environment Politics: financial reform Harry Reid
by Warren
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Month 4, Day 20: Their Cash, Our Trash
A version of yesterday’s letter, this one to Harry Reid.
Dear Majority Leader Reid,
As financial reform legislation comes to the floor of the Senate, it’s important to recognize that the gutting of America’s economy is deeply and powerfully linked with the destruction of America’s environment. Irresponsible short-term thinking, motivated entirely by considerations of immediate profit, is at the root of both our financial crisis and our climate emergency.
Only a vigorous regulatory regime can keep giant corporate interests from exploiting legislative loopholes to the detriment of our financial and environmental health. Economically and environmentally destructive behavior is rooted in a systemic bias toward short-term economic thinking. As long as it is based on a model of unregulated consumption, our economy will remain unsustainable. Big banks buying and selling incomprehensible credit derivatives; cheap plastic junk that winds up in oceanic garbage patches — this is the face of unrestrained and short-sighted consumption, and it’s profoundly damaging to our country and to the world.
We need our corporations to focus on long-term thinking, something which is currently discouraged by the terms of corporate charters. We only have a little time left to determine whether we will leave our descendants a meaningful future or an exploitative dystopia. To fix the climate, we must transform our economy, making it essential that the largest economic forces in the country give back more to the Earth than they take out.
We can’t afford to lose this one.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Chris Dodd economy financial reform John Kerry
by Warren
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Month 4, Day 19: Turning Your Money Into Trash
Financial reform is very important, not only because Goldman Sachs and the rest of the shark pack have ripped the guts out of our economy, but because these mega-bankers care as much about the environment as they do about the people below them on the economic ladder. That is to say, not at all. Unsustainable environmental practices go hand in hand with unsustainable business practices, and it’s time to make sure that shit is absolutely never going to happen again.
Dear Senators Kerry and Dodd,
This letter is about the connection between climate legislation and financial reform.
Any reasonably robust climate bill will be fought tooth and nail by business interests in this country, which is a sure indication that environmental legislation needs to be coupled with financial reform. Ultimately, our destruction of the environment is rooted in a systemic problem in our economic thinking. Our economy is largely built on an unsustainable practice: buying things and turning them into trash as quickly as possible. This happens on Wall Street when the big banks buy and sell incomprehensible credit derivatives to one another, and it happens on Main Street when our stores sell us cheap plastic-wrapped junk that breaks and winds up in a landfill a week later.
An economic model based on turning things into trash will ultimately destroy our nation, and us along with it. We tell our children to contribute to society, to leave things better than we found them — but unless we can end our reliance on consumption as a way of life, our fine words are nothing more than hypocritical prating. The next few decades will determine whether we live in a world that offers our children and their children a meaningful future or a landscape clogged beyond recognition with toxic trash. We can’t fix the climate unless we transform our economy — until we focus our power and attention on living in ways that give back more to the Earth than we take out.
During the debate on the financial reform bill, it is my hope that you will point out to your colleagues in the Senate (and to the nation) that what unsustainable financial practices have done to our economic health, unsustainable consumption habits are doing to our environment. Our nation, and the world, can afford this no longer.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment: allergens hay fever
by Warren
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Month 4, Day 18: More “Allergy” Stuff
U.S. News and World Report had a little squib about the same report referenced two days ago — all about how there were going to be a lot more allergens in the air, so allergy sufferers were going to be even more miserable than they usually are.
I shortened and revised my earlier letter, and used their dedicated submissions form to send it in.
It’s not just the eyes and noses of allergy sufferers that will be hit by global warming. Allergies and asthma are already huge loss factors almost everywhere in our economy: 12 billion dollars and 14 million school and work days to hay fever alone; $15 billion in medical costs and $5 billion in lost earnings a year to asthma. If, as scientists predict, climate change doubles or triples the level of ragweed allergens in our air, the economic effects are going to be disastrous.
On the other hand, antihistamine manufacturers will be excellent investment opportunities; we’ll be able to sneeze all the way to the bank.
All joking aside, this is just one tiny aspect of the most serious threat humanity has ever faced. We must take strong action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or it’s going to hurt a lot more than our noses.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Barack Obama National parks teddy roosevelt
by Warren
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Month 4, Day 17: National Park POTUS
RL Miller writes about President Obama’s approach to our national park system, and provides me with fodder for a letter. Too tired to write eloquently; I’m falling asleep at the keyboard.
Dear President Obama,
It was great to learn of your memorandum addressing “America’s Great Outdoors Initiative.” It is crucial that we as a nation learn to conserve our land and natural resources, integrating state, local, and tribal leadership with federal support and partnerships. Most important for those of us who pay attention to news on climate issues is your commitment to “use science-based management practices to restore and protect our lands and waters for future generations.” That’s good news; science-based management is reality-based management, something the previous administration could have used a lot more of.
While it’s absolutely crucial to build conservation initiatives from the local level up, the role of the federal government is crucial. Teddy Roosevelt, as you remarked, made America’s national park system into one of our greatest resources, and he did it through decisive use of the powers of the federal government; while his use of the Antiquities Act in creating national monuments was criticized as socialistic (sound familiar?), his bold vision preserved the Grand Canyon.
The input of local residents is important — but familiarity may breed contempt, leading locals to take a priceless national resource for granted. By all means, talk with local residents, but remember that they’re citizens of a nation. Bold and resolute action in the conservation of our natural resources is essential.
Most important for the long run is to restore a love of the land and the environment to the American people. We should expand our National Park system, increase hiking trails and allocate federal funds for schoolchildren’s field trips up the mountains. Many city dwellers have no access to our beautiful open spaces, and children especially suffer terribly from “nature deprivation syndrome.”
If we are to have a hope of addressing the terrible threat posed by global climate change, we must make it possible for every citizen to know and love our country’s natural resources. While they are vital for tourism, and for their own intrinsic beauty, our national parks and forests are also part of the struggle against climate change: they’re “carbon banks,” capturing carbon in the form of trees, keeping it from entering the atmosphere. Trees and forests are our first line of defense against global warming, which is why it’s crucial that all proposals for acquiring wilderness must be evaluated on the carbon absorption of the land — its carbon footprint.
The damage that has already been done by political pandering to crass anti-environment interests is incalculable. For the sake of our parks, our forests, our country, our citizens and our planet, I hope your words about “science-based management practices” are matched by your actions.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment: allergies poison ivy pollen sneezing
by Warren
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Month 4, Day 16: Aaaaaaahhhh-choooo!
A Siegel is a prolific writer on climate issues at Kos. Yesterday’s piece was about the impact of climate change on pollen levels, and hence the future of allergic reactions….kind of scary.
Sent to my local paper, the Medford Transcript.
The effects of global warming are no longer abstract. You’re going to be feeling them in your nose. Increased CO2 levels are projected to boost pollen production enormously over the coming decades, according to a National Wildlife Federation study released yesterday. A doubling or tripling of ragweed allergens in the United States is going to have huge economic impacts. We already lose around $12 billion dollars a year to hay fever suffering; we lose over 14 million school and work days, over $15 billion in medical costs and over $5 billion in lost earnings a year to asthma. What will the Global Warming multiplier be?
But wait! There’s more! Fungal production will probably quadruple with doubled CO2 levels; tree pollen levels are expected to increase drastically — and did I mention that poison ivy will be faster-growing and more virulent?
But it’s not all bad news. Investing in pharmaceutical companies should be a winning strategy. As asthma and allergies debilitate huge segments of the population, we can sneeze all the way to the bank.
Warren Senders
environment: newsweek pine beetle
by Warren
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Month 4, Day 15: Beetlemania
I got all the info used for this letter from a new series at Kos, “This Week In Climate Change.” Definitely read it all.
Part of that piece was a link to Newsweek’s short article on the pine beetle in the American West, which is killing forests with brutal efficiency. So I used the Newsweek piece as the hook for a letter.
Thanks for giving a closer look at what global warming will be bringing us in the years to come. The dying forests left in the pine beetle’s wake are just one of many phenomena which mark the planet’s rising temperatures. Some of the other things we can expect to see: more weather anomalies and storm activity (such as this winter’s freak blizzard in Washington, DC); higher pollen counts (severely affecting many asthmatics); shrinking populations of sensitive wildlife (Antarctica’s Adelie penguin population has diminished to a third of its 1980 level); more and more invasive species replacing local flora and fauna; irregular and unpredictable monsoons (potentially devastating food production worldwide)…the list goes on and on. It is time to stop treating climate change as a forum for political gamesmanship, and to start addressing it for what it is: a slow motion catastrophe that constitutes the most urgent existential threat humanity has ever faced.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Ben Nelson
by Warren
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Month 4, Day 14: Because Someone Told Me So…
A diarist at DK who goes by the handle patrickz wrote a piece the other day called “John Kerry Is Trying To Pass A Climate Bill and He Needs Your Help.” To my pleasure, he referenced me and my letter-writing campaign (using the word “epic,” no less)….and included a sample letter of the sort he asks people to send to Ben Nelson, of the famous “Cornhusker Compromise.”
So I did. It’s not as good as patrickz’s but that’s okay.
Dear Senator Nelson,
I write to you as as a concerned citizen. It is my understanding you do not support the American Clean Energy and Security Act in its present form, because it includes “cap and trade” — and that you are firmly against any kind of “carbon tax,” because you believe that incentives for innovation and infrastructure development are the best way to move the country towards energy efficiency and environmental responsibility.
Well, incentives are certainly important; no argument there. But it is an undeniable fact that the best incentive to lower CO2 emissions is to price carbon according to its true cost, which necessarily includes the health impacts of atmospheric particulates from coal, the poisoning of our national rivers and streams, the expensive wars we wage to protect our sources of oil, and the destruction of the polar ice caps. To burn our energy resources, pushing Earth’s climate to a point of no return — this is truly generational theft, for it may take thousands of years for our planet to recover from the damage we’ve done and the damage yet to come. Simply put, there isn’t any tax high enough to recover these costs. Furthermore, it’s also quite clear by now that increased conservation and a transition to green energy will improve our standard of living, not destroy it. The only things that will be affected negatively are the quarterly balance sheets for big oil and big coal companies. Unless we start now, we haven’t a hope of avoiding economic and environmental catastrophe.
Please change your mind on this issue. A bill without a price on carbon is a terrible mistake. Our descendants will not forgive us our failure to act responsibly.
Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment Politics: coal Graham Kerry Lieberman Natural Gas
by Warren
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Month 4, Day 13: Not King Coal
I read a terrific piece at Kos about a politically viable strategy for weaning the US off its terrible coal addiction. So I appropriated a chunk of the piece, shuffled the clauses around, changed some verbs and punctuation, filed off all the serial numbers, and I’m now going to send it off to the Senators in charge of the climate bill.
Dear Senators Kerry, Lieberman and Graham,
As the recent tragedy in West Virginia reminds us, coal mining is a dirty and dangerous business. The true cost of coal includes places like Southeast Ohio, where even the cows have cancer; it includes hundreds of thousands of cases of black lung disease, and it irrefutably includes huge CO2 emissions which lead to global warming. And yet, these factors are never considered when we think of how “cheap” coal is as a source of energy.
In the long run, America needs to stop burning coal, and it needs to stop burning oil. The hidden costs of fossil fuels aren’t going to stay hidden much longer, now that the polar ice caps are melting and catastrophic climate change is just around the decadal corner. On the other hand, it’s not politically or economically realistic to think that we can start decommissioning these coal fired plants any time soon. A switch to natural gas would lead to massive price hikes in that commodity, creating conditions for poor people to freeze to death, and US agriculture’s total dependence on fertilizers created with natural gas would mean that food prices would closely track heating costs.
If we are to accomplish a lessening of CO2 emissions from the US energy system, we must be pragmatic. The legacy of coal and natural gas-fired electrical capacity is both a burden and a blessing. We need to focus on using coal and LNG as part of a strategy to integrate renewables into the electric grid — on thinking of renewable electricity is a way to conserve our fossil fuel resources rather than as a way to replace them. If every megawatt of power produced from renewables can keep a megawatt of coal or gas fired capacity offline when it’s available, we can start reducing our country’s grossly disproportionate carbon footprint.
If this strategy is coupled with a vigorous national push to reduce energy wastage, we might have an energy policy that actually accomplishes something. What we don’t need is a “political solution,” where our CO2 emissions are simply augmented with a lot of hot air.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment: Shen Neng1 Time Magazine
by Warren
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Month 4, Day 12: Time Enough For Lies
I revised the letter I sent to the Boston Globe and sent it off to Time Magazine, which ran the AP story about the Shen Neng 1. Same point, same framing, different phrasing.
The Chinese coal ship foundering on the Great Barrier Reef is not just a sad story about oily birds, or a sea-captain’s dereliction of duty. The disaster off the coast of Australia also warns us to acknowledge the huge hidden costs of so-called “cheap energy.”
The Shen Neng 1 could just as easily be a million cases of black lung disease or the imminent loss of the polar ice cap, for these tragedies are all consequences of our addiction to fossil fuels. If we are to survive and prosper in the coming centuries, we must acknowledge the truth: oil and coal are only “cheap” when we ignore their health, ecological, and environmental costs. Any realistic energy policy must include these factors; to disregard them is to perpetuate a lie — and with catastrophic climate change looming on the horizon, lies about “cheap energy” are a luxury we can no longer afford.
Warren Senders
environment: Bret Stephens idiots Wall Street Journal
by Warren
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Month 4, Day 11: The Wall Street Journal – Fishwrap for Financiers
It’s 11 pm and I’m finishing this one up. I couldn’t think of what to write, so I checked out Media Matters, which had a good treatment of a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. So I wrote them a letter (the WSJ, not Media Matters).
Speaking of Media Matters, I greatly enjoyed David Brock’s book “Blinded by the Right.” It’s always amazing to me that anyone can swallow the nonsense spewed by so-called “conservatives,” and Brock’s personal story was very revealing. I’m glad he came around and is now on the side of the right, rather than the Right.
Anyway, here’s my letter to the Journal:
Bret Stephens’ April 6 column suggests that recent scientific research shows that “global warming is dead.” Yet the climate scientists he cites explicitly reject this notion.
While Stephens claims that National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) data show that Arctic sea ice has not diminished significantly, the NSIDC disagrees, stressing that long term data (in contrast to data for a single month) indicate that “ice extent has shown a dramatic overall decline over the past thirty years.”
Stephens’ also discussed the “now debunked claim about disappearing Himalayan glaciers” in the context of the so-called “Climategate” scandal. Is he aware that scientists’ studies around the world unanimously support data showing significant glacier loss? And is he also oblivious to the fact that on March 31, the British House of Commons’ Science and Technology Committee completely exonerated Dr. Phil Jones and the CRU, confirming that their data are “consistent and independently verifiable”? Yes, the 2007 IPCC report included an erroneous citation about Himalayan glacier loss, but this no more invalidates the document’s conclusions than a mendacious op-ed about global warming invalidates the Wall Street Journal’s stock market reports.
Warren Senders