healthy humans and healthy societies is destined to fare poorly in a world buffeted by unpredictable weather catastrophes.
Conservative politicians and their media enablers have expended extraordinary amounts of energy in obscuring the simple facts of global climate change. A social movement this dedicated to ignoring reality does not bode well for the rest of the world. It’s a pity we can’t run generators on obfuscation, misdirection and mendacity.
Warren Senders
Conservative Tabloids Don’t Check Their Facts
Just like the Boston Herald, the New York Post did not email or call me to confirm that I was who I said I was, before printing a drastically edited version of my letter.
There are five comments, each representative of the dumber-than-a-box-of-anvils school of thought.
environment Politics: Barack Obama climate change utopia
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Month 8, Day 24: Pulling Out All The Stops
I figured I’d make one last plug for world peace before I go back to chastising the news media for ignoring climate change.
Dear President Obama,
By substantially altering the nature of the world’s climate, humanity has created and entered the Anthropocene Epoch. Indications for the long-term survival of our species in this eponymous age are less and less favorable.
The short-term effect of global climate change is of course to create ever more chaotic and damaging weather patterns — leading to devastating events like Pakistan’s floods and Russia’s fires. While it’s impossible to say that a specific calamity was specifically triggered by climate change, the greenhouse effect is predicted to increase extreme weather exactly the way it’s happening today.
The short-term effect is disaster, deprivation, and misery. A longer-term effect is the likelihood of political instability. Resource wars brought about through weather-induced food shortages; water wars catalyzed by droughts; governments toppled because of a failure to respond appropriately to a climate catastrophe…these are among the “coming attractions” for our species.
Unless we act thoughtfully and carefully to head them off. The U.S.A. must set an example to the world by enacting strong climate legislation, rewarding organizations and individuals who make important contributions to reducing greenhouse gases, and investing heavily in renewable energy systems. If America is to be a world leader, we must lead, not wait for China and India to get their houses in order, as some of the procrastinators in the Senate would have us do.But this is only the beginning. We (and the rest of the world) must gaze unflinchingly at what’s going to be coming at us over the next centuries, and make plans for how we will cope with a global increase in droughts, fires, storms, blizzards, floods and famines. Can humanity unite in the face of a common enemy? If humanity is to survive climate chaos, we can no longer afford war.
Never has the case for world peace been of such urgency.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment: Ban ki-Moon pakistan United Nations
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Month 8, Day 23: Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream
I’ve never written to Ban ki-Moon before. His statements about climate change make it pretty clear that he gets it in a way that hardly any American politicians do.
It was extremely difficult to find any useful contact address. The UN has a generic email submission page which I finally used…but I’m going to try and get something more substantial once they open for business tomorrow.
SUBJECT:
Please forward to the Secretary General – RE: Geopolitical Implications of Climate Change
Dear Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon,
Your recent words about the disaster in Pakistan show that you are one of the few public figures who is willing to recognize climate change as one of the primary causal forces behind that country’s devastating floods. It is evident to any thinking observer that a steady increase in extreme weather events (as predicted for decades by climatologists) will lead to dramatic changes in the structuring foreign policy.Humanity can go in two directions. The nations of the world can join together to develop strategies for resource allotment and the deployment of infrastructure as needed to combat the devastating effects of short-term weather events (thereby preventing food and water wars, or other political manifestations of climatic emergency) — or they can continue on the path of what the economist Naomi Klein aptly terms “disaster capitalism,” in which any crisis is used as an opportunity for exploitation and the curtailment of human liberties.
The first path will lead to our survival as a species, the second inevitably to our doom.
We have often wondered: if humanity could find a common adversary, could old national rivalries be set aside? In that respect, the climate crisis offers us an opportunity to transform our ways of thinking about ourselves as a species and our role on the planet. What is happening to Pakistan today could happen to one of the world’s wealthiest nations next week; the transformed climate does not play favorites in the long run.
This is the first time that humanity has faced a planet-sized enemy, an enemy that cannot be defeated by force of arms or by political maneuverings. We have created this threat ourselves, and to defeat it we must change ourselves at a deep level.
We can no longer waste time and treasure on the destructive distractions of war; there is a greater enemy to overcome.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders