environment Politics: Koch Brothers Proposition 23 scoundrels
by Warren
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Month 9, Day 6: Foulness, Foulness, Foulness.
It’s probably too late for this letter to be published, but I wanted to lend my voice to what I hope is a chorus of outrage triggered by Frank Rich’s description of the unmitigated vileness perpetrated by the Koch Brothers.
Frank Rich’s takedown of the Koch brothers does not go far enough. In their disregard for the continued health of our democracy, these arrogant billionaires reveal themselves as fundamentally anti-American. Even worse is their readiness to disseminate misinformation which is overwhelmingly likely, not just to mislead the the American populace, but to endanger the planet. Their recent donation of a million dollars to the proponents of the anti-environment Proposition 23 in California is an example of their long history of close engagement with the denial of the human contribution to catastrophic climate change. At this time in history, our continued national inability to grasp the genuine science of global warming has profound moral implications. The continued survival of our species is placed at risk by the Kochs’ continued readiness to fund an ideology that rejects robust scientific evidence in favor of fiscally expedient ignorance.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Charlie Baker Deval Patrick Massachusetts Tim Cahill
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Month 9, Day 1: These People CANNOT be Allowed to Have Political Power!
The Boston Globe notes the ignorance and folly of Charlie Baker and Tim Cahill, the two conservative candidates for Governor.
In opposing the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, Charlie Baker and Tim Cahill demonstrate once again the anti-science stance of the Republican party on state and national levels. The scientific consensus on human causes of climate change is overwhelming (over ninety-seven percent of climatologists are firmly in agreement). Let’s put it this way: if the evidence for Iraqi WMD’s was as strong as the evidence for anthropogenic global warming, we could’ve bought loose nukes in the bazaars of Baghdad. Expanding and improving the RGGI will strengthen the Commonwealth’s leadership position on environmental issues. Baker and Cahill’s approach, by contrast, would make a mockery of Massachusetts. Home to M.I.T., Harvard and countless other major universities and research centers, our state cannot afford a governor whose readiness to learn anything about the science of climate change never moves beyond standard Republican talking points.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: EPA hippie-punching regulation
by Warren
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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 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
by Warren
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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
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 Politics: foreign policy Hillary Clinton pakistan
by Warren
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Month 8, Day 21: Time To Speak Truth
Figured I’d continue on the theme outlined yesterday and write to Hillary Clinton.
Dear Secretary Clinton,
It is obvious that the United States’ foreign policy in South Asia is going to be significantly affected by the catastrophic flooding in Pakistan. This will be the first case of important policy alternations being brought about by the effects of climate change, but it is assuredly not the last.
Twenty-five years ago, climatologists begin predicting that increased atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases would lead to dramatic changes in weather pattern across the globe; they anticipated more storms, more floods, more heat waves, more blizzards, more droughts. Now, despite the frantic protestations of the deniers in the U.S. Senate and their enablers in our country’s mass media, those predictions are coming true.
Climate chaos is going to get worse over the next decades, and the current policy paradigm will soon be hopelessly out of date. Either the nations of the world will be able to agree on a strategy for collective adaptation to the destructive effects of climate change — or we are going to see resource wars that will multiply the current level of global misery a thousandfold.
As Secretary of State, it is crucial that you make this point loud and clear in your public statements. Climate change isn’t going to start happening sometime in the future; it’s making its effects felt right now — in the drowning provinces of Pakistan, in the burning peat-bogs of drought-ridden Russia, and in hundreds of other places around the globe. Our news media is unable or unwilling to make the connection; they must be prodded into recognizing the magnitude of the most significant existential threat our species has yet faced.
We need your help.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Charlie Baker Deval Patrick Jill Stein Tim Cahill Worcester Telegram
by Warren
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Month 8, Day 17: Pronounced Wuh-stuh!
I didn’t feel very passionate today.
Our candidates for Governor had a debate. The Worcester Telegram had an article about it.
That the gubernatorial debate included questions on global warming is a positive reflection on the quality of electoral politics in Massachusetts. Too many politicians at both state and national levels are unable to take a clear position on a matter where public opinion polls reflect a distressing ignorance of unequivocal scientific evidence. Conversely, Cahill and Baker’s unwillingness to agree that humans are to blame for global climate change is a negative reflection on the Republican party, which has made climate denialism a central plank of its policy structure. But the facts are in: human activities are responsible for the changing climate, and our generation must begin paying the bill for the past century’s profligate waste of the planet’s fossil fuel resources. Massachusetts needs more mass transit; it needs more renewable energy; it needs more attention paid to conservation — and it needs politicians who are ready to recognize scientific reality.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: filibuster reform John Kerry
by Warren
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Month 8, Day 16: Filibusted
Figured I’d write to Kerry and whine about the filibuster.
Dear Senator Kerry,
On the assumption that the upcoming November elections will preserve the Democratic majority in the Senate, I am writing to ask you to speak as powerfully as possible on behalf of filibuster reform. The shelving of critical climate legislation has been a bitter pill to swallow for any of us who are concerned about the looming climate crisis. At the moment when it seemed we might possibly be able to make headway against Republican obstructionism, the problems involved in assembling the sixty votes required for cloture effectively doomed any hope for a meaningful bill. This is not how the Senate is supposed to work.
The behavior of Senate Republicans and a few conservative Democrats has left the United States in a deplorable position: as billions of people around the world face an uncertain future due to the ravages of climate change, a tiny group of rich and powerful men and women hold the power to stall any action. This is not how the Senate is supposed to work.
Even for bills that are broadly popular, a single senator from a state with a population less than that of Massachusetts’ capitol can effectively stymie forward motion — until special provisions, concessions or earmarks are inserted. A single senator can place an anonymous hold on legislation without giving any reason whatever, again halting forward motion. This is not how the Senate is supposed to work.
It should be no surprise that Congress’ approval ratings are low, for voters see that there is no political will to get things done; there is only a will to procrastinate….and procrastination is not a characteristic we expect in our leaders or our representatives. This is not how the Senate is supposed to work.
I am a lifelong Democrat and a fervent environmentalist. I believe deeply in the potential of our system of government. But right now, America’s Senate is completely dysfunctional. The Senate is supposed to work — and it doesn’t.
Please advocate forcefully for filibuster reform. The Senate needs to get to work. We cannot survive another legislative session of delaying tactics.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Al Gore Barack Obama Deficit reduction idiots Nancy Pelosi Renewable Energy
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Month 8, Day 12: Common-Sense Deficit Syndrome? GAFB!
Sometimes I just want to bang my head against a wall.
Solar industry officials are pleading with President Obama to restore billions of dollars in renewable energy loan guarantees that Congress is at least temporarily cutting to pay for emergency education and Medicaid help to states and other policy priorities.
The loss of these loan guarantee funds could help “send solar development into a tailspin that will be difficult to reverse,” according to a letter to Obama sent Monday from Rhone Resch, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA).
House lawmakers Tuesday are slated to approve a $26.1 billion state education and Medicaid funding package the Senate passed last week that would be partially paid for by slashing $1.5 billion in renewable energy-loan guarantees approved in last year’s economic stimulus bill.
“These rescissions put into jeopardy the green jobs that the administration has touted as part of our clean-energy future and put us further behind the rest of the world,” Gore said on his website Monday afternoon.
I’m not a professional Leftist; I’m more of an amateur. But by Grabthar’s Hammer, I am pretty fucking pissed off about this.
My emotional state is concealed, however, by my erudition.
Dear President Obama and Speaker Pelosi —
It is of the utmost importance that the $3.5 billion which has been taken from the renewable energy and transmission loan-guarantee program be restored. While deficit reduction must be part of our thinking, there is no alternative to pursuing renewable energy with all our attention, enthusiasm and funding.
We cannot continue to burn oil and coal in the years to come. Not only is our national security complicated by our financial entanglements with Saudi Arabia and other OPEC countries, our long-term survival is at stake. With atmospheric CO2 well on track to be over 400 ppm within a year or two, the fight against global warming has already been significantly compromised. In order to maintain a world climate suitable for human survival and prosperity, we must change our energy economy without delay.
If the United States is to maintain a role as a world leader, then we cannot afford to shrug off the problems of smaller states; we cannot afford to wait for India and China to reduce their carbon footprints before acting on our own. The laws of physics pay no heed to political exigencies; greenhouse gases know nothing of election-year strategies. The problem of global climate change is the defining one of our generation, and we must tackle it on all levels: as individuals, as communities, as regions, as states, as a country, and as part of a global society.
At this moment in the world’s history, cutting funding for renewable energy is a grotesque abdication of our responsibilities to one another and the planet as a whole. Please act with dispatch and resolve to ensure that financial resources are restored to renewable energy programs. Failing to spend that money is a foolishness we cannot afford.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders