environment Politics: Ed Markey Republican obstructionism
by Warren
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Month 8, Day 10: He’s One Of The Best
My congressman said something great.
Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) suggested a novel use Saturday for a 100-square-mile ice sheet that has broken off Greenland.
“An iceberg four times the size of Manhattan has broken off Greenland, creating plenty of room for global warming deniers to start their own country,” Markey said in a statement. “So far, 2010 has been the hottest year on record, and scientists agree arctic ice is a canary in a coal mine that provides clear warnings on climate.”
I figured I’d indulge myself tonight and send him a congratulatory letter. I imagine the poor guy’s always getting hammered by wingnuts. So here’s my Dear Ed letter:
Dear Congressman Markey,
Your remarks about the obstructionist approach of the Republican party on climate change issues are absolutely correct. I am sickened by the behavior of climate denialists, and fear its consequences for all of us.
It is a sad commentary on the present state of our politics that just about the only good news I’ve had on climate for a long time is the fact that you called them out for the selfish, sloppy, cynical sociopaths they have become. No words are strong enough to express my gratitude to you — or my outrage at the dysfunctional wreckage they have made of our system of government.
In the past, “climate change” was in the future. As the recent extreme weather events all over the world show us, the past is over. Climate change is now. And yet our media represent the subject as something still being debated, with a one-to-one ratio between climate scientist and industry shill. When they report on Russian fires, Connecticut’s storms and flooding, or the heat wave in New York, the connection with climate change is never made. It is a dangerously irresponsible omission.
In the battle for media attention, the best bumper-sticker wins. Climate-change advocates need better soundbites to prevail, in a media system that is rigged against us.
Ask your colleagues: if ninety-seven out of a hundred oncologists told you, “it’s cancer,” would you go to the hospital? Or would you choose to trust the three percent of them who said they “weren’t sure?” Why, then, do you choose to ignore the ninety-seven percent of climate scientists who are telling us we’ve got a serious problem?
Tell your colleagues: if a freak snowstorm in Washington, DC disproves global warming, then the swollen belly of a starving child disproves world hunger.
And I think we should start calling that iceberg “Inhofistan.”
These people have no shame, conscience or scruples. Keep speaking as strongly as you did today.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Barack Obama Big Oil BP climate change Deepwater Horizon Liars
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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 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 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 Politics: Barack Obama climate bill fury idiots
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Month 7, Day 24: Half as Tired, Twice As Infuriated
Gosh. Who knew that it was environmental groups that are to be blamed for the failure of climate legislation?
Dear President Obama —
I was prepared to write a letter expressing a modicum of sympathy for your administration after climate legislation failed to make it to the Senate floor. But what did I find when I caught up on the news this morning? An unnamed “administration official” blaming environmentalists, saying that groups like the Environmental Defense Fund “weren’t able to get a single Republican convert on the bill.”
Well. That’s certainly going to motivate the base.
Instead of blaming the people who have been pushing day and night to get the best bill possible, who have been donating, calling, writing and working — why don’t you blame the people who are actually to blame: the Republicans? With a strategy of calculated obstructionism, these political nihilists have carried out the wishes of their financial masters in the corporate sector — the planet be damned.
For one of your officials to attribute this defeat to a failure on the part of environmental groups is a disgusting, demoralizing and infuriating abdication of responsibility on the part of this administration. I would point out that Harry Reid’s inability to get members of his own caucus even to agree on a cloture vote has far more to do with a climate bill’s failure than the EDF’s inability to persuade Republican Senators to vote against their short-term political interests.
I’ve been a Democrat all my life; my family is through-and-through Democrat — and make no mistake, I’m going to be working all-out to get Democrats elected this fall. But it’s sure as hell not because I have a lot of confidence in my party and its ability to do the right thing. We elected you to help turn this dysfunctional political system around, and we have been working as hard as we can to support you.
To have one of your officials deprecate our efforts in public is to spit in the faces of those who care the most.
Credit where credit is due; blame where blame is due.
Yours Bitterly,
Warren Senders
environment Politics: climate bill fury Wall Street Journal
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Month 7, Day 23: Tired & Angry. How ’bout You?
It’s very late. I’ve been cleaning the house all night…leaving for Toronto tomorrow mid-morning, where I will help celebrate my father’s 90th birthday…and meet up with my wife & daughter, who are at this moment flying back from two months in India.
My fury at the Senate’s abandonment of climate legislation is muted by my exhaustion. Usually I write this letter about 11:40 at night; I’m two hours behind. The Wall Street Journal ran an article about it, so I sent them a screed on the media’s failure to do its job. Think they’ll print it?
The failure of the US Senate to move forward on meaningful climate legislation represents the continued triumph of ignorance in our country — a triumph enabled by our news media. The scientific consensus is overwhelming that climate change is real, it’s dangerous, and it’s caused by humans. But the spurious doctrine of false equivalency requires that any climate scientist must be “balanced” by an opposing voice — actual fact-based reporting be damned. This is a sad day for America and a sad day for the world. Global warming’s effects are real and they are only going to get worse: more storms, more droughts, more displaced populations, more shattered ecosystems. By procrastinating (again!) on this most important of all issues, our senators demonstrate that short-term political exigencies count for more than the long-term good of the nation and the planet. Shame on them, and shame on the media which has abdicated its responsibility.
Warren Senders