Al Gore's We Can Solve It campaign has a new ad out. Watch it:
They're getting tougher and tougher! Me likey.
They're going to run this one on cable and, if they can raise enough money, "60 Minutes" and "20/20".
Repower America
A new We ad gets feisty 7
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Posted 9:34 PM on 19 Sep 2008
by David Roberts -
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David Roberts is staff writer for Grist. You can follow his Twitter feed at twitter.com/drgrist.
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GreenMom Posted 2:39 pm
19 Sep 2008
[After the election. Right now, I'm tapped out.]
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amazingdrx Posted 3:03 pm
19 Sep 2008
Attach message, it's delivered. Hehey.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 10:33 pm
19 Sep 2008
We in the family of humanity are going to be forced to do better in our efforts to communicate in a more reality-oriented way about ominously looming threats of an human-driven, global calamity of some kind. If we keep doing precisely what our leaders are saying and doing now, the future for our children looks bleak. We can surely do more and do it better. After all, human beings are remarkably intelligent, ingenious and adaptive.
Before we can determine what new and different to do, perhaps a brief analysis of our current, distinctly human-induced, global predicament is in order. Consider for a moment some of the ways in which my generation of leaders has gone so terribly wrong.
First, the leaders in my generation of elders wish to live without having to accept limits to growth of seemingly endless economic globalization, of increasing per capita consumption and skyrocketing human population numbers; our desires are evidently insatiable. We choose to believe anything that is politically convenient, economically expedient and socially agreeable; our way of life is not negotiable. We dare anyone to question our values or behaviors.
We religiously promote our widely shared and consensually-validated fantasies of `real' endless economic growth and soon to become unsustainable overconsumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities, and in so doing deny that Earth has limited resources and frangible ecosystems upon which the survival of life as we know it depends.
Second, my not-so-great generation appears to be doing a disservice to everything and everyone but ourselves. We are the "what's in it for me generation." We demonstrate precious little regard for the maintenance of the integrity of Earth; shallow willingness to actually protect the environment from crippling degradation; lack of serious consideration for the preservation of biodiversity, wilderness, and a good enough future for our children and coming generations; and no appreciation of the vital understanding that humans are no more or less than magnificent living beings with "feet of clay."
Perhaps we live in unsustainable ways in our planetary home; but we are proud of it nonetheless. Certainly, we will "have our cake and eat it, too." We will own fleets of cars, fly around in thousands of private jets, live in McMansions, exchange secret handshakes, frequent exclusive clubs and distant hideouts, and risk nothing of value to us. We will live long, large and free. Please do not bother us with the problems of the world. We choose not to hear, see or speak of them. We are the economic powerbrokers, their bought-and-paid-for politicians and the many minions in the mass media. We hold the much of the world's wealth and the extraordinary power great wealth purchases. If left to our own devices, we will continue in the exercise of our `inalienable rights' to outrageously consume Earth's limited resources; to recklessly expand economic globalization unto every corner of our natural world and, guess what, beyond; and to carelessly consent to the unbridled global growth of human numbers so that where there are now 6+ billion people, by 2050 we will have 9+ billion members of the human community and, guess what, even more people, perhaps billions more in the distant future, if that is what we desire.
We are the reigning, self-proclaimed masters of the universe..... the thousands of greedy little kings of capital concentration, big business potentates and governmental sinecurists. We enjoy freedom and living without limits. Of course, we adamantly eschew any talk of the personal responsibilities that come with the exercise of personal freedoms or discussions of the existence of biophysical limitations of any kind.
We deny the existence of human limits and Earth's limitations.
Please understand that we do not want anyone presenting us with scientific evidence that we could be living unsustainably in an artificially designed, temporary world of our own making....a manmade world filling up with gigantic enterprises, virtual mountains of material possessions, and boundless amounts of filthy lucre.
Third, most of our top rank experts appear not to have found adequate ways of communicating to the family of humanity what people somehow need to hear, see and understand: the rapacious dissipation of Earth's limited resources, the relentless degradation of the planet's environment, and the approaching destruction of the Earth as a fit place for human habitation by the human species, when taken together, appear to be proceeding at breakneck speed toward the precipitation of a catastrophic ecological wreckage of some sort unless, of course, the world's colossal, ever expanding, artificially designed, manmade global political economy continues to speed headlong toward the monolithic `wall' called "unsustainability" at which point the runaway economy crashes before Earth's ecology is collapsed.
Who knows, perhaps we can realistically and hopefully hold onto the expectation that behavioral changes in the direction of sustainable production, per human consumption, and propagation are in the offing.....changes that save both the economy and the Creation.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/index.php
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Jonas Posted 11:28 pm
19 Sep 2008
But to make it economically viable, we need a few simple transparent accounting rules.
a price on carbon
no subsidies, or equal subsidies (because now some forms of renewable and fossil energy get loads, whereas others don't)
Tech-neutrality and carbon accountability are the key concepts needed in this debate.
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Laurence Aurbach Posted 1:13 am
20 Sep 2008
In the sustainability arena, this means a meager outlook for initiatives like a revamped electric grid, new transit and rail infrastructure, energy efficiency tax credits and so on.
In this context, and given the continuing necessity to lower CO2 emissions, I wonder if carbon taxes may become more politically palatable. The big advantage of carbon taxes is that the costs to consumers and industry can be certain and predictable. After watching the massive failure of the credit industry this fall, I wonder if Americans will prefer revenue certainty to Wall Street betting.
Also, if proposals like that of the Carbon Tax Center are implemented, everybody would receive a rebate from the carbon tax revenues, an idea that could gain popularity in a recession economy. This is the same sort of individual payment that Alaskans get ($2069 in 2008 via the Alaska Permanent Fund) and that Palin supplemented with an additional $1200 "resource rebate." So now that we have a VP candidate from Alaska, let's hear more about dedicated tax revenues that are rebated directly to individuals.
Ped Shed Blog
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LGT Posted 7:54 pm
20 Sep 2008
http://msrb.wordpress.com/2008/09/20/ensuring-national-se ...
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amazingdrx Posted 12:43 am
21 Sep 2008
Unless the idea of rebating the whole tax to those with under 200k income could be understood by the public above the "no new taxes" din. And about half the voters do not want to understand that.
I think subsidy diversion is a more palatable plan. It's easy to see record oil company profits and soaring fuel prices. With this fact up front it's easier to fight the anti-tax rhetoric.
Sure the right will say removing tax breaks for oil, coal, and nuclear is a tax hike, but we can counter that it just redirects yax revenue and doesn't raise taxes.
The Gore carbon tax/rax rebate could come later maybe, after some finanxcial breathing room is attained through a few years of steady reductions in oil demand.
This is where the focus should be now, reducing oil consumption at a steady pace quarter after quarter, with a leader that gets everyone behind that move towards financial recovery and economic confidence.
Oil and oil war are a black cloud over everything we do as a nation right now, because gasoline could soar to 10 bucks overnight with a new invasion ("bomb, bomb, bomb..Iran", as Mcbush says)or a big storm hitting refineries.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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