environment: forest fires Israel wildfires
by Warren
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Month 12, Day 10: Only YOU Can Prevent, etc., etc., etc.
Israel is burning, reports the Sydney Morning Herald. And (of course) it’s because of climate change — arguably the largest tossed-away cigarette to trigger a forest fire in humanity’s history.
The news accumulates daily, reinforcing a sobering message: climate change is not something that will affect the lives of our grandchildren, but a real-time emergency. Israel’s spreading forest fires are one among multiple symptoms of our planetary fever. Our survival depends on two things: we must learn to think in longer spans of time (for when the lag between climatic cause and climatic effect is measured in decades, where will a politician find the courage to do what is right?), and we must learn to think beyond national boundaries. In Cancun, the world’s nation’s are negotiating; the richest are reluctant to surrender their privileges, while the poorest simply want to keep their land, their lives and their hopes. A moment’s objective reflection makes it obvious: if humanity is to prosper in a post-climate-change world, an “us vs. them” mindset is an unaffordable luxury.
Warren Senders
Month 12, Day 9: Okay — YOU Think Of A Clever Headline For This One
I’m played out.
The Vancouver Sun covers a story about the increasing frequency and intensity of wildfires. Needless to say, that’s yet another symptom of climate change, and one which will add its own further push to the accelerating processes that are going to make life for my daughter much more awful than I want to think about.
The feedback loop in which climate change accelerates wildfires which in turn add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere is a terrifying example of the ominous future that awaits our children. The fact is that global heating is the single gravest existential threat facing the world today, and one that our present international order is particularly ill-equipped to handle. If specific climatic symptoms had specific causes, it would be easier to make reciprocal agreements between affected nations, but the climate system doesn’t work that way; the effects of a warmer troposphere are felt all over the globe, often far from major sources of greenhouse gases — as in the case of Pakistan, a nation whose contribution to CO2 emissions is negligible, but which is still reeling from disastrous flooding. Just as climate change ignores national boundaries, our response to this common enemy must be cooperative in nature and planet-wide in extent.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes Chris Christie denialism idiots
by Warren
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Month 12, Day 8: Hey, “Right-Wing Jim!” You Reading This?
I just couldn’t resist this. Some climatologists from Rutgers are hoping to change Chris Christie’s mind on climate change. Heh heh heh.
Maybe I’ll get another piece of hatemail!
If Governor Christie were motivated by longer-term concerns than his own electoral survival in a Republican environment dominated by the anti-science zealots of the Tea Party, he might be able to pay attention to the advice he’s receiving from climatologists. After all, it should be apparent to anyone that catastrophic climate change will be bad for business in multiple ways. Rising sea levels could submerge large swaths of coastline; droughts could imperil agriculture and lead to food shortages; increasingly severe storms could destroy or degrade infrastructure, necessitating expensive repairs. Unfortunately, the Governor is motivated exclusively by short-term electoral exigency — he’s made his ideological bed and is unlikely to get up from it. He has become a “climate zombie,” unable to acknowledge scientific reality without alienating his base constituency, a group of voters united in their distrust of expertise in general and scientific expertise in particular.
Warren Senders
environment: false equivalence media irresponsibility
by Warren
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Month 12, Day 7: OF COURSE Ignorance is Idiogenic. Where Else Could It Come From?
NPR ran a piece this weekend on how
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fewer and fewer Americans believe climate change is a problem. Naturally, they fail to address their own role in the issue.
This went to the NPR Ombudsman.
Sunday’s story on the decreasing number of Americans who believe that climate change represents a significant threat was another triumph for false equivalence, and another failure of journalistic responsibility.
There are two sets of facts, each fairly simple.
The first is the straightforward scientific reality that climate change is happening, that it is going to have disastrous consequences across the planet, and that humans are the primary causal agents.
The second set of facts concerns the manipulation of public opinion, and rests on the reality that conservative “think tanks,” heavily funded by fossil fuel industries, employ contrarian scientists who appear regularly in the print and broadcast media to convey the false impression that there is no clear climatological consensus on global warming.
How many times has the American Enterprise Institute’s Ken Green been featured on NPR news or opinion programming in the past year? And how many of those appearances have included the information that Green’s parent institution is funded by the petroleum industry?
In the absence of actual scientific analysis, listeners are left with dueling voices, one on each side of a complex issue. The media’s role in shaping American ignorance of climate change is (oddly enough) not addressed anywhere in the Weekend Edition piece, which treats this national failure of understanding as something entirely apart from a systemic failure in our communications systems.
To say that NPR has been more responsible than most media outlets on this issue is to set the bar very low.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: groveling Indonesia
by Warren
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Month 12, Day 6: Abject Apologies
The Jakarta Post notes, correctly, that things are getting kinda scary out there.
As a U.S. citizen, I must accept responsibility for my own nation’s abject failure to take responsibility for its actions. As the world’s largest per capita emitter of greenhouse gases, and as the enabler of a consumerist lifestyle which, if left unchecked, is absolutely certain to submerge the planet in gigatonnes of toxic trash, the United States has been the driving force behind the climate crisis. Unfortunately, my country’s responsibilities are unlikely to be met any time soon, for we are in the grip of a political crisis brought about by a national exaltation of demagoguery and ignorance. Thus our governing bodies are riddled with arrogant men and women who dismiss scientific expertise as irrelevant, preferring the comforts of ancient superstition. Global warming’s realities are terrifying. But as citizens of ocean states can attest, ignoring those facts will surely lead to outcomes beside which our nightmares will pale into insignificance.
Warren Senders
Education environment music Personal Politics Warren's music: inspiration parenting
by Warren
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A Song When Hope Dims: Pete Seeger And The Napalm Ladies
I think I was twelve when my parents gave me a new Pete Seeger lp. They knew I loved his music; I’d listened over and over to “We Shall Overcome: The Carnegie Hall Concert” and knew most of the songs, or at least their lyrics, by heart. I’d memorized most of the songs on the “Children’s Concert at Town Hall,” and forty years later I can get a good laugh from any kid by singing “Where have you been all the day long, Henry my boy?” with its gross, lugubrious “greeeeeeeeen and yeller” chorus.
But this was a new disc, and I’m quite sure my folks just went into the store and grabbed something off the shelf. After all, Pete had a lot of albums, and they were all pretty much the same, right?
Well, actually, no.
environment: Cancun fossil fuels global interdependence irony
by Warren
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Month 12, Day 5: FSM Is An Iron
The beaches at Cancun are being eroded. (USA Today) Perhaps building a resort city on a narrow, storm-vulnerable peninsula wasn’t such a great idea?
It’s a sad irony that the beaches of Cancun are under threat from rising seas and intensifying storm systems. The vulnerability of this tourist destination is eerily similar in microcosm to the state of our own global civilization, in which the survival and prosperity of billions of people is predicated on interdependent systems of extraordinary complexity. Food travels hundreds or thousands of miles to reach our tables; the fuel we burn comes from halfway around the globe; the products that support our consumer economy are shipped from China, Pakistan or the Philippines. A disruption anywhere will have huge impacts everywhere; as climate change’s effects are felt across the planet, our lifestyle will be threatened in various and unpredictable ways. Like a resort erected on sand, our civilization is built on a shifting, fundamentally unsustainable platform. One hopes this similarity is not lost on the delegates to the Cancun climate convention.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Alaska Even a blind pig finds a nut Sarah Palin
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Month 12, Day 4: She Did WHAT?
The Juneau Empire (AK) runs an AP article on a just-issued report on Alaska’s strategy for preparing itself to deal with climate change. Buried in the article is this gem:
The report is an outgrowth of an effort launched by former Gov. Sarah Palin, who formed a climate change task force to prepare a climate change strategy for Alaska.
Heh.
As if we needed another demonstration of the disconnect between political “reality” and the facts of the world, along comes the news that Alaska’s Fish and Game Department has been working to quantify the effects of climate change on the state’s wildlife. While the Department remains mum on the causes of this change (pssst! It’s human beings and their increasing emissions of greenhouse gases!) they have taken the brave step of acknowledging that the phenomenon exists and will have grave consequences for Alaska’s natural resources. It is thought-provoking to realize that this report is the outcome of a process initiated by former Governor Palin, who appeared to recognize climate change as a threat in her bureaucratic incarnation while vociferously denying it in her role as Tea Party rabblerouser. Even the willfully ignorant will eventually recognize global warming’s dangers — by which time they may be too late to protect themselves.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes Ed Markey idiots John Boehner
by Warren
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Month 12, Day 3: It’s Not Just A River In Egypt.
Naturally, they’re going to discontinue the Committee on Global Warming, since the world is getting cooler and stuff. Also.
The Republicans’ decision to disband the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming is unsurprising but disappointing. As the warning signs of climatic tipping points steadily accumulate, the anti-science, anti-reality GOP has found denial a fine coping mechanism. Too many disturbing statistics about the facts of global climate change? Defund the organizations producing the statistics. Too many highly qualified climatologists pointing out that the scientific consensus on human-caused global warming is essentially unanimous? Eliminate the congressional forum where scientists can provide testimony. It highlights the abysmal state of our country’s politics that Republicans consider ignoring facts and belittling expertise a sign both of political cleverness and moral fiber. Even as they continue to advocate funneling further billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies to Big Oil, these hypocrites tout the elimination of one of the most important committees in the house as a sign of fiscal responsibility. They are financially, morally, scientifically, and ethically wrong — but that’s never stopped the Republican party before.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: fossil fuels Ken Salazar offshore drilling
by Warren
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Month 12, Day 2: Get Me Two Packs of Marlboros. With Cheese.
Looks like we’re not going to keep drilling, baby, drilling after all, as the Times reports.
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration announced on Wednesday that it had rescinded its decision to expand offshore oil exploration into the eastern Gulf of Mexico and along the Atlantic Coast because of weaknesses in federal regulation revealed by the BP oil spill.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said that a moratorium on drilling would be in force in those areas for at least seven years, until stronger safety and environmental standards were in place. The move puts off limits millions of acres of the Outer Continental Shelf that hold potentially billions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas.
Well, that’s excellent, and worthy of praise. But I’m just a grouch, I guess.
While it’s certainly good news that the Obama administration has abandoned its plans for further exploratory oil drilling on the East coast of the U.S., it is also a demonstration of just how far we have to go in our long national struggle for an energy economy free from the environmental and fiscal impacts of fossil fuels. Like those of Big Tobacco, the extractive industries’ P.R. aims to persuade us that fossil fuels are clean, safe, cheap and desirable — and all the past century’s collapsed mines, moonscaped mountaintops, sunken drilling platforms, ruptured pipelines, exploded refineries and drunken tanker captains have failed to change our minds. In the light of American intransigence regarding any possibility of a meaningful greenhouse emissions agreement at the Cancun Conference, Secretary Salazar’s announcement reminds one of a morbidly obese person topping off a Supersized order of junk food — with a diet soft drink.
Warren Senders