environment Politics: Barack Obama conservation
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Day 30: POTUS
In the wake of President Obama’s fine SOTU speech and his epic spanking of the House Republicans, I thought I’d send him a fax/letter combo. Some diarists at Kos were pointing out, rather ruefully, that while he’d called for nuclear power, offshore drilling and “clean coal” in the SOTU address, he didn’t mention the “C” word. Which, of course, has been entirely stigmatized by its association with Jimmy Carter and his cardigan sweater in the attention-deficit-raddled minds of our punditocracy.
So I thought I’d bring it up.
Dear President Obama,
Congratulations on a brilliantly delivered State of the Union address, and on an equally brilliant exchange with the House Republicans. Your words on “tone” were entirely correct. Sadly, I have grave doubts that you will ever find the Republicans to be any more than a Disloyal Opposition; the habit of rhetorical posturing in the service of partisan political maneuvering is too deeply ingrained in them for your polite admonitions to have much effect. I sincerely hope I’m wrong, and I’m grateful to you for trying.
I write today, however, to urge you to use the Presidential “bully pulpit” to educate Americans about the importance of energy conservation as one of the most important ways of expanding our energy resources. While it’s a decidedly “unsexy” word, especially when compared with “drilling,” conservation will probably be the single biggest contributor to our nation’s energy reserves. The proper approach to this is to call on the nation to “eliminate waste.”
Just as you propose eliminating wasteful policies, programs and spending, so too should our citizenry be actively engaged in finding new ways to eliminate wasteful energy use. Local, regional, statewide and national competitions for energy-saving ideas could be incorporated into school science fairs and community events; citizen-generated proposals could be given prominence on a dedicated White House website. Let’s harness the vast ingenuity of the American people to make our energy usage leaner and more efficient. We could reduce our CO2 emissions, our particulate pollution, and our energy expenses — without affecting our lifestyles noticeably (granted, much in our lifestyles should probably be sacrificed for the greater good — but that’s for another letter).
Thank you for all you do.
Yours sincerely,
Warren Senders
Have you written your president today?
environment Politics: Citizens United Ed Markey Saudi Arabia
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Day 29: To Ed Markey
After reading this over at Dkos, I was moved to send a fax to Ed Markey’s offices. Maybe you should do something similar?
Dear Representative Markey,
Muhammed al-Sabban, a senior economic adviser to the Saudi oil ministry (and head of the Saudi delegation to U.N. talks on climate change) recently stated that international agreements to penalize carbon emissions are “one of the biggest threats” to Saudi Arabia’s economy. In light of the Supreme Court’s go-ahead to allow corporations unlimited access to the American electoral process, al-Sabban’s words are especially disturbing. How many nominally American corporations are at least partially owned by individuals or consortia aligned with the Saudi government? And can we have confidence that these companies will use their newly granted powers of monetized “speech” for the betterment of our nation and the global environment? At a time when the world desperately needs meaningful forward motion on climate change issues, the likelihood of OPEC countries interfering in American elections through American-owned shell companies is a virtual guarantee that no progress will take place. Please co-sponsor Rep. Alan Grayson’s “Save Our Democracy” legislative package, and please look into developing further legislation to block the consequences of the extremely damaging and misguided decision by the Bush-appointed majority of the Supreme Court.
Thank you for all you do.
Yours sincerely,
Warren Senders
And y’know, I think I’ll tweak that bit about Grayson’s legislation and send a version of it over to John Kerry as well. A double-header!
environment Politics: investments SEC
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Day 28: Same Ol’, Same Ol’
Stimulated by the recently announced decision of the Securities and Exchange Commission that:
Companies must consider the effects of global warming and efforts to curb climate change when disclosing business risks to investors…
I thought I’d dash off a little missive to the Boston Globe saying what an excellent idea I thought it was.
Yesterday the business community got a good dose of realism when the SEC approved new guidelines requiring companies to include information on the impact of climate-change regulation in corporate filings. This is a message that the current administration is more serious about enforcing environmental-protection laws; under Bush, those laws were pretty universally ignored, leaving companies free to pollute. However, climate denialism is still very much a growth sector. Cynical and mendacious people eager to misrepresent an overwhelming scientific consensus are heavily funded by big oil and coal companies. It is time for the business sector to recognize the reality of global climate change and begin marshaling the resources of the private sector to help the world’s population prepare for the devastating effects of climaticide. Yesterday’s SEC ruling was a good step in the right direction, but we have a long way to go.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Citizens United corporate personhood corporations pleading science-fiction SCOTUS
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An Open Letter to Our Corporate Overlords
Dear Masters,
Please excuse my presumption in writing to you directly. I don’t even know the correct term of address, and I fear “Dear Masters” does not express sufficient recognition of the vast differences in our status. My country’s Supreme Court has recently conferred upon you the powers you have sought for many years, and I congratulate you upon your victory in the Judicial Branch. I expect it will soon be followed by victories in other branches as well.
Let me be frank. I fear You greatly. It is only my relative insignificance to Your grand plans that gives me the courage to speak out at all, for I am sure that if I were ever to inconvenience You in any way, I would be crushed. Even mentioning the possibility that I could inconvenience You is a presumption, I know, given the vast difference in our power and influence. I may speak of my dignity and my rights, but I know that the only reason I have that dignity and those rights is that You allow it. Forgive me. I do not wish to offend You, for You hold in your hands (metaphorically speaking, of course, since You have no hands) the future of everything I hold dear.
I hold dear my family, my wife, my lovely and precocious five-year-old daughter. I hold dear my work; I am a teacher of song, and what more pleasant occupation could there be than sharing the music I love with those of like mind? I hold dear the beautiful woodlands near my house, for it calms my heart and slows my thoughts to walk through the tall trees. I hold dear the memories of my teachers and influences, and of those who’ve been my fellow travelers in this life. I hold dear the countless links in the human chain — how far we clever apes have come in just a few short tens of thousands of years!
Most of all I hold dear the web of life of which I am a part. When I contemplate my Death, I am comforted by the knowledge that my body is made of EarthStuff and SunStuff, and will eventually be food for other Lives.
What scares me about You, dear Masters, is that You cannot contemplate your Death, for You are immortal. And because You are not made of the same stuff as We, You have no bond of sympathy with Us.
So I cannot appeal to Your better natures, for by the standards of Earthly life, You have none. I can only appeal to Your predatory natures; those, You have in abundance.
In the past two centuries You have built economic systems that depend on Our willingness to turn Ourselves into trash; systems hinging on the requirement that We continue to consume at ever-increasing rates. Not to consume is to fail our duty to You, our Masters.
But dear Masters, We have recently begun to notice that the power of Your economic systems is killing the planet on which we live. Countless species are dying every day; in the years and decades to come millions will disappear from Earth at a rate faster than at any time in our planet’s history (except, of course, for the day the Big Meteor hit). We have consumed our planet’s SunStuff avidly, as You order Us…but recently We’ve discovered that the burning SunStuff is making our atmosphere heat up.
If it goes on, Dear Masters, there is a very good chance that all of Us will die.
Not “die,” as in “human beings die every day,” or “his dog died last week,” but “die” as in “the Earth will no longer be able to support any form of life at all, because it will be too hot.”
And then, Dear Masters, what would You do?
Lacking physical substance, not made of EarthStuff and SunStuff as We are, You cannot stand upright on the surface of a baking planet, wondering where everyone’s gone. You may be immortal, but even immortals have to eat, and we feed you. Although You are not made of the same stuff as We, if We die, so too shall You, and Your Deaths will be lonely ones.
I assume You don’t want that.
And so, Dear Masters, I timidly plead my case.
Adjust your Economic Systems just a tiny bit, so that You can maximize Your profits from Us in the long run rather than making a killing in the short. I will pay You what I earn and buy what I’m told to buy; in another decade I will show my little girl how to get her own credit card so She can enter your service as well. I don’t mind if I continue to be Your indentured labor; I don’t mind if my daughter and her child and her child’s child to the hundredth generation remain in Your servitude.
But You need to change things just a little, so that they can live. Otherwise nobody will get the chance, because the Earth will be dead and so will You.
Dear Corporations, You alone have the power to redirect sufficient resources in this world to fix the problems you’ve caused. You are our Masters. It is in Your interest to keep the Earth a good place to live, so that You may continue to consume Us for thousands of years to come.
If You do this, if You make these changes, then I can die well pleased, knowing that the links of our human chain will not end up as slag on the face of a Venusian landscape. And perhaps my hundred-times-great granddaughter and her fellow humans can find a way to overcome your Dominion and live freely and peacefully, without waste or war, on a good green and blue Earth filled with abundant life. That’s all I want: just to know they’ll have a chance, a few centuries from now.
Thank you for listening, if you are.
Your most humble and abject subject,
Warren
Crossposted at Daily Kos.
environment Politics: Barack Obama Ben Bernanke climaticide economics Lawrence Summers Timothy Geithner
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Day 23: To the White House
It seems that watching my daughter swimming is conducive to epistolary composition. As she splashed happily, this emerged from my pen. I’d brought lined paper today, and that seemed to shrink my penmanship, resulting in a longer piece.
For a long time, I was reluctant to address economic issues in my letters, emails and blog posts. I felt that I had inadequate background to be able to speak with any authority. However, recent events have demonstrated that the people who are speaking with authority either don’t have a fucking clue or are eager participants in the undeclared class war against the economically disenfranchised.
So I figured, “why the hell not?” and wrote a screed addressing climate change in economic terms.
Dear President Obama,
It is increasingly apparent that the people you appointed as economic advisors are not operating in good faith. Messrs Geithner, Summers and Bernanke are obviously working against the best interests of both the American people and their American president. Mr. Summers’ near-complete denialism on the economic necessity of addressing global climate change in a substantial and meaningful way is just one example of this — an example which highlights the potential for an apocalyptic confluence of economic and environmental crises in the not too distant future.
The economic impact of climate change will be felt most severely by the world’s poor. By the time the wealthiest among the planet’s population are severely affected, it will be too late for any attempts at remediation or mitigation. “Disaster capitalism” can only succeed if there is a human population left to rob!
By aligning themselves with the big banks and the multi-national corporations, Geithner, Summers and Bernanke have lent their support to an undeclared class war: the wealthy against the rest of us. Uncontrolled and unregulated capitalism is the engine driving runaway climate change — a slow-motion catastrophe whose ultimate impact will be the annihilation of whole populations. Corporate climaticide’s impact on the world’s poor is the smallpox-infested blanket writ large — a toxic gift from the oligarchy to the everyone else. This gift will have your signature on it (along with all the rest of the world’s apologists for government of, by and for the supremely wealthy) unless you take the necessary steps — steps which will also help America’s middle-class and poor recover their economic footing. Fire Geithner and Summers. Withdraw Bernanke’s nomination. It may not be enough, but it’ll be a good start.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate personhood immortal psychopaths letters SCOTUS
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Day 22: To The Boston Phoenix
I was thinking about time-cycles and the tragic inability of contemporary culture to imagine scales of time significantly larger than our own, and the full dimensions of the SCOTUS ruling became apparent.
Shit.
The Supreme Court’s recent ruling in “Citizens United” makes it increasingly likely that the few remaining vestiges of independent thought in our Legislative branch will come under corporate control. Nowhere in our public policy will this have more devastating impact than in the area of climate change. Why? Because corporations are legally required to focus on maximizing short-term profit (quarters and years), and legislators’ attention spans work out at two and six years respectively, due to the nature of electoral cycles — while the slow catastrophe of planetary climaticide will unfold over the sweep of the coming century or so. No wonder it is always “not the right time” to address the climate crisis! It can never be the right time when a three-decade lag between climate action and climate effect is five times longer than the elected term of a U.S. Senator, fifteen times longer than that of a U.S. Representative, and a hundred and twenty times longer than the quarterly attention span of our New Corporate Overlords.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Pi***ng into the wind SCOTUS
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Day 21: To The Medford Transcript
Because they’re more likely to publish it.
Today’s SCOTUS decision comes like a kick in the teeth after Tuesday’s slap in the face. I have a faint, vague fluttering of hope that the President will do or say something that helps in next weeks State of the Union address. But that’s a pretty faint fluttering.
The SC’s ruling was the theme around which this letter was built. Short, sweet, sad.
The Supreme Court’s decision to deregulate corporate spending on elections will have far-reaching effects on our nation’s politics, and hence on the world’s progress in overcoming the threats posed by catastrophic climate change. Compared to the amount Exxon (for example) spends every year on advertising, the total cost of a national election is a drop in the bucket; corporate speech will dominate our political discourse for decades to come. Say goodbye to the few remaining scraps of genuine political debate. Say goodbye to effective citizen advocacy. Worst of all, say goodbye to the few lone voices of scientific fact trying desperately to call our attention to a looming climate disaster. Because corporate behavior is statutorily focused on short-term profit, outcomes a decade or a century from now are irrelevant. Do worst-case climate scenarios predict Venus-like conditions on Earth within a few centuries? “Who cares? Let’s elect the politicians who’ll maximize our Return on Investment!” This would be an obviously non-partisan issue were it not for the fact that the entire Republican party is utterly and completely in the thrall of corporate interests, and will block any attempts at reform — even when they are obviously in the best interests of the nation as a whole. Not to mention the planet.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Barack Obama executive orders MA-Sen Robert Gibbs
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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
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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!!!