With growing numbers of scientists declaring that the global climate crisis is approaching a point of no return, there is a huge and bewildering disconnect between our physical world and our political environment. Our government's response to the prospect of runaway climate impacts is one of paralysis.
The negligence of the Bush administration is understandable. The White House has become the East Coast branch office of ExxonMobil and Peabody Energy. The fossil-fuel lobby is essentially writing the administration's climate and energy policies. As a result, climate change has become the preeminent case study of the contamination of our political system by money. This is not political conservatism. This is corruption disguised as conservatism.
How hot will it have to get?
The case of Congress, however, seems a bit different. The inaction of Congress in the face of a civilization-shattering threat seems less like corruption and more like simple, old-fashioned, bipartisan cowardice.
Several Republican senators and representatives are offering puny efforts to address the climate crisis -- all of them lame given the urgency and magnitude of the challenge. Congressional Democrats, given their widespread support for the Iraq war and the War on Terror, should be using climate change as a key issue to distinguish themselves from their Republican counterparts. But their equally ineffective approaches testify to the failure of our political system to effectively engage nature's challenge.
Even those congressional Democrats who acknowledge the threat seem petrified by the prospect of any meaningful action. For starters, virtually all their proposals center on market-based "cap and trade" mechanisms, which are dismally inadequate in the face of the problem. We cannot trade our way to deep cuts in our emissions. Carbon trading is most useful as a fine-tuning instrument -- to help countries achieve the last 10 or 15 percent of their obligations. It is not the workhorse vehicle to propel a 70 percent energy transition. We cannot finesse nature with accounting tricks.
What is missing from all of their deliberations is the sense of desperation and helplessness shared by all of us who are shaken by each new terrifying report about our increasingly unstable climate.
One group is trying to shake Congress out of its lethargy. The Climate Crisis Coalition is launching a drive called ClimateUSA to put the issue of global climate change squarely on the agenda of the November elections. The goal: to get as many congressional incumbents and challengers as possible to take a visible public position on the issue. The group is drawing on the volunteer energy of the more than 40,000 people who have signed a web-based People's Ratification of the Kyoto Protocol.
Those volunteers will present candidates in a number of key districts with the group's platform. The candidates, in turn, will be asked either to endorse that platform or to put forth their own positions on the climate issue.
The group's three-part platform calls for:
- The withdrawal of federal subsidies for coal, oil, and natural-gas development -- as well as the withdrawal of some subsidies for carbon-intensive agriculture -- and the establishment of subsidies to jump-start a renewable-energy economy based on wind, solar, tidal power, biomass, small-scale hydropower, and other sustainable energy and agricultural technologies.
- The ratification by Congress of the Kyoto Protocol and the formulation of a post-Kyoto framework that would result in a rapid worldwide transition away from fossil fuels to clean-energy technologies.
- The enactment, as a preliminary step, of the non-nuclear version of the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act to begin reducing carbon-dioxide emissions.
As the positions of both incumbents and challengers are collected, they will be posted on the ClimateUSA website so voters will know where candidates stand. This is, at best, a very small step toward the very large goal of preserving a hospitable planet.
It is understandable that ExxonMobil, Peabody, and their allies -- both in and out of Washington -- are deploying immense resources to fight off a clean-energy transition. After all, such a transition threatens the survival of their multibillion-dollar industries.
It is much less understandable why our elected representatives are willing allies in a process that will soon drag the rest of us straight to the bottom of climate hell.
The Copenhagen Conference on food security
Carl Levin (D-Mich.) [UPDATED]
Comments
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mms Posted 6:55 am
22 Jun 2006
This Congress, this administration, are not going to do anything to change this. We need new people representing our interests, our concerns. If we don't have them, we need to create in their districts enough uproar that they will begin to change things -- in a manner commensurate with the danger we face -- or be thrown out of office.
Many folks are disgusted and ready to give up on politics. Don't do it folks. Hang in there. Get on TV and radio talk shows, show up at the candidates' summer events, spoil their picnics if you have to -- make lots and lots of noise!
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bookerly Posted 10:42 am
22 Jun 2006
The first step is people need to get organized, form "Global Warming Watch" committees in your districts. Dog the politicians. Every appearance by any of them should have (polar bears? penguins?)
symbols of the death it is causing who demand answers.
Speak! Speak! It is time to be heard!
patrick
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GulfAaron Posted 12:13 pm
22 Jun 2006
Anywho - Gore and others should spend some of their re$ources to send the remaining climatards to the Arctic Cirle, show them the sea where no sea should be, the not-so-perms-frost, the orphaned walrus pups and polar bear cubs. If they don't see the crisis, we can save the return airfare and feed them to the remaining polar bears.
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mjgraham Posted 12:02 am
23 Jun 2006
While I believe that legal standards are useful and needed, it is not going to be the solution to this dilemna. Let's face it, as a society, we consume FAR TOO MUCH! Unless Americans and others like us begin to change the way we live, the planet is doomed. We build houses far bigger than needed, we are addicted to self-transport instead of mass transit, green space and wetlands are being developed more and more each day while city neighborhoods rot, forests are cut to provide virgin paper we do not need, etc., etc.
Even if our elected officials were totally in touch with the reality of climate change and legislated accordingly, it will not solve the problem until we can get the vast majority of over-consumptive Americans to do their part, as well.
We need to educate citizens on the impact our lifestyles have on climate change, fair wages, immigration, slave labor, and a myriad of other social issues. It is only then that we can expect them to take their government back by electing those who will govern for the people and not the corporations.
MJG - Buffalo, NY
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Rmay Posted 1:25 am
26 Jun 2006
If our elected leaders cannot support methods and technologies that protect the environment while promoting the economy, then we need to vote every one out of office.
America's reliance on gas, coal and those supporting technologies have created:
Exorbitant gas prices that hurt the American family and economy.
Created catastrophic weather patterns destroying thousands of American families i.e. Hurricane Katrina.
An American funding and dependence on Middle Eastern countries that support and fund terrorism on America and Americans.
Why do legislators and Congress continue to fund and support an energy and technology that is outdated and destructive?
1. The current legislative and congressional members are un-American. America's greatness has been built on ingenuity. We have been relying on oil and gas technology in cars for more than a century without any real innovation. If we cannot build, create and promote a new and dynamic source of energy that creates new jobs, industries and worldwide commerce then we are not true American economic entrepreneurs.
and/or
2. The current legislative and congressional members are bought and paid for. How else can we explain our dependence on fossil fuel technologies that are more than 100 years old. How much has the computer evolved in the past decade? Yet we are still reliant on 19th century energy sources and technologies in the 21st century.
and/or
3. Legislators and congress members are incompetent.
No matter what the reason, it is our job as voters to vote them out of office and elect politicians who will create a new source of energy and technology that protects the environment and boosts the economy.
Please pass this e-mail to everyone in your group and go to the following web site - http://www.i-movement.com/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=6 to show your support. We need every American to read this e-mail, pass it along and hit the web site.
We will present the number of web hits to the Democratic National Party, the Republican National Party and the national media in September. We will give the candidates a chance to include in their election platforms to support energies and technologies that protect the environment AND promote the economy. If the politicians cannot support such an easy concept then we will vote every incumbent out of office.
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