Education environment Politics: Bill McKibben economics Julliet Schor sustainability
by Warren
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Inconvenient Futures: Two Books You Should Read
We modern humans sure do love our conveniences. Most things in our lives are so convenient we’ve forgotten there ever was such a thing as inconvenience.
Look at some of the inconveniences we’ve forgotten:
Having to procure our own food from start to finish.
Having limited quantities of untrustworthy water.
Being at the mercy of the climate.
Being at the mercy of the weather.
Having no easy access to large quantities of energy.
Assuming that some of our children won’t live to adulthood.
Living in a world where death is always immanent.
These are some of the big ones. Many of the conveniences we know and love are resolutions of one or another of this list, scaled to fit circumstances. Having to replace the steam nozzle on your cappuccino-maker is a tiny inconvenience to one person (you); the collapse of a coffee crop is a major inconvenience with repercussions all the way from farmer to consumer.
In the coming years, times are going to get harder. Some of the inconveniences we’ve forgotten about are going to re-enter our lives. Weather-related mortality is going to increase (it already has). Our infrastructure is going to deteriorate (it already has). Our water supply is going to be less reliable (it already is).
Our current economy is built around convenience. Having ready credit is a convenience, as is having ready cash available at any ATM. Being able to fly anywhere in the world, is a convenience, as is having a place to stay when you get there.
You get the picture.
Traditional cultures have social rituals and mechanisms for coping with the procurement and preparation of food, the climate and weather, the difficulty of large tasks, the death or sickness of a community member. You could make a pretty strong case that a culture’s identity and uniqueness is encoded in its response to difficulty, to hardship, to inconvenience.
And we humans crave community. We are social creatures, and our cultures provide us with meaningful ways to relate in a wide variety of contexts. We need one another most when times aren’t good.
Which is part of the reason our communality has eroded concurrently with our inconveniences. An unintended consequence of the development of a quick-satisfaction consumer culture in which anything we want is available is the gradual disappearance of the things we really want: one another. Until pretty recently most human beings were always there for one another. Now, not so much.
Which brings me to two books I’ve been reading recently.
environment Politics: filibuster idiots John Kerry Republicans
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Month 7, Day 10: Yes, I Know It’s A Sucking Chest Wound, But Please Fill Out These Forms. In Triplicate.
We really really really need to change the way the filibuster is used in the Senate. You should write to your senators (if you’ve got some Democrats) and tell them something along these lines. The emergency-room analogy in this letter pleases me; I’m going to try and use it some more.
Dear Senator Kerry,
The Senate needs filibuster reform, for all our sakes.
Despite having one of the smallest minorities in recent history, the Republicans are making it impossible for us to move forward. Every bill is watered down, every policy initiative is gutted, every noble impulse turned into a tepid and uninspiring porridge.
This is most appalling and damaging in the case of climate legislation. We are asked to wait. And wait. And wait. And give up the things that might actually make a tiny bit of difference to humanity’s next century, in the hope of appeasing Olympia Snowe, or Lindsey Graham, or Scott Brown — or some damn Republican or another who will end up voting against the bill anyway.
The United States Senate is like the admissions clerk in an emergency room; someone is brought in bleeding to death, and rather than receive treatment, is forced to spend hours filling out insurance forms. That’s what the US Senate does, thanks to the abuse of the filibuster by the Republicans.
And if Democrats want to keep a majority, they’d do well to enact meaningful filibuster reform at the beginning of the next congress. Senate Democrats must overcome the timidity that has kept them quivering and cowering at the threats of their Republican colleagues, and this must begin with ending the most egregious abuse of Senatorial process in the past century.
With Arctic sea ice at its lowest level yet, with methane bubbling up out of the ocean floor, with BP’s toxic cocktail destroying the Gulf of Mexico, with the ocean becoming more acidic, with atmospheric CO2 at 394 ppm and rising…learned helplessness is a luxury we can no longer afford. We need a strong climate bill, or we may not have any descendants to curse us for our inaction.
There is no time left to waste in appeasing a group of anti-science, anti-environment, anti-humanity opportunists who are guaranteed to oppose anything you do. Reform the use of the filibuster. Advance genuine climate legislation.
That’s all.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Boston Herald heat wave idiots
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Month 7, Day 7: It’s Too Darn Hot
We’re having a heat wave up here in Boston, as the Boston Herald helpfully reports. But since as all of us climate alarmists kept pointing out in December, local weather events aren’t proof of anything. Look for that to be the new meme of the idiocracy, if they’re ever called upon to comment on our blistering high temperatures. Which they won’t be.
Sheesh. If it’s 100 degrees here in July, what will August be like?
It was only a few months ago that climate-change deniers were trumpeting the unusual snowfall in Washington, DC as proof that global warming was a hoax. Senator Jim DeMint said, “It’s going to keep snowing in DC until Al Gore cries ‘Uncle,’ “ and Senator James Inhofe built an igloo with Gore’s name on it. And at the time, people who understood even a little bit about science knew that climate scientists had predicted exactly what was happening: more extreme weather events, everywhere. Extreme snow, extreme rain, extreme heat. Now an early-July heat wave is debilitating cities throughout the Northeast. Is the heat wave proof of global warming? No — local weather doesn’t prove anything by itself. But the fact that more places all over the globe are experiencing unusual and destructive weather than ever before is a confirmation that climatologists had it right all along. When will the rest of us pay attention?
Warren Senders
environment Politics: climate bill extinction Harry Reid John Kerry
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Month 7, Day 5: Tiny Little Glimmers. Just Tiny Little Glimmers.
The striking thing isn’t that a famous scientist thinks humanity is likely to go extinct within a century. The striking thing is that many other scientists agree with him.
Dear Senators Kerry and Reid –
The continued forward motion of climate legislation is heartening to those of us who are concerned about the Earth’s future. It is sickening to watch the obstructionist tactics of the opposition party, and those Democrats who, placing narrow interests above that of the nation as a whole, continue to support “business as usual” (BAU for short).
Because it is daily more evident that BAU is not going to work any longer. The Australian biologist Frank Fenner states baldly that continued population growth and unchecked consumption (key elements of BAU, needless to say) are going to bring humanity to extinction within the century — and other scientists nod grimly and say things like, “While there’s a glimmer of hope, it’s worth working to solve the problem. We have the scientific knowledge to do it but we don’t have the political will.”
We need to recognize the nature of the crisis and educate one another, and we have to do it in a hurry.
Which is why I’m writing, begging you: don’t capitulate any more.
Don’t capitulate to the oil interests.
Don’t capitulate to the coal interests.
Don’t capitulate to the natural gas interests.
Don’t capitulate to the financial interests.
Don’t capitulate to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Don’t capitulate to the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page.
Don’t capitulate to the Dominionist Christians who anxiously await armageddon as promised in the Book of Revelations.
Don’t capitulate to Lindsey Graham’s political exigencies.
Don’t capitulate to Glenn Beck’s conspiracy theories.
Don’t capitulate to President Obama’s accomodationist bipartisan instincts.Don’t capitulate. Make the bill stronger. We need a price on carbon. We need to make the cost of carbon reflect its true cost to our planet and ourselves. How much will it cost to clean up the mess we’ve made? Trillions of dollars, at minimum — and the longer we go on with Business As Usual, the more costly and inconvenient it’s going to be. Those trillions need to be added to the price of carbon, as soon as possible.
We have fooled ourselves that fossil fuels are cheap. They are anything but — and the sooner our economic thinking changes to reflect the true cost of oil and coal, the more likely it is we can avoid the fate Dr. Fenner has predicted.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Barack Obama Jimmy Carter Ronald Reagan solar panels
by Warren
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Month 7, Day 3: I’m Gonna Make Him An Offer He Can’t Refuse.
I mean it. If he does it, I’ll do it, too.
Dear President Obama —
I know you’ve got a lot on your plate. Your predecessor left things in a hell of a mess and you’ve got a lot of cleanup to do.
And it wasn’t just your immediate predecessor. Every Republican president since Reagan’s election has left a mess behind. So you’ve got thirty-year-old messes to clean up.
When Jimmy Carter was in office, his ideas about energy and the environment were far ahead of the conventional wisdom. A family friend, an elderly gentleman in his 80’s, told me, “When Carter put those solar collectors on the White House roof, I got inspired, and I made a solar water heater and put it on my roof. And that was thirty years ago and it’s still working just fine, and it’s saved us thousands of dollars.” Carter’s ideas may have been ahead of their time, but if we’d followed his example and his advice, we wouldn’t be in this predicament today, for we would no longer be dependent on oil and coal for our energy needs.
Of course, when Reagan took office, he immediately removed those solar panels. They’re probably in the White House basement somewhere.
I think it would be a nice gesture to put them back, don’t you? Or perhaps you could get some newer, more efficient panels. It would also be a nice gesture to invite President Carter to help with the re-installation. Maybe you’d pound a few nails yourself?
And it would be a really nice gesture to acknowledge that when it came to energy and the environment, Jimmy Carter had it right all along: we need clean, decentralized energy from multiple sources, and we urgently need to get off fossil fuels. If we had stopped our dependence on oil and coal back then, the world would not be reeling towards a climate crisis now.
Tell you what: you get solar panels up on your house, and I’ll get solar panels up on mine. Deal?
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
humor Personal Politics: Richard Nixon
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A Message From Tricky Dick
As far as I can figure out, my maternal grandparents must have written to Nixon, telling him they supported the war. He sent back this postcard, which they kept. At some point it fell into my hands, whereupon it disappeared for decades. A recent digitization push has brought it to light again…and now it’s readily available on the Intertubes.
environment Politics: climate bill Scott Brown
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Month 6, Day 30: Oh, How I Wish Martha Coakley Had Been A Better Candidate!
Scott Brown doesn’t want to help out a climate bill.
Scott Brown is my junior Senator.
Scott Brown is an idiot.
Dammit.
Dear Senator Brown –
As the home of many important research centers and universities, Massachusetts is one of the nation’s scientific focal points. Consequently, our elected officials owe it to themselves and to the people they represent to understand enough about science and scientific method — not a lot, mind you, but enough that they’re not an embarrassment to informed citizens of the Commonwealth.
As one of your constituents, I am outraged that a Senator from Massachusetts is embracing an anti-science position. There is no significant scientific dispute over global climate change; ninety-seven percent of the world’s climatologists concur unanimously that the world is warming, that humans are the cause, and that the results will be catastrophic. The other three percent, for the most part, think more studies are needed. A few of that group are on the payroll of oil and coal companies.
If you went into a restaurant, and ninety-seven out of a hundred food inspectors told you that the kitchen was filthy and unsanitary, would you still eat there? If you were looking at a house, and ninety-seven out of a hundred home inspectors told you that it was a dump, would you still make an offer? If you found a lump, and ninety-seven out of a hundred oncologists told you to start therapy immediately, would you wait?
It appears that only in the area of climate science is the testimony of experts so irrelevant. Whose testimony is meaningful to you, Senator Brown? That of oil company representatives, coal lobbyists, FOX News commentators and your Republican leadership?
I thought you were supposed to be representing the citizens of Massachusetts, who overwhelmingly want you to support robust climate legislation that includes a price on carbon emissions.
I guess I was wrong. Funny how that happens.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment Politics: climate bill Harry Reid
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Month 6, Day 29: Harry Reid, Mensch.
Well, this is looking better and better. I finished faxing my Friday letter to all the Senators over the weekend (there were four senatorial fax machines out of order, so I didn’t quite make it), but if that DK article is on the level, Harry Reid is really sticking his neck out here. So I wrote him a letter of support.
Dear Senator Reid,
I write to express my enthusiastic support for your plan to get a strong climate bill passed before the August recess. The facts and figures from around the world tell a terrifying story: the climate has reached a serious “tipping point,” and there is absolutely no time to waste in bringing about very serious reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
Even with emissions reductions at the highest level that is politically possible, we (all of us on the planet) are looking forward to a world that will be drastically less livable; a world in which a steady climate cannot be taken for granted; a world with more unexpected torrential floods and more sustained droughts. We’re past the point where we can get back to the climate you and I grew up in.
But if we act soon, and act strongly, we may be able to give our children’s children a world they can grow up in. That’s why it’s absolutely crucial that a strong climate bill get passed in the Senate as soon as possible — and that’s why I’m writing to support you.
Thank you for what you are doing. Please don’t let denialists and cynical opportunists weaken this bill. We can’t afford inaction, we can’t afford delay — and we can’t afford Republican obstructionism. Stand firm.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Barack Obama Blue Planet Prize James Hansen
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Month 6, Day 28: Honoring A Voice In The Wilderness
Well, James Hansen got another important prize. Meanwhile, he continues to be (shamefully) ignored here at home. Another letter to POTUS? Why not?
Dear President Obama,
This is the second time this year that climatologist James Hansen has been awarded a major international prize for his work in environmental science. Dr. Hansen has just received the Blue Planet Award, considered to be Japan’s version of the Nobel Prize. Earlier this year he was given the Sophie Prize, perhaps the world’s most prestigious award in climate science.
But there is one form of recognition that has eluded Dr. Hansen, and it is the one which would probably make the most difference to him. His work was silenced and censored by administrative fiat during the previous administration, because his warnings about global climate change and the effects of atmospheric CO2 ran contrary to what President Bush and Vice-President Cheney wished to believe.
It is time for the United States Government to recognize Dr. James Hansen as one of the world’s experts on the science of climate change. To be a genuine rather than symbolic recognition, this needs to take two forms. First, Dr. Hansen should be invited to the White House to meet with you; second, he should be invited to be a core participant in your administration’s decisions on environment and climate issues. All the international prizes don’t mean much to a man whose life’s work is ignored in his native land.
James Hansen has been sounding the alarm on global climate change for well over a decade. His predictions have been proven accurate over and over again. Isn’t it time that you and your administration took him seriously?
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment Politics: climate bill US Senate
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Month 6, Day 27: The World’s Greatest Deliberative Body, or just a Pack of Twits?
The LA Times ran an article about the Senate Democrats’ attempt to get a good climate bill. This is a pretty generic letter; I’m very tired and kind of groggy. Overslept; didn’t write it last night.
As extreme weather becomes the norm around the world, the position of climate-change denialists is becoming harder and harder to sustain. Unfortunately, quite a few of those denialists are U.S. Senators, and their obdurate refusal to recognize the facts of nature is imperiling their fellow citizens and the rest of the planet. Senate Democrats are to be commended for working towards a meaningful climate/energy bill. While a restricted carbon cap is a disappointing half-measure, it is certainly better than nothing. What we really need, of course, is to put a price on carbon. If we can find the political strength and the national readiness to start paying for our pollution now rather than later, we’ll spare our descendants a crippling burden of shattered ecosystems and weather-related destruction. We need a robust bill from the Senate; let us hope that the denialists don’t make it impossible.
Warren Senders