Lester Brown came to our office today and had a nice chat with us Gristers. (Have you watched my diavlog with Brown? It’s must-see tv!) The guy is wicked smart. You really, really should buy his book Plan B 4.0—it’s the best summation of humanity’s converging ecological problems and the best roadmap to solving them, all in one compact package.
One thing from our chat jumped out at me. In the context of a debate about the clean energy bill in Congress (he thinks it’s worse than nothing), Brown made the point that there’s actually a lot of good carbon policy in the pipeline, which will get us some big gains in the short-term. He cited the boost in fuel efficiency standards from the EPA and DOT; green stimulus spending flowing through DOE and states; EPA’s denial of recent coal mining and power plant permits; new federal enforcement of appliance efficiency standards; EPA’s new CO2 reporting requirements; and various state-level policies like renewable mandates.
These are indeed good policies! Notice anything they share in common? That’s right: they bypass the U.S. Congress.
This gets at one of the few reasons why members of that dysfunctional body might want to muster the will and the votes to change some of the more arbitrary procedural roadblocks preventing them from getting anything done. If they continue being exemplars of pompous, self-important paralysis-by-looking-busy, the country is just going to figure out more and more ways of doing policy around them. They’re going to become increasingly irrelevant. Surely they don’t want that!
Obama administration may (finally) offer greenhouse-gas targets
George Voinovich (R-Ohio) [UPDATED]
Comments
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Tasermons Partner Posted 3:06 pm
16 Nov 2009
In other words, think long-term of how an end to filibusters could hurt us in future as much as it could help us now.
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Gene Preston Posted 5:44 am
17 Nov 2009
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ghostlly Posted 7:01 am
17 Nov 2009
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grey Posted 1:05 pm
17 Nov 2009
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Catmoves Posted 2:40 pm
17 Nov 2009
It should frighten every single American when someone wants to take that right from us.
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David Roberts Posted 2:50 pm
19 Nov 2009
And needless to say, I hardly think that majorities being able to pass bills constitutes creeping fascism.
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Catmoves Posted 5:02 pm
22 Nov 2009
The rule of the vast, unthinking majority can lead directly to fascism and the destruction of an individual's rights and even their existence.
A rough quote: "One man is a great thinker. A group of men are a mob that cannot and will not think."
When majorities alone are in charge passing laws any country is on the knife edge of falling into revolutions.
Our forefathers did not want this country to become a democracy. They wanted a Representative government so that those citizens with opposing views would be heard and their well being considered. This is really non-arguable if the history of our country's founding is studied. And being a fair and equable fact, it has led to things such as gay rights, women's vote, equality in so many things.
A further thought: consider the great men of science and art who walked down a lonely road and found out that the universe did not revolve around the earth, that the human eye can be deceived by certain juxtapositions into believing the artist has rendered something perfectly logical while the work itself is a lie, that innocents are hurt in witch hunts and that the earth is not flat.
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grey Posted 3:45 pm
19 Nov 2009
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Zain Posted 10:15 am
22 Nov 2009
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