environment Politics: Barack Obama Big Oil BP climate change Deepwater Horizon Liars
by Warren
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Month 8, Day 5: Many Happy Returns!
Bill McKibben wrote this absolutely kick-ass piece, which went up in a bunch of places. I was inspired. Then I read Bob Cesca’s piece at Huffington Post and was further inspired. So I combined the two in a long letter to POTUS, who hasn’t heard from me for at least a week.
Dear President Obama,
The oil flowing from the site of the Deepwater Horizon disaster has finally been stopped, and for that we are all deeply grateful. But there is another spill which has not been capped — and if this one doesn’t get dealt with, all of us will be the losers.
I’m talking about the uncontrolled gusher of misrepresentations, evasions and equivocations that come from the mouths of BP spokesmen, from the PR outlets of Big Oil, from the offices of Senators and Representatives who have been taken over by petroleum interests…and, alas, from your own administration.
It is surely tempting to sugar-coat unpleasant facts; time and again we have learned that the political process is unkind to those who speak the truth bluntly and accurately. But there is a time for the actual truth, and now is that time.
The truth is — that BP spilled almost five million barrels of oil. If they’ve cleaned up three-quarters of it, that leaves about fifty-three million gallons, which is five times the size of the Exxon Valdez.
The truth is — that BP lied from the beginning about how much was flowing; far from cooperating in the cleanup process, they have done as much as they could to hide the details, restrict the flow of information, and make it impossible for accurate measurements to be taken.
The truth is — that the toxic dispersants they’ve used haven’t evaporated; they’ve dissolved into the seawater along with the oil. That doesn’t make the oil go away; it just hides it, and leaves the waters of the Gulf of Mexico a toxic chemical stew that will destroy ecosystems and the communities that depend on them.
The truth is — that BP was criminally careless in their handling of the Deepwater Horizon platform, and criminally careless in their handling of the disaster.
The truth is — that carelessness and mendacity are part and parcel of the strategic toolkit of Big Oil, day in and day out.
The truth is — that nobody in the United States should take anything an oil company representative utters at face value. To paraphrase Mary McCarthy, “Every word is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the.’ “
The truth is — that global climate change is a slow-motion disaster unfolding before our horrified eyes, and it has been made possible by the malfeasance of our energy sector.
The truth is — that Americans need to hear the truth, and they need to hear it from their elected representatives.
And the truth is, Mr. President — that means you.
We can’t afford happy talk right now. We need to know how bad it’s gotten if we’re going to find ways to stop it from getting worse.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
PS — Happy Birthday!
environment Politics: Chicago Tribune climate bill
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Month 8, Day 4: This Is All The Good News You Got?
The Chicago Tribune ran an AP story noting that the American climate negotiators are now reduced to reassuring their European counterparts that, yes, we will still honor our commitments.
While the collapse of climate legislation was a long-anticipated disappointment, it’s good to know that the United States still intends to honor its commitment to reduce CO2 emissions over the coming decade. Given that the USA has five percent of the world’s population, but emits twenty percent of its carbon dioxide, a seventeen percent reduction from 2005 levels is only a tiny step on a globally responsible path. If we wish to be taken seriously as a leader among nations, though, we must do better than a minimal reduction. We’re going to have to do some hard work, make some meaningful sacrifices, and prove ourselves capable of doing the right thing for generations yet to come. Is it possible? The current political climate is stranger and more overheated than the planet’s, but the laws of physics pay no heed to election-year exigencies. We must act decisively and rapidly, or all seven billion of us will face a future of almost unimaginable harshness.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Daniel Patrick Moynihan global warming John Erlichman Richard Nixon
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A Long Long Time Ago In A Galaxy Far Far Away…
I saw this at Greg Laden’s blog and felt strongly enough about it to put it up again here.
While I grew up hating Richard Nixon, and still deplore the man and his ways, there is no getting around the fact that he would be considered just fractionally to the right of Dennis Kucinich by today’s Republican Party. His establishment of the EPA in 1970 (although his vision of the Agency was of course one of corporate enablement) has made a substantial amount of difference to our national environmental policies over the ensuing decades.
In 1969, Daniel Patrick Moynihan sent John Erlichman the memo reproduced below. You can get the PDF file from the Nixon Library.
In an alternate history, Tricky Dick wasn’t so paranoid about the commies and hippies that he had to resort to dirty tricks. So Watergate never happened…and we were able to head off our looming climate disaster before it gained traction.
Sigh.
The multiverse theory is attractive because it suggests that somewhere, somehow, there’s a place where we aren’t burning up the ship we’re sailing in.
Anyway, here’s Moynihan to Erlichman. Read it and weep:
FOR JOHN EHRLICHMAN
As with so many of the more interesting environmental questions, we really don't have a very satisfactory measurement of the carbon dioxide problem. On the other hand, this very clearly is a problem, and, perhaps most particularly, is one that can seize the imagination of persons normally indifferent to projects of apocalyptic change.
The process is a simple one. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has the effect of a pane of glass in a greenhouse. The CO2 content is normally in a stable cycle, but recently man has begun to introduce instability through the burning of fossil fuels. At the turn of the century several persons raised the question whether this would change the temperature of the atmosphere. Over the years the hypothesis has been refined, and more evidence has come along to support it. it is now pretty clearly agreed that the CO2 content will rise 25% by 2000. this could increase the average temperature near the earth's surface by 7 degrees Fahrenheit. This in turn could raise the level of the sea by 10 feet. Good bye New York. Goodbye Washington, for that matter. We have no data on Seattle.
It is entirely possible that there will be countervailing effects. For example, an increase of dust in the atmosphere would tend to lower temperatures, and might offset the CO2 effect. Similarly, it is possible to conceive fairly mammoth man-made efforts to countervail the CO2. (E.g., stop burning fossil fuels.)
In any event, I would think this is a subject that the Administration ought to get involved wit. It is a natural for NATO. Perhaps the first order of business is to begin a worldwide monitoring system. At present, I believe only the United States is doing any serious monitoring, and we have only one or two stations.
Hugh Heffner knows a great deal about this, as does also the estimable Bob White, head of the U.S. Weather Bureau. (Teddy White's brother.)
Then Environmental Pollution Panel of the President's Science Advisory Committee reported at length on the subject in 1965. I attach their conclusions.
Daniel P. Moynihan
environment music: genius Pete Seeger
by Warren
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WWPD?
Write a song. That’s what.
environment Politics: false equivalence George Will idiots washington post
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Month 8, Day 3: An Acorn!
The blind pig that is the Washington Post just published a genuinely good editorial about climate change.
Indeed, as the editorial points out, there is no longer a “controversy” of any kind with regard to the scientific factuality of anthropogenic climate change. The world is rapidly approaching a climatic tipping point which will almost certainly trigger a future profoundly inimical to human existence, and human activity is responsible. In a few years we will be far too busy dealing with the ramifications of the crisis to assign blame. Right now, however, there’s still enough breathing room to point out that the Washington Post has been “denier central” for years — muddying the waters and obscuring the truth in column after column by anti-science ignorati like George Will, Sarah Palin, Bjorn Lomborg, Robert Bruce and Robert Samuelson. As the “home-town paper” of our government, the Post has a responsibility to provide factual information and reasoned analysis to America’s policy-makers — and to refrain from printing misleading, inaccurate and scientifically unsound pontifications which provide our political class with convenient rationalizations to avoid action.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: idiots Scott Brown US Senate
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Month 8, Day 2: Calling His Buff, er, Bluff
Cosmo boy wrote back.
Dear Senator Brown,
Thank you for your response, dated July 7, 2010.
You say that “Reducing America’s greenhouse gas emissions…is clearly of concern to me.” I’m pleased to hear that, for it places you in a distinct minority among your Republican colleagues in the Senate. Later in your letter, you actually state that you are “open to new ideas and proposals to addressing pollution and threats to our environment and climate,” which suggests that you are aware that climate change both exists and is a problem. Might I request that you inform your Senatorial colleagues of this fact? Senator Inhofe’s irresponsible grandstanding has done enormous damage to our environment, to our standing and reputation in the world, and to the planetary systems that support us all.
The recent collapse of climate legislation in the Senate has relieved you of the onerous necessity of balancing political exigencies against the requirements of human survival on the planet in the coming centuries. But let’s look at some of the other points in your letter. You say, “with our economy just beginning to recover…I cannot support any bill or policy that significantly raises taxes or increases consumer energy costs.” I’m glad to hear that you think President Obama’s economic initiatives have turned the economy around — that’s another area in which your opinion probably differs from that of your colleagues. The sad fact of the matter, however, is that the age of cheap fossil energy is over. We have passed the Peak Oil point already; from now on it’s going to be harder to get and harder to refine. The question is not whether energy prices are going to go up — it’s whether we can change the way we live in order to use less energy. And, of course, it’s absurd to imagine that further tax breaks for big oil companies and the billionaires who invest in them will somehow result in lowered energy costs for middle-class Americans.
Finally, we come to your opinion on carbon dioxide emissions, where you say we must “ensure participation by other high-emitting nations, such as China and India…” Indeed, China is ahead of the US in CO2 emissions, and India is just behind. But these countries have about four times as many people, making their per capita CO2 emissions drastically lower than the USA’s. Our country has about five percent of the world’s population, and emits about twenty percent of its carbon dioxide. We waste a lot more energy than China or India. A policy statement on greenhouse emissions that fails to take this fact into account is simply ignorant demagoguery.
Time and time again, our country has shown a willingness to do what is right, not just for our own interests, but for the world. To suggest that we refrain from just and responsible actions until some other nation “goes first” is to abandon any pretense of world leadership.
If that’s your position, fine. I just wanted to be sure.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment: extreme weather flooding media failure pakistan
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Month 8, Day 1: Get Ready For Severe Disaster Fatigue.
The LA Times had an article about the floods in Pakistan. Naturally, nobody mentioned that climate change is one of the primary triggering factors in such extreme weather events.
The tragic flooding in Pakistan’s Northwest territories, like the 128-degree temperatures recently recorded elsewhere in that beleaguered country, are a symptom of a larger and much more profound problem: the increase in extreme weather events brought on by global climate change. Across the USA we are seeing unexpected flooding and storms, with attendant injuries, loss of lives, and property damage. While it is not possible to state that a particular storm was “caused by global warming,” scientists have been predicting for decades that the burgeoning greenhouse effect would trigger more storms, more rain, more snow, more damage. Now it’s happening, just as we were told it would. Even as headlines blaring the news of catastrophic weather everywhere around the world appear ever more frequently, our news media fail to connect the dots. Because we have failed to do something about climate change, climate change is doing something about us.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: climate bill Deepwater Horizon false equivalence idiots newsweek
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Month 7, Day 31: Grrrrrrrrr.
Newsweek ran an article on the “biggest losers” from the Deepwater Horizon debacle. This approach is typical of the horserace-obsessed journalistic establishment, and it’s part and parcel of our national ADD. Among the “losers” was a climate bill:
Who could have predicted that a landmark environmental disaster would make a comprehensive energy bill even less likely? Yet before the Deepwater Horizon explosion, offshore oil and gas drilling was actually a point of compromise between Democrats and Republicans in Congress. Obama had lifted the moratorium on exploration off the East Coast, which seemed like a gesture to win support from “Drill, Baby, Drill” Republicans for more far-reaching proposals, including a cap-and-trade scheme to curb greenhouse emissions. Now, opposition to offshore drilling has increased in the wake of the spill. In fact, Obama has imposed a six-month moratorium on deep-water drilling permits. MSN’s Jim Jubak observed, “Without increased drilling as a bargaining chip to offer, there’s no way to build the coalition necessary to pass an energy bill that focuses on fighting global climate change.” His words were prescient–with little support from the White House, leading Democrats finally pronounced cap-and-trade dead in the Senate last week.
This analysis has a modicum of short-term political factuality to it, but it’s also a way for Newsweek to avoid confronting the truth about their role in shaping the discussion.
Yes, by taking offshore drilling off the table, the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico counterintuitively played a role in making climate/energy legislation less likely to pass the Senate. But our continuing failure to confront climate change can’t be blamed on BP’s malfeasance. Rather, the responsibility rests with those who have fostered a culture of denial which has made it possible for our policy-makers to ignore decades of increasingly urgent warnings. By perpetuating a policy of false equivalence in which every statement from a qualified scientist is balanced by a dismissal from an industry-funded denialist, our media conveys the impression of an unresolved controversy. If the “debate” over climate change were represented accurately, we’d hear forty-eight climatologists for every “skeptic.” Our print and broadcast media have abdicated their responsibility to the truth, and their failure is going to have painful consequences for us all.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: climate bill filibuster Harry Reid
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Month 7, Day 30: Rules Are Made To Be Changed
Too tired tonight to find a newspaper to yell at; not enough time available to write a short letter. So I thought I’d just let Harry Reid know that we really really really really need to change the Senate rules on the filibuster.
Dear Senator Reid —
It’s been a bad year for citizens who are aware of the enormous threat posed by climate change. The Senate’s abandonment of a climate bill during this Congress is a bitter disappointment; more than that, it may mark the final closing of the window of opportunity. The signs are all there, pointing toward an unimaginably bleak and difficult future for our children and their children in turn.
A recent study sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council points out the impending desertification of huge swaths of the American West and Southwest; one analyst refers to it as a “permanent dust bowl.” This trend can be slowed and perhaps stopped, but not if we continue “business as usual.” That means that strong measures have to be put into place to reduce carbon emissions worldwide, and to transform our country’s energy economy.
Which, in turn, means that Senate Democrats must reform the filibuster, for this currently places effective veto power over meaningful legislation in the hands of people who are ideologically driven, pathologically short-sighted, and unable to act for the greater good.
Some of the time I sympathize with you; it must be unbearably difficult to be the de facto leader of an essentially dysfunctional organization. And some of the time I’m simply furious, because I am convinced you could have done more to make your Democratic colleagues maintain party unity on cloture votes.
Climate change is the greatest existential threat we face in the world today; if we fail to address it with sufficient clarity and resolve, no other issue will matter. The results of failure are unthinkable — but the roadblock in the way of action is the U.S. Senate.
Let’s get filibuster reform accomplished, so we can get something done. Time is running out.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment: false equivalence Financial Times NOAA
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Month 7, Day 29: False Equivalence — Variations on a Theme
According to the Financial Times (behind a subscription firewall, so I won’t link to it)…
International scientists have injected fresh evidence into the debate over global warming, saying that climate change is “undeniable” and shows clear signs of “human fingerprints” in the first major piece of research since the “Climategate” controversy.
The research, headed by the US National Oceans and Atmospheric Administration, is based on new data not available for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report of 2007, the target of attacks by sceptics in recent years.
The NOAA study drew on up to 11 different indicators of climate, and found that each one pointed to a world that was warming owing to the influence of greenhouse gases, said Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring at the UK’s Met Office, one of the agencies participating.
The article quotes three climatologists. Then it quotes four so-called “skeptics,” presumably in the interests of balance (they include people from the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute, a “blogger” and a financier who “follows climate change as a hobby.”). This shit makes my blood boil.
The evidence keeps coming in: climate change is real, it’s caused by humans, and it’s likely to cause enormous amounts of damage to the world we live in in the decades to come. The latest reports from the N.O.A.A. confirm what climatologists have been saying for years. 2010 is well on track to be the hottest year on record; storms and extreme weather are hammering places all over the globe; oceans are acidifying far faster than scientists’ rather conservative predictions — if we are to escape the direst consequences of global warming, we need concerted worldwide action, not cosmetic measures. But instead of helping people understand the dimensions of the crisis, our media choose to maintain a specious policy of false equivalence, as witness the ratio of climate scientists to denialists in Fiona Harvey’s article: three to four. To properly represent the scientific consensus, of course, the ratio should be around forty-eight to one. The Financial Times has abdicated its responsibility to the truth, and we are all the worse for it.
Warren Senders