environment: idiocracy McNewspaper time-lag USA Today
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Day 25: To America’s Daily Newspaper
Today was my first day on a strict no-coffee regimen. It didn’t work; mid-afternoon I had five sips of my wife’s cappucino. But in general I’ve had a splitting caffeine-withdrawal headache all day, and I was totally not in the mood for literary composition. Which makes it a perfect day to write to USA Today.
I didn’t have a damn thing to say today that I haven’t said before, and probably better. But there it is: another take on the time-lag problem inherent in the relationship between America’s dysfunctional politics and the planet’s soon-to-be dysfunctional atmosphere.
Why is it never the right time to do something about global climate change? The answer is simple: the time between action and effect is too long. If we immediately reduced greenhouse emissions to a tenth of their present levels, the planet’s atmosphere would continue to warm for another thirty years or more before showing any change. If the “lag” is five times the term of a U.S. Senator, and fifteen times that of a U.S. Representative, it’s easy to see why addressing the climate crisis keeps getting pushed to the legislative back burner. Unfortunately, Earth’s atmosphere doesn’t care about getting re-elected in 2010 or 2012. If America (the world’s largest per capita emitter of greenhouse gases) can’t lead the world in learning to think in the long term, there may not be a long term for any of us. The worst-case scenarios outlined by climate scientists can be summarized in one word: Venus.
Warren Senders
environment: Boston Herald insurance companies Murdoch nose hairs
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Day 24: To The Local Murdoch
After reading Wade Norris’ excellent piece on insurance companies’ response to climate change, I thought I’d write to Boston’s own Murdoch-owned newspaper, the Herald. My challenge is to use short words and short sentences.
It’s easy to deny global warming. Just look out the window and point to the snow, right? Well, If that’s how to do it, then I can deny my baldness by pointing to my nose hairs. The facts about global climate change are pretty scary, and lots of people don’t want to believe it’s happening at all, while some don’t want to believe humans are causing it. But covering our eyes and saying “Does not!” is the response of a child, not a grown-up. Perhaps we should look instead at the response of companies like State Farm Insurance, which announced this week that it won’t issue or renew policies for buildings and structures on North Carolina’s barrier islands — because global heating is raising ocean levels and increasing the risk of catastrophic storms. It’s going to be harder to deny the climate crisis when it’s costing us hundreds of billions of dollars. State Farm gets it. When will the majority of Americans?
Warren Senders
Maybe they’ll print it because I made a funny joke ha ha he mentioned nose hairs ha ha!
environment Politics: Barack Obama Ben Bernanke climaticide economics Lawrence Summers Timothy Geithner
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Day 23: To the White House
It seems that watching my daughter swimming is conducive to epistolary composition. As she splashed happily, this emerged from my pen. I’d brought lined paper today, and that seemed to shrink my penmanship, resulting in a longer piece.
For a long time, I was reluctant to address economic issues in my letters, emails and blog posts. I felt that I had inadequate background to be able to speak with any authority. However, recent events have demonstrated that the people who are speaking with authority either don’t have a fucking clue or are eager participants in the undeclared class war against the economically disenfranchised.
So I figured, “why the hell not?” and wrote a screed addressing climate change in economic terms.
Dear President Obama,
It is increasingly apparent that the people you appointed as economic advisors are not operating in good faith. Messrs Geithner, Summers and Bernanke are obviously working against the best interests of both the American people and their American president. Mr. Summers’ near-complete denialism on the economic necessity of addressing global climate change in a substantial and meaningful way is just one example of this — an example which highlights the potential for an apocalyptic confluence of economic and environmental crises in the not too distant future.
The economic impact of climate change will be felt most severely by the world’s poor. By the time the wealthiest among the planet’s population are severely affected, it will be too late for any attempts at remediation or mitigation. “Disaster capitalism” can only succeed if there is a human population left to rob!
By aligning themselves with the big banks and the multi-national corporations, Geithner, Summers and Bernanke have lent their support to an undeclared class war: the wealthy against the rest of us. Uncontrolled and unregulated capitalism is the engine driving runaway climate change — a slow-motion catastrophe whose ultimate impact will be the annihilation of whole populations. Corporate climaticide’s impact on the world’s poor is the smallpox-infested blanket writ large — a toxic gift from the oligarchy to the everyone else. This gift will have your signature on it (along with all the rest of the world’s apologists for government of, by and for the supremely wealthy) unless you take the necessary steps — steps which will also help America’s middle-class and poor recover their economic footing. Fire Geithner and Summers. Withdraw Bernanke’s nomination. It may not be enough, but it’ll be a good start.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate personhood immortal psychopaths letters SCOTUS
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Day 22: To The Boston Phoenix
I was thinking about time-cycles and the tragic inability of contemporary culture to imagine scales of time significantly larger than our own, and the full dimensions of the SCOTUS ruling became apparent.
Shit.
The Supreme Court’s recent ruling in “Citizens United” makes it increasingly likely that the few remaining vestiges of independent thought in our Legislative branch will come under corporate control. Nowhere in our public policy will this have more devastating impact than in the area of climate change. Why? Because corporations are legally required to focus on maximizing short-term profit (quarters and years), and legislators’ attention spans work out at two and six years respectively, due to the nature of electoral cycles — while the slow catastrophe of planetary climaticide will unfold over the sweep of the coming century or so. No wonder it is always “not the right time” to address the climate crisis! It can never be the right time when a three-decade lag between climate action and climate effect is five times longer than the elected term of a U.S. Senator, fifteen times longer than that of a U.S. Representative, and a hundred and twenty times longer than the quarterly attention span of our New Corporate Overlords.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Pi***ng into the wind SCOTUS
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Day 21: To The Medford Transcript
Because they’re more likely to publish it.
Today’s SCOTUS decision comes like a kick in the teeth after Tuesday’s slap in the face. I have a faint, vague fluttering of hope that the President will do or say something that helps in next weeks State of the Union address. But that’s a pretty faint fluttering.
The SC’s ruling was the theme around which this letter was built. Short, sweet, sad.
The Supreme Court’s decision to deregulate corporate spending on elections will have far-reaching effects on our nation’s politics, and hence on the world’s progress in overcoming the threats posed by catastrophic climate change. Compared to the amount Exxon (for example) spends every year on advertising, the total cost of a national election is a drop in the bucket; corporate speech will dominate our political discourse for decades to come. Say goodbye to the few remaining scraps of genuine political debate. Say goodbye to effective citizen advocacy. Worst of all, say goodbye to the few lone voices of scientific fact trying desperately to call our attention to a looming climate disaster. Because corporate behavior is statutorily focused on short-term profit, outcomes a decade or a century from now are irrelevant. Do worst-case climate scenarios predict Venus-like conditions on Earth within a few centuries? “Who cares? Let’s elect the politicians who’ll maximize our Return on Investment!” This would be an obviously non-partisan issue were it not for the fact that the entire Republican party is utterly and completely in the thrall of corporate interests, and will block any attempts at reform — even when they are obviously in the best interests of the nation as a whole. Not to mention the planet.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Barack Obama executive orders MA-Sen Robert Gibbs
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Day 20: A Fax to the White House
Very busy tonight. Took a break and started to write a 1-paragraph fax to the WH (black ball-point pen on unlined paper) but it got away from me and ended up two pages long, and tackling two separate subjects. The first is of course the environment, and was specifically referencing the excellent record President Obama has built up (largely inconspicuously) of environmentally positive executive orders, but the second is the astonishing statement by Robert Gibbs that the President was “surprised and frustrated” with the outcome of the MA election. Normally I try to avoid jamming multiple subjects into a single letter or fax. Not tonight; I was just too pissed off.
Dear Mr. President,
Two things:
First, despite the lack of legislative action on climate-change issues and the disappointing outcome of the Copenhagen Conference, your first year in office has soon some good results in environmental areas through your use of executive orders. Thank you.
Second, I gather that you told Robert Gibbs that you were “surprised and frustrated” by the outcome of my state’s recent election. As a MA-07 resident and a lifetime progressive Democrat, I was certainly frustrated, but I wasn’t surprised. You need to get some new advisors; the ones you’ve got are hiding the truth from you. We are the people who worked to get you elected, donated beyond our budgets, called till we were hoarse. And what have we gotten? Geithner. Bernanke. Summers. Howard Dean excluded. Surrender fromthe Administration, on almost every front. It’s a politician’s prerogative to change his mind, but it is buzarre that after this past year you could not be aware of the growing despondency of the (formerly energized) progressives. And in a nutshell, that is what lost MA-Sen. Martha Coakley ran a terrible campaign, but her failure is a local one by comparison. November 2010 is going to be very unpleasant if you and your senior staff continue through the next six months as you have over the past twelve.
We need an aggressive president who will tackle these issues without a need for the conforting illusions of “bipartisanship.” We elected YOU president, not Olympia Snowe or Joe Lieberman.
Anyway, congratulations on your many successful executive orders on the environment, including increased mpg standards, protecting many Federal sites by blocking Bush rules, strengthening the EPA, establishing the new Wilderness Area, toughening smog rulings, and many others. I applaud this aspect of your presidency without reservation.
Thank you,
Warren Senders
No fancy verbiage there.
Day 19: A Post-Election Missive
Too tired after watching Coakley’s unbelievable shambles of a campaign crash and burn to do much more than fire off a short one to the Boston Globe.
Massachusetts has officially elected a climate-change skeptic to the Senate. Among other things, this illuminates an unbelievable lack of scientific literacy in our schools, in our media, and in our politics. It is long past time for the White House to point out that denying something doesn’t change scientific facts. The Earth’s biosphere is in serious danger from decades of unregulated emissions of greenhouse gases; it’s not just humans who are moving rapidly toward a catastrophic evolutionary bottleneck, but millions of other life-forms as well. The Bush administration addressed climate change by denying its origin, its severity, and sometimes its existence — while passing cynically titled anti-environmental legislation with a bare majority in the Senate. The Obama administration seems to address climate change in the opposite way: by acknowledging its origin, severity and existence, while timidly refraining from using the Presidential bully pulpit to educate the public about the most severe existential threat ever faced by humans. Scott Brown may think atmospheric CO2 concentrations soaring to Mesozoic Era levels is a sign of economic growth, but his descendants, and ours, will judge us very harshly for our failure to act effectively while we still had the time.
Warren Senders
I phonebanked for Coakley, donated and did a bit of sign-holding at the polls. I think she would have been an excellent Senator. But…By Grabthar’s Hammer, that was the worst clusterf**k of a political campaign I’ve ever seen or heard. Martha made John McCain’s presidential run look like a finely polished gem.
environment Politics: filibuster Joe Biden
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Day 18: Joe Biden Hears From Me
This morning I read a nice piece at Kos, titled “Vice-President Biden Bashes the Filibuster.” Better late than never, I suppose. I still cannot believe it’s taken the Administration this long to figure out that they’re dealing with an opposition party that is entirely composed of people who think Fox News is genuinely Fair and Balanced; an opposition party of delusional sociopathic denialists, actually.
So I wrote Joe a letter. I emailed it to him at the WH website, and I’m going to print it out and mail it to him tomorrow.
It was interesting to craft a letter in which climate-change issues were the secondary theme rather than the primary focus. This will open up more possibilities on the days when I have time to compose new material rather than just recombine my old verbiage.
Dear Vice-President Biden,
I was deeply gratified to read that you recently made the statement that, “As long as I have served … I’ve never seen, as my uncle once said, the constitution stood on its head as they’ve done. This is the first time every single solitary decision has required 60 senators. No democracy has survived needing a supermajority.” The supermajority requirement has effectively stifled participatory democracy in our country. When a single senator from a low-population state can hold up a bill which is supported by the vast majority of the nation’s population, we no longer live in a democratic republic.
While this situation has been made obvious by the continuous wheeling and dealing over health-care legislation, the supermajority requirement will stand in the way of meaningful action on another policy initiative, one that is even more important for our long-term viability as a nation and as a planet. How can genuine action on climate-change legislation take place in the face of the 60-vote requirement?
Our oceans are becoming acidified, with potentially catastrophic results for the billions on Earth who depend on the seas for their food. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations are already above the levels Dr. James Hansen calls the maximum to “sustain the climate in which civilization evolved and to which all planetary life is adjusted.” America needs to assume the leadership responsibilities that go along with being a global superpower, and that means that passing a robust climate bill is essential at all levels: it’s essential for our economy; it’s essential for the health of our citizens; it’s essential for our country’s role in the world; it’s essential for the survival of our planet.
I urge you to suggest to Majority Leader Reid and other members of the Senate that they adopt the proposal of Senator Tom Harkin, in which a gradually decreasing majority would be required for cloture. It is my understanding that this could come up for consideration at the opening of the next session of Congress, when the Senate Rules Committee can institute changes to the Senate’s rules of procedure. We need to reform the abuse of the filibuster as soon as possible, so that a tiny minority of lawmakers can no longer effectively paralyze the Senate, making progress impossible.
Thank you.
Yours sincerely,
Warren Senders
I’m pretty tired. I did 5 hours of phonebanking for Coakley today and will be helping voters get to the polls tomorrow morning. If you live in Massachusetts, REMEMBER TO VOTE!!!
Day 17: Do You Seriously Think Newsweek Would Actually Print This?
I did 7 hours of phonebanking for Martha Coakley yesterday. You can read the story here if you’re interested. Today I was teaching most of the day, so I didn’t have time to write my letter until now. You’ll note that I took the Brian Aldiss quote I’d used a few days ago and built a new edifice around it.
Do I actually think Newsweek will publish this letter? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
If you live in Massachusetts, remember to VOTE on Tuesday.
The science-fiction writer Brian Aldiss described civilization as “the distance man has placed between himself and his waste,” and by this criterion ours is the most advanced civilization in human history. But it is increasingly obvious that when we are this distant from our waste, we are at best oblivious to it and at worst openly contemptuous of efforts to reduce it (as witness Dick Cheney’s sneering remark that “Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy.”).
The problem is, simply, that the laws of physics are oblivious to our posturing. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and when the CO2 output of our civilization overwhelms the absorptive capacity of our oceans and forests, the earth’s atmosphere will heat up. Let it get warm enough, and the frozen methane under the Arctic Ocean will enter the atmosphere, triggering a terrifying positive feedback loop. The best-case result of that is what is euphemistically called an “evolutionary bottleneck.”
But it is much easier to fixate on the latest celebrity scandal du jour than it is to confront catastrophic climate change while there is still time. If the public understood the difference between denialism and scientific fact, it would be simple to recognize lies and debunk them. Instead, while the world’s ecosystems collapse under the strain of our accumulated waste, irresponsible broadcast and print media bombard us with a steady stream of celebrity scandals, distractions and irrelevancies. Albert Einstein put it very clearly when he said, “We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.” What we need is nothing more or less than a new definition of civilization, one which embodies a wholly different attitude towards waste. If we do not act now to redefine civilization for ourselves and our descendants, our great-great-grandchildren will curse us for blighting their lives with a cultural and environmental heritage that amounts in the end to a world full of toxic trash.
Warren Senders
Please feel free to cut and paste parts of what I’ve written into your own letters to our media and politicians. If you have suggestions for people and/or organizations I should write to, I would welcome them.
environment Politics: copenhagen Desperation New York Times Pi***ng into the wind Todd Stern
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 1, Month 1, Day 16: The Gray Lady
The New York Times has a length limit of 150 words; I managed to get it down to 149. Tomorrow I’ll be out most of the day making calls for Coakley at a local phonebank. I hate doing it, but it’s not something I feel a lot of choice about. My voice will be wrecked by the evening…with luck I’ll recover before a full day of teaching on Sunday.
Another of the Times’ stipulations is that letters have to explicitly address an issue discussed in a recent article. Fortunately, a few seconds of searching their site found me a recent piece on the possibilities of post-Copenhagen progress on climate, and I framed my letter around that. It was fun getting it trimmed to fit a 150-word maximum; I’ll try again in another week or so.
If you have suggestions for other journals, papers, magazines or forums I can write to, I will be interested in hearing them!
American climate change negotiator Todd Stern’s is cautiously optimistic (“U.S. Official Says Talks on Emissions Show Promise” – John M. Broder, January 14). Unfortunately his caution is more reality-based than his optimism. Stern’s statements are full of conditionals, as witness the end of the first sentence: “…if countries followed through on its provisions.” The dilemma lies, as do so many of our problems, in the Senate, where a significant number of lawmakers have abandoned any notion of crafting policy around scientific consensus, basing it instead on poll numbers or ideological opposition to the current administration. And because our mass media has for years downplayed the threat posed by global climate change, the public has not grasped the terrifying reality of anthropogenic climaticide for what it is: a planetary emergency of unparalleled scale. Our failure to address this crisis with the requisite urgency may be the final failure of our species.
Warren Senders