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Year 3, Month 12, Day 17: Bring Out Your Dead!
The South Bend Tribune reprints the MacCracken/McCarthy article from a few days ago — two climate scientists respond to the President’s purported invitation to a dialogue — and it’s still excellent stuff:
Having seen the devastating impacts of Sandy, at least a few leaders in Washington seem poised to acknowledge what scientific analyses have clearly shown: Human activities are causing climate disruption. Whether encouraged and forced by regulations, product standards, a cap-and-trade policy, or a carbon tax, we need a national policy to initiate the transition to a low-carbon economy.
Investing in energy efficiency and switching from use of coal, petroleum and natural gas to primary reliance on renewable wind and solar energy is a change that we can make. Switching away from petroleum would also build independence from OPEC and fossil fuel cartels.
According to Bloomberg Finance, the best wind farms in the world already produce power as economically as coal, gas and nuclear generators, and solar energy is proving a good investment in many states. Iowa now generates nearly 20 percent of its electricity from wind energy and Colorado and Oregon more than 10 percent.
We saw inspiring political leadership when Sandy struck. Now we need equally bold and visionary action that taps into the best in ingenuity and technology that our country has to offer. Encouraging both economic development and environmental well-being requires creation of a modern, clean energy system that protects both our nation and our environment.
The scientific community is eager to engage in the conversation the president seeks, but we all must recognize that the conversation must turn quickly from talk to action. This story can have an ending we can live with. It is up to us.
There’s an elephant in the room, though. Sent December 11:
It would be a great thing if President Obama got together with some genuine climate scientists, as Michael MacCracken and James McCarthy suggest. If there’s anything in short supply in Washington nowadays, it’s unvarnished facts and figures. Compared with the genuine emergency posed by the looming climate crisis, the brinksmanship around the impending “fiscal cliff” is absurd and irresponsible play-acting.
But it’s not only the President who needs to show scientists some respect. An entire political party has decided that measurable reality is less important than pouting and posturing. The G.O.P.’s reinvention as a vehemently anti-science party means that America is seriously hamstrung when it comes to dealing with any problem that can’t be solved with a photo-op.
Our country, and the world, deserve better. America cannot be a beacon of hope to the world if half of our government has chosen to live in the Dark Ages.
Warren Senders
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Year 3, Month 12, Day 16: Dreamers.
USA Today runs an AP article on the world’s hopes that America will DO SOMETHING instead of making it impossible for everyone else to DO ANYTHING:
Even as international climate talks ended this weekend with no new commitments on carbon emissions or climate aid from the United States, some were relieved America didn’t make a weak deal even weaker.
Other countries are now watching to see if the Obama administration will back up post-election comments about climate change with renewed efforts to cut emissions at home and pave the way for more ambitious targets as work proceeds to adopt a new global climate pact in 2015.
The two-week talks in Doha ended with an extension of the Kyoto Protocol, which was to expire this year, but which now will only cover 15% of global emissions since several developed countries, including Japan and Canada, have opted out. The U.S. never ratified the accord.
European Union Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said Sunday that the U.S. negotiators were “careful not to block” the negotiations, adding that it’s “still difficult to know whether they will actually invest political capital in committing to a new international deal.”
In an emailed comment to the Associated Press, Hedegaard said she hopes Obama “will present not only an enhanced domestic climate policy but also an enhanced U.S. engagement and willingness to commit more in an international climate context.”
Yup. Good luck with that. Sent December 10:
Every president leaves a record of promises kept and broken, of hopes fulfilled or dashed, of ideologies upheld or disproven, and Barack Obama is no exception. The coming years will allow him to shape the future of our country — and our planet — in ways that earlier chief executives could not even imagine. The choices he makes on the issue of global climate change will not only shape his own legacy, but determine whether the slow evolution of our American republic can continue towards an ever more perfect union.
Failure to address the climate crisis condemns future generations to life on a deeply hostile Earth in which simple survival will be a daily struggle — a bleak existence in which our descendants won’t have any time to recall the greatness of past Presidents. It’s not just President Obama’s legacy that’s on the line, but the future of our civilization.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Barack Obama corporate irresponsibility economics fossil fuels Republican obstructionism
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Year 3, Month 12, Day 11: Nobody Here But Us Chickens
The St. Louis American reprints Eugene Robinson’s astute and blistering column from earlier this week, this time titled, “Obama Should Lead On Climate Change.” Good stuff:
The United States has never agreed to abide by the Kyoto Protocol, the binding 1997 treaty through which some countries agreed to limit emissions. Still, U.S. emissions have risen only slightly since then. The big increase has been in China and India, which are exempt from cuts under Kyoto.
Officials in Beijing and New Delhi understand that unchecked growth in emissions is not sustainable. But they also know that the United States and Europe are still responsible for far more carbon emissions per capita. And if a factory in, say, Guangzhou province produces iPhones for American consumers, who should be held responsible for those emissions?
Will these questions be answered in the Doha talks now under way? Not a chance. Not until the United States is fully involved.
And this is why President Obama should devote his next State of the Union address to climate change. He understands the science and knows the threat is real. Convincing the American people of this truth would be a great accomplishment – and perhaps the most important legacy of his second term.
Lots of luck with that. Sent December 6:
Environmentalists are justifiably disappointed in the Obama administration’s tepid participation in the Doha climate conference, and in our nation’s lackluster response to what is clearly the defining crisis of our times. And indeed there is plenty of cause for frustration, what with the steady drumbeat of bad climate news seemingly getting worse by the minute, while our diplomats dither and the United States routinely abdicates its position of leadership in the world community.
However, Mr. Obama’s timidity is not the real problem. If addressing an ongoing catastrophe responsibly means a reduced quarterly profit margin for Big Oil and Big Coal, it’s not going to happen. Our political paralysis in the face of a collapsing planetary ecosystem is caused by the all-pervasive influence of fossil fuels in our economy and fossil funds in our government. Presidential pusillanimity is a diagnostic indicator of how far, and how deeply, the disease has spread.
Warren Senders
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Year 3, Month 12, Day 8: You Never Give Me Your Money…
USA Today has an op-ed from Dan Becker & James Gerstenzang, titled: “Column: Obama’s chance to change (political) climate.” Not bad, actually:
9:00AM EST December 2. 2012 – Hurricane Sandy and the 2012 drought drove home the need for President Obama to lead the fight against global warming. Freed from the political constraints of the re-election campaign, he holds three tools. Wielding them successfully, he will make bold action against the world’s most pressing environmental problem a legacy of his second term.
The president can sharply curtail power plants’ emissions of carbon dioxide, the largest global warming pollutant, by using existing law to require that utilities start converting from coal to cleanly extracted natural gas and introduce more renewable energy. To cut demand for electricity, he can set standards that increase the efficiency of power-gobbling appliances.
But scientists warn that far more will be necessary. The deadly hurricane, devastating drought and 332 consecutive months of above-average global temperatures are just the sort of conditions they say will accompany global warming.
So, taking a page from the nation’s first environmental president, Theodore Roosevelt, Obama can use his third tool — the bully pulpit — to change the political climate on climate. He must mobilize public pressure on Congress to adopt far-reaching measures that he cannot enact on his own, including steps that begin to end our addiction to oil.
Meanwhile, the country’s talking heads are talking about something totally different. Details at 11. Sent December 2:
While our news media have gone all out to cover the looming showdown over the “fiscal cliff,” the fact is that we’re facing another deadline with far more serious implications. The “climate cliff,” unlike its economic namesake, is based on hard scientific data and analysis, not political expediency and partisan gamesmanship. The consequences of a failure in climate policy reach far beyond the next election cycle or two and into the next millennium. Unless we can get the rapidly metastasizing greenhouse effect under control, questions about a marginally higher tax rate on the wealthiest two percent of Americans will be quaintly irrelevant in the face of catastrophic weather extremes, devastated agriculture, and the geopolitical instabilities triggered by famine, drought, and rising sea levels.
President Obama needs to make climate change a central issue for all Americans. If there’s any issue that transcends the transient boundaries of ideology, this is it.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Barack Obama corporate irresponsibility Keystone XL Tar Sands
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Year 3, Month 11, Day 23: All Of The Heavies Were Light As A Feather
The Pasadena Star’s Steve Cauzillo wonders about our President’s taste for the fight:
“I am a firm believer that climate change is real, that it is impacted by human behavior and carbon emissions. And as a consequence, I think we’ve got an obligation to future generations to do something about it.”
-President Barack Obama, Nov. 14, 2012THE president has been sending signals on the environment like policy test balloons. He mentioned climate change twice since re-election, once during his victory speech and during a press conference at the White House.
Though he was cautious to say the inordinate number of freak storms lately (i.e., Superstorm Sandy in the Northeast) can’t be traced with cause-and- effect accuracy to climate change, he did confirm his belief that the globe is getting warmer. He and 98 percent of all the scientists in the world agree that humans contribute to global warming, mostly due to industrialization which produces more greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane.
Of course, the next four years will be about avoiding the fiscal cliff, fixing tax policies, lowering the deficit and creating an economy in which employers can expand and new businesses can sprout.
But, even in that context, Obama told the press that much has been accomplished to reduce energy use. Cars are getting better gas mileage due to stricter standards. Wind, solar and biomass plants are opening up to provide electrical energy.
“If, on the other hand, we can shape an agenda that says we can create jobs, advance growth, and make a serious dent in climate change and be an international leader, I think that’s something that the American people would support,” said the president.
Now we’re talking.
We shall see. Sent November 18:
While the President often talks a good game on climate issues, it is often disturbingly evident that other members of his staff regard them as irrelevant distractions — presumably from the economic questions that dominate the news cycle and the rhetoric of the President’s conservative adversaries. Mr. Obama’s apparent renewal of commitment to addressing climate change can have no more definitive test than his approval or rejection of the disastrous Keystone XL project.
Keystone is catastrophic on multiple levels of scale. The destruction of millions of acres of boreal forest in order to exploit Canada’s tar sands is already an environmental blunder of huge proportions. Transporting the filthy oil across the US offers the potential for hundreds of local and regional disasters from leaks and contaminated aquifers — and, or course, burning all that oil will send the greenhouse effect into a drastic runaway zone from which recovery may be impossible. If President Obama allows the pipeline project to proceed, we will know that his commitment to the fight against global warming is inadequate to the magnitude of the crisis.
Warren Senders
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Year 3, Month 11, Day 18: Figures Don’t Lie, And Liars Can’t Figure
USA Today says that “Climate change worries have had a high profile in New York, post-Hurricane Sandy.” Gee, ya think?
Climate change is suddenly a hot topic again. The issue is resurfacing in talks about a once radical idea: a possible carbon tax.
On Tuesday, a conservative think tank held discussions about it while a more liberal think tank released a paper on it. And the Congressional Budget Office issued a 19-page report on the different ways to make a carbon tax less burdensome on lower income people.
A carbon tax works by making people pay more for using fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas that produce heat-trapping carbon dioxide.
A letter with actual numbers in it! Sent November 14:
Hurricane Sandy definitely brought climate change back into the national spotlight by making the consequences of a runaway greenhouse effect exponentially harder to ignore. But another recent storm should also help bring global warming back to the policy table. On November 6, Hurricane Arithmetic made landfall on the coast of Republican self-delusion, as nerds and statisticians predicted election results far more accurately than any conservative pundits had ever imagined. Not only was the President re-elected, but math was vindicated.
As Mr. Obama heads into his second term, he and his administration must call America’s attention to two numbers: 350 and 400. The first describes the level (in parts per million) of atmospheric CO2 consistent with the survival of our civilization. The second is the level of CO2 in our atmosphere today. While political posturing over the “fiscal cliff” may make for good headlines, the imminent “climate cliff” is far, far more permanent.
Warren Senders
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Year 3, Month 11, Day 2: But They Say There’s A Hell. What The Hell? What The Hell Do They Think THIS Is?
The Dallas Daily News runs a NYT article on climate ignorage in the Presidential campaign:
WASHINGTON — For all their disputes, President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney agree that the world is warming and that humans are at least partly to blame. It remains wholly unclear what either of them plans to do about it.
Even after a year of record-smashing temperatures, drought and Arctic ice melt, none of the moderators of the four general election debates asked about climate change, nor did any of the candidates broach the topic.
Throughout the campaign, Obama and Romney have seemed most intent on trying to outdo each other as lovers of coal, oil and natural gas — the very fuels most responsible for rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Obama has supported broad climate change legislation, financed extensive clean energy projects and pushed new regulations to reduce global warming emissions from cars and power plants. But neither he nor Romney has laid out a legislative or regulatory program to address the fundamental questions arising from one of the most vexing economic, environmental, political and humanitarian issues to face the planet.
Should the United States cut its greenhouse gas emissions, and, if so, how far and how fast? Should fossil fuels be more heavily taxed? Should any form of clean energy be subsidized, and for how long? Should the United States lead international mitigation efforts? Should the nation pour billions of new dollars into basic energy research? Is the climate system so fraught with uncertainty that the rational response is to do nothing?
Many scientists and policy experts say the lack of a serious discussion of climate change in the presidential contest represents a lost opportunity to engage the public and to signal to the rest of the world U.S. intentions for dealing with what is, by definition, a global problem that requires global cooperation.
“On climate change, the political discourse here is massively out of step with the rest of the world, but also with the citizens of this country,” said Andrew Steer, the president of the World Resources Institute and a former special envoy for climate change at the World Bank. “Polls show very clearly that two-thirds of Americans think this is a real problem and needs to be addressed.”
Nothin’ to see here, folks. Move along, move along. Sent October 26:
It must be difficult to be Mitt Romney — agreeing on one hand with the scientists who’ve studied the problem of climate change, yet prevented from stating his agreement definitively in public by the anti-intellectual intransigence of the tea-party conservatives who comprise his (not entirely willing) electoral base. Given Romney’s pathological aversion to a definite commitment on anything beyond the idea that he deserves to be president, such cowardice is understandable, although hardly a recommendation for the position he seeks.
President Obama’s reluctance to discuss climate change, however, most likely springs from a strategic avoidance of controversy. Given the firestorm of opprobrium engendered by his adoption of Republican ideas about health care, one can only imagine the howls of outrage from conservatives were he to actually make the long-term future of our civilization a legislative priority. Through judicious executive orders, he has made significant strides on energy efficiency and environmental responsibility without engaging our know-nothing congress the futile and ugly wrangling that characterized the eventual passage of the Affordable Care Act.
While neither candidate represents an optimal choice for those cognizant of the magnitude of the climate crisis, there is no equivalence between their respective silences on the subject.
Warren Senders
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Year 3, Month 10, Day 27: Both Candidates Will Eat A Live Bug, On National Television
By the time this shows up on the blog, the last presidential debate will be in the past. Maybe my letter will have been rendered irrelevant. In any case, as I type this, it’s Saturday, October 20, and the LA Times notes that climate activists are still trying to get somebody (anybody!) to ask some damn questions:
With just 2 1/2 weeks left before election day, there’s an urgency on all fronts in the presidential race. For activists, it’s not just about whether President Obama or Mitt Romney will win, but whether either man will pay attention to their issue.
Perhaps no interest community has been as disappointed as those who worry about global climate change. They have repeatedly called for more attention to the issue and, for the most part, failed to get it.
This week’s presidential debate prompted a new round of regret and demands for Romney and Obama to address the topic, as both candidates spent their most notable time arguing about how much coal they would extract from federal lands.
“Both President Obama and Gov. Romney maintained the silence on climate, again ignoring the growing roster of extreme climate-change induced weather events,” said Maura Cowley, executive director of a consortium of youth-oriented groups called the Energy Action Coalition. “As young voters, and the generation with the most to lose if we don’t address the climate crisis now, we demand both candidates break the silence on climate change by standing up to big oil and gas with ambitious plans for clean energy.”
A political application of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis helps us understand why it’s nahgannahappan. Sent October 20:
Monday’s presidential debate will focus on foreign policy, which ought to provide a perfect opening for questions about global climate change. After all, the accelerating greenhouse effect transcends national boundaries, affecting all life on Earth equally. Furthermore, rising planetary temperatures and increased extreme weather will have humanitarian and geopolitical consequences, often in areas with a long history of conflict. It’d seem that our rapidly transforming climate is an essential subject in any discussion of foreign policy. Why won’t it happen on Monday?
“Foreign policy” as a field is concerned precisely with national boundaries — those human abstractions which surging atmospheric CO2 counts make irrelevant. The hard truth is that America (and the rest of the world) must rise above the narrow strategic concerns which have preoccupied us for centuries. Climate change is a global problem, not a “foreign” one, and there is as yet no scheduled debate on “planetary policy.”
Warren Senders
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Year 3, Month 9, Day 27: Suck On This!
The Bend Bulletin (OR) runs the same McClatchy story on the two campaigns’ approaches to climate issues:
Romney has said previously that he believes climate change is occurring and that human activity is a contributing factor.
During the Republican primary season, though, he said he didn’t believe it was the right course to spend “trillions and trillions” to reduce carbon emissions.
More recently, he said in a questionnaire submitted to Science Debate, a nonprofit organization focusing on science issues in the presidential campaign, that he believes human activity contributes to global warming and that policymakers should consider the risk of negative consequences.
Frank Maisano, a lobbyist whose firm represents energy interests and who has been involved in climate change discussions for 15 years, cautioned not to read too much into Romney’s dig about the rise of the oceans. It was designed to show Obama is “a little bit out of touch,” he said.
“Right now, you need someone who cares about you rather than these larger, soaring rhetorical issues,” Maisano said.
Sheesh. Sent September 20:
So according to a representative of the energy industry, climate change is a “soaring rhetorical issue.” How bizarre. When Frank Maisano suggests that discussion of our civilization’s future happiness and prosperity of our civilization is “rhetoric,” he’s really saying that the short-term profitability of his clients in the oil and coal business is more important than the world our children and grandchildren will inhabit.
When ocean acidification has broken the food chain, when extreme weather has devastated agriculture, when vanishing glaciers have ended water supplies for innumerable cultures everywhere around the planet, when rising seas have wiped entire nations off the map — will Mr. Maisano and his colleagues finally put down their quarterly reports and address the catastrophic transformations they have wrought?
To be sure, we need action even more than “soaring rhetoric.” But Republicans and energy lobbyists offer only a toxic blend of legislative paralysis and mendacious misrepresentations.
Warren Senders
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Year 3, Month 9, Day 25: She Said She Said…
The Anchorage Daily News runs a McClatchy story comparing the two presidential candidates’ approach to climate change:
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — It was just six words, but when President Barack Obama gave a shout-out to global warming in his acceptance speech this month, he reintroduced an issue that had all but disappeared from the political debate.
“Climate change is not a hoax,” Obama said, an assertion that brought Democratic National Convention delegates to their feet, as he pledged to continue approaching energy policy in a way he said would “continue to reduce the carbon pollution that is heating our planet.”
In a year when the political debate has lacked nearly any discussion of climate change, some environmentalists have struggled to summon enthusiasm for the Democratic president they helped elect in 2008 in part because of his views on global warming. So they rejoiced when the president rebutted a taunt tossed out by Republican candidate Mitt Romney the week before. Romney had quipped in his own acceptance speech in Tampa, Fla., that Obama “promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet.”
“My promise is to help you and your family,” Romney added.
It was a rhetorical flourish, an attack line offered to make the point that Romney understands the kitchen table issues that, he says, the president doesn’t. But environmentalists heard it as heresy.
“Twenty years from now, history is going to judge the next generation on how they responded to the destabilization of our climate,” said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club. “With a couple of short sentences, Romney made clear what’s at stake in this election.”
It looks increasingly improbable that Mitt is going to get anywhere near the oval office. Good. Sent September 18:
It stretches credulity that a significant percentage of Americans continue to reject the reality of climate change. This is both an environmental and an educational crisis; too many of us spurn the evidence of both science and our senses in favor of the comforting untruths peddled by a fossil-fueled media.
Scientific discourse is couched in careful and meticulous language; responsible climatologists will shy away from definitive statements connecting, say, a particular extreme weather event with the burgeoning greenhouse effect. That’s because science deals with probabilities, correlations and complexities — not in polemics. But there’s a reason these specialists are exceptionally worried: the evidence for runaway atmospheric warming is unequivocal and unambiguous, and the likely effects of even moderate warming are devastating to agriculture, infrastructure, and the integrity of local and regional ecosystems.
By steadily ignoring the science of climate change, both our media and politicians have been profoundly irresponsible. A crisis of planetary magnitude demands a commensurate response — and there can be no moral justification for continued ignorance.
Warren Senders