environment Politics: Barack Obama climate bill
by Warren
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Month 7, Day 11: Sunday POTUS
Just a generic POTUS letter. I discovered that it had been over a week since I’d written one.
Dear President Obama,
The process of generating a workable climate/energy bill is looking uncomfortably like the process of generating health-care legislation. That is, lots of giveaways, lots of concessions in advance, lots of delays — all culminating in a bill that is just barely better than nothing, and significantly less than what the country needs.
But there is a big difference between a climate bill and a health-care bill. A climate bill is ultimately a contract with the laws of physics and the forces of nature, and they do not negotiate. The window of time available to us is rapidly closing; all the critical indicators show that climate change is moving faster and more powerfully than any scientists anticipated.
Please use your considerable persuasive powers to motivate our Senators to do the right thing for our nation, for our descendants, and for our planet. There is no time to waste on a bill that puts a band-aid on a near-mortal injury; we need strong climate legislation now if we as a species are to survive. Please abandon your hands-off approach and twist some arms.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
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
by Warren
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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: coal EPA Lisa Jackson Mountaintop Removal
by Warren
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Month 7, Day 9: Even Though I’m Not A John Denver Fan
The Rainforest Action Network sent me an email. They’re apparently camping out in EPA administrator Lisa Jackson’s vicinity, letting her know that mountaintop removal mining is a Bad Thing. Which it is.
We’re here at the EPA today with a giant sound system playing Lisa Jackson her own words over and over at a deafening volume, mixed with the sounds of dynamite blowing apart mountains, and a little of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” for good measure. We hope this intensely emotional soundtrack filling the halls of the EPA all day long will guarantee they hear us this time.
They requested me to go to their online action site and send an email. Which I did. I’m also going to print it and fax it/send it.
Dear Administrator Jackson,
There are many reasons to oppose mountaintop removal mining. The obvious ones are local in essence: an MTR project means millions of tons of toxic debris winds up in the waterways; it means that what was once a flourishing forested area will be transformed into a blasted, dessicated moonscape; it means that once the project is over, local ecosystems and economies are blighted, perhaps beyond recovery.
Those are the obvious reasons. The less obvious reasons are national and global in essence: America and the world need to stop burning coal as soon as humanly possible, because of the extraordinary amount of harm it does through increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. The goal of the EPA should be what its name implies: protecting the environment.
There really is no good reason for green-lighting the Pine Creek MTR proposal, which is projected to destroy almost a thousand acres of pristine forest and over two miles of streams. Please reverse your decision. Mountaintop removal is a bad idea in every sense, and it is time for your agency to offer genuine stewardship instead of an “Environmental Protection Racket.”
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment: Climategate Philadelphia Inquirer UEA
by Warren
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Month 7, Day 8: All Clear?
The Philadelphia Inquirer ran an AP story noting that the third inquiry into “climategate” was due out soon. Of course, the results came out today, and of course the scientists from the University of East Anglia were completely cleared (just as happened in the previous two inquiries, which I suppose proves to the denialists that all the Boards of Inquiry are in the tank).
This report was the third such inquiry into the so-called “climategate” non-scandal, and the third inquiry to completely exonerate the scientists involved from any hint of dishonesty or wrongdoing. Even though the accusations leveled against the British scientific team were completely unfounded, the entire affair succeeded in making global warming less accepted by the general public. This is a tragedy: at the time when we most need widespread awareness of the threat posed by worldwide climate change, fewer people are prepared to take scientific authority seriously. Over ninety-seven percent of climatologists agree that global warming is happening, that human activity is to blame, and that if we don’t change our ways soon, we’re in for a world of hurt. If ninety-seven out of a hundred oncologists diagnosed malignancy, you’d probably take their advice. Climatologists are “planetary physicians.” We would do well to take them seriously.
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: BP Deepwater Horizon Gulf of Mexico
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Month 7, Day 6: Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Back In The Water…
The Chicago Tribune (last seen as the site of a remarkably stupid column by Jonah Goldberg) ran an unremarkable AP story noting that oil is now found on the beaches in every state that borders the Gulf.
The spreading filth from the wreckage of the Deepwater Horizon is making its presence felt everywhere. Beaches are contaminated, ecosystems shattered, and clean-up workers are already experiencing health problems. If anything good comes of this debacle, it must be that Americans finally come to terms with the truth about oil: it costs too much.
Not only have we subsidized oil production, keeping prices artificially low for decades, but we deferred the cost of cleaning up after our fossil fuel use, assuming that some future generation will have the technology well in hand when the bill comes due. Alas, it turns out we’re the generation who’ll have to pay — and the technology never got developed, as BP’s nonexistent contingency plans confirm. With oil accumulating on beaches everywhere in the Gulf of Mexico, the evidence mounts in each day’s news: we must break our addiction to oil, or it will break us.
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 Gardening Personal: DIY Gardening sustainability vegetables
by Warren
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My Big Fat Garden Project
It’s Independence Day! And I’m just going to brag on my garden a little.
Our little household will never be able to get off the food grid entirely (can’t grow rice in the Boston suburbs! No room for the spaghetti trees!) but we’ve been getting better at it every year.
Let me describe our layout. We live on the side of a hill. 47 steps lead from street level to our front door. When we bought the house, the front yard was a very steep slope, covered with weeds and debris. There is a garage at street level, inset into the hill. When we bought the house, the garage had a peaked roof in wretched condition.
I started a garden four years ago. It took a lot of work. The weeds and debris had to go — and individual planting beds had to be made out of rock, rubble, and concrete. I mastered the technique of building a leaky stone structure (dig shallow ditch & fill with gravel; plop rocks and rubble on top of gravel; slap concrete on top of rocks and rubble; allow to dry; add more rocks and rubble; add more concrete; repeat until you’re at the height you want, then add soil) and at this point have fifteen or sixteen fully operational planting beds in my front yard.
My front yard during the off-season. Note the drip-irrigation hoses.
environment: Boston Herald economic justice economic recession economics
by Warren
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Month 7, Day 4: Independence From What?
The Boston Herald ran an AP story noting that there was no increase in CO2 emissions in 2009, due to the worldwide economic slowdown. Well, that certainly links the good news and the bad news in an arresting way.
If increased greenhouse gas pollution is correlated with economic growth, there are two ways to interpret the news that worldwide recession has held atmospheric CO2 emissions steady for the first time since 1992. Either global warming is a welcome indicator of financial well-being, or our growth-fixated economy is literally killing the planet. Growth has its place. Rapid doubling of weight is healthy — if you’re a baby. For an adult? Not so much. With over six billion people living on a finite world, we need a new way of economic thinking that doesn’t require constant expansion to survive. “Growth for the sake of growth” brought us the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico; gutted our national economy to line the pockets of wealthy speculators; increased global warming emissions without thought to the consequences. It’s an economic idea that is actually destroying the place we live! For all our sakes, we’d better find another way.
Warren Senders