…And, speaking of the “confidence quotient” for Congress…
I have just returned from DC, where I joined representatives of the League of Conservation Voters from all over the country to bring an appeal to the doorsteps of our President, our Senators and our Representatives:
Act to address Climate Change Now!
We want to send a message to President Obama, that all the distractions of the past few months are no excuse to neglect the commitment he made in his second inaugural speech, to get the U.S. onboard with responsible climate action.
I seriously doubt that more than a handful of key Republicans continue to deny climate change in their most private conversations; yet, they have succeeded in paralyzing the U.S. response to this global threat. That paralysis leaves us, as a nation, not just guilty of colossal neglect, but also vulnerable to incredible economic impacts for which we remain officially unprepared.
There are good people proposing some kind of meaningful action ( like Bernie Sanders‘ bill proposing a carbon tax); but there are not enough of them and the problem has grown too big for a single bandaid fix.
Even if, by some miracle, the carbon tax was adopted, there would still be contamination by methane from the newly introduced practice of “fracking” which represents a windfall for fossil fuel speculators but ignores the fact that the methane released in the process has roughly five times the potential for climate impact of carbon. We haven’t even succeeded in weaning the fossil fuel industry from it’s grip on the government teat, so we are essentially suckling the demon child that will devour us all!
And, while the President spoke eloquently on Climate Change in January, it is now June and the agenda still appears to be to claim fuel “independence” by ramping up extraction and production of domestic dirty fuels. It’s as if Dick Cheney still haunts the Oval Office. Of course he does; and so do all the fossil fuel industry poltergeists.
I remember reading a couple of years ago about climate change deniers in the legislature of a southern state actually prohibiting state planners from factoring the impact of climate change into projections of shoreline decline over the coming years. I’d like to think that even those folks are finally getting the picture now.
As if on cue, as soon as Bill McKibben announced to the world that we had already exceeded the dreaded 400-ppm, the heavens opened to release some of the most violent storm and climate events of recent memory.
The City of New York, no longer the blase capital of the world, got ahead of the news (and they hope the next big wave) when Mayor Bloomberg announced a $20-billion plan to prepare the city for shoreline loss and the catastrophic weather events predicted for the future. While Mayor Bloomberg may represent the leading edge of official U.S. response to Climate Change, he is well-behind much of the world, where many feel “the end is here,” and nothing is left but to adapt as the inevitable blight descends, leaving island nations homeless and others in economic and societal peril.
And where are all those great plans for reversing the trend? Where are all those folks who claimed we would come up with a “solution” in plenty of time to prevent catastrophe? Let’s hear something helpful from the roughly 1.5% of scientists who are always cited as experts by the knuckledraggers who restrain even the White House from meaningful action.
I only saw the really “good guys” on my Capitol Hill visits; but what they said was uniformly discouraging: “We’re trying but we can’t get much of anything done.”
Unfortunately, that isn’t good enough. Climate crisis won’t wait for the political stars to realign with reality. It’s here right now.
Don’t care which party you vote for or whether or not you want to believe in them. They just merrily keep marching along. Unfortunately, marching along with CO2 levels at such insanely high levels means increasing strength in weather systems, and increasing droughts, wild fires, and floods throughout the world.
The human roadblocks preventing progress in the Congress are playing a cruel game, destined to harm not only those “other” people in countries they don’t care about, but their own families and friends. They will not be immune to tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, or fires. Nor will they be immune to starvation and deprivation as the world’s crops fail from the new unstable climate.
They’re chasing fool’s gold, and will find themselves empty handed in the end.
Fracked gas pipelines are proposed for Chittenden and Addison counties to bring fracked natural gas to International Paper in NY! There is something wrong with that picture!
Climate change and its effects are well underway, and I don’t see any major reversal possible without –and until we have — a major upending of our current economic and political system. Congress doesn’t appear to have the capacity to act, let alone the will, and the president is not likely to act in any big way.
In my mind, the next priorities should include preserving non-human life. As Aldo Leopold said, you must ‘keep all the parts.’ If past is prologue, man when threatened will step up destruction of ‘other’ (non-human) in our clumsy attempt to fix things.
We need to get real about what our lives will be like in the coming years… if we’re not already doing so we should be more involved in our own support system. Learn practical skills and get to know your neighbors better. Do what we can to protect the areas where we live; mend broken things and places; find ways to barter and exchange services. As things unravel new possibilities may present themselves – IF we are capable of seeing them. It seems unrealistic to think we’re going to avoid this self-inflicted asteroid. Change is ‘gonna come.’
They won’t do a damn thing, Sue, because there’s money in this. First off, the money tied-up in oil and everything we use it for, including plundering other Earth resources. Second, the bastards have already figured out that Global Warming opens up more ADVENTURES IN CAPITALISM–Disaster Economics. These people will go where the money is in the short term–the quick grab. Hell, Monsanto allegedly has been involved in some spurious, but not wholly documented, nastiness with its GE crap affecting atmospheric conditions to alter the climate of the growing seasons for farmers and put them out of business. Then Monsanto can have a good lock on our food supply. Look at our season so far in the Midwest.
Hell, look at our seasons here in Vermont. One of the signs that Global Warming has commenced is RAIN in abundance. Supposedly, rainfall will increase around the world, flooding Bangladesh and other nations with ocean shoreline. But also, the rains will take hold in Northern climates–Vermont, Finland, etc., and we will soon see–if not this year–RAIN throughout the Christmas season into January. Yes, I think Global Warming is here, and, rather than solve it, the bastards intend to continue their plunder of the Planet’s ecosystem, knowing that the results can be turned into PROFITS.
We’ll see how the rest of the year goes here in Vermont.