Comments randino has made

Heh, give the guy a break. At least he is not a Red like Van Jones!

Randy Cunningham

That is what is happening on the playing field.  Let us see what happens in the parking lot as powerful coal state politicians move to hold the health care plan hostage to saving MTR mining.  Bet on it.

Randy Cunningham

This is the quality of article that you tune into Grist for.  By the way - the "green on the outside, red on the inside" was a phrase coined by the dead squad right in Latin America to explain why it was justifiable to kill Christian Democrats (whose symbolic color on campaign materials was green) along anyone else they did not like.  How appropriate that the rep from Americans for Prosperity adopted it.  Birds of a feather..........

Randy Cunningham

Now that I have had a long weekend to both hit the ceiling and cool down, I have come to the conclusion that it will end up being good for Van, good for Beck, and absolutely horrible for Obama, who is now marked as a kid who won't fight back when you steal his lunch money.  That is fatal for a politician.

We should remember a few things about the world we live in.

1) Trying to turn an activist into a bureaucrat is like trying to turn a wild animal into a pet. You end up with a lousy wild animal and a lousy pet.

(2) Appointees to positions in government, are like young women who wish to marry an heir to the throne. They should have a history but no past.

(3) This world is run by successful non-entities. Sleek and fat (to use Shakespear's term), colorless, bland, not too stupid and not too intelligent, people who you forget five minutes after meeting them. In short, domesticated animals - like cows.

Anyone who does not conform to standarsd of blandness, is in trouble.  You become the issue.  There is a reason that most politicians are forgotten six months after they leave office.  It is because they are forgettable.  Like cows.

Randy Cunningham

If I call a turtle a turtle, I am not calling him out of his name, as they say in the hood.  I call you a troll because you like to hang out at a web site just to give grief to the regulars.  You are a troll. I would be a troll if I visited conservative web sites, just to razz them, but I don't because I have what you don't have - character.  I also have much better things to do with my life.

Now, there would be a reason not to call you a troll if, for instance, you were a regular who was making posts on the environment on issues like renewables, climate change (which I am sure you are in denial about) public policy regarding national forests, food issues, or the latest announcement of the EPA.  But I have NEVER seen you post on any of those topics.  You have just shown up on these posts about Van Jones, to give the greens some shit.  Now you whine and cry because I have handed it back to you.  Well, quit hanging out in bars where you are not wanted, and you will not have to worry about getting you butt kicked.  You are the type of person who makes harrassing phone calls, eggs someone's house, or goes to town halls to shout someone down. 

You are a troll.  And if you think that term is one of disrespect, let me assure you, it is.  

randino

Gee, I thought "Love it or Leave it" was just a fading nightmare of my youth.  As far as socialist, communist whatever, I have to take a little more affirmative defense.  Socialists were among the first people to demand that workers have rights, in an era where the Robber Barons said "jump" and the whole country jumped. They were at the vanguard of fighting Jim Crow and segregation at a time when most White Americans thought those things were just fine and proper.  They were in the forefront of the movement to end the war in Vietnam.  They have screwed up royally at times in this country, and great crimes were committed in the name of socialism or communism.  But, within the history of this country, they have been more often right, than wrong.  Something that cannot be claimed by the reactionaries who now call themselves conservatives. 

Now, let us get down to the environmental movement.  One of my heroes, and perhaps he was a Van Jones of his day, was Bob Marshall.  He was a journalist, forester, legendary hiker and outdoorsman, and a socialist.  He had a modest job in FDR's administration.  This did not prevent him from taking part in unemployed marches in the nation's capitol.  He was a champion of civil rights in the right of African Americans to enjoy the national forests for recreation.  He was also a person of interest to the FBI - our own political police force.  His brother was red baited out of the leadership of the Wilderness Society during the McCarthy Era.  The fact is that his bosses in the Roosevelt administration knew everthing there was to know about Marshall.  They did not force him out.  A lot of people have compared Obama with FDR.  This is another example of where Obama may be many things - but he sure as hell is not FDR. 

Finally, I get the definite impression that the trolls that have come to reside on Grist like ticks on a dog, would really like to enact an ideological loyalty oath, where anyone who works for the government has to swear that they love capitalism, and that Adam Smith is second only to Jesus Christ.  Another nightmare from my youth.

Randy Cunningham

I hope that there are no more of us out there, who think that reason and Kumbaya will win out with the right.  At times like this I recall that scene in the Untouchables, where Malone tells Ness how to get Capone. 

 You wanna know how to get Capone? They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. *That's* the *Chicago* way! And that's how you get Capone. Now do you want to do that? Are you ready to do that? I'm offering you a deal. Do you want this deal?

I am not suggesting that literally. But we need to understand who we are dealing with. They are not nice people, and we will have to be just as tough as Malone in dealing with them. 

Your day of misfortune is your day of liberation Van. Make them curse the day they got you fired.  And as far as Obama is concerned, well - as the Bible says, he has his reward. 

Randy Cunningham

I have had two.  One in the Plain Dealer toasting the tootsies of some green washers at at local sustainability conference, and another in the New Yorker about college writing programs. Are you in the Cleveland area?  Cue into www.clevelandclimatewatch.org.  That's what I'm up to.

Randy Cunningham

Wal-Mart is very active in green washing "sustainability" summits.  They played a prominent role in a recent one in Cleveland, even though few companies have done more to pave over the region than they have.  I guess they are getting their money's worth from hiring Adam Werbach, yesterday's enfant terribe of the environmental movement.

I have a proposal for the next "genius" award.   Sue Sturgis. 

Randy Cunningham

The progressive community is like an abused child.  Obama rescued us from the mean foster parents who used to lock us in the closet.  As a result we are obsequious in our gratitude, and terrified that we will be sent back to where we came from.  So we don't want to make our new Daddy angry at us.

We really need to put some distance between ourselves and the O man.  For both our sakes.

We have also forgotten how to organize.  But if you want us to put something on You Tube, Twitter, or show our proficiency at being internet whiz kids, we can do that.  But unfortunately that is not what gets the job done.  The only people who still know how to do that are the conservatives, who are organizing circles around us.  We have not even left the locker room.  We are on our knees praying to the O man to save us.   

Randy Cunningham

You are getting warm, Veritone, about where the fault lies.  The fact is that our system of government is designed to be dysfunctional.  Stalemate, gridlock and inertia are not accidents.  They are not aberrations.  They were the intent of our sainted founding fathers, and were designed to protect the "rights" of slave owners and aristocrats.  It is not about the morons at the health care town halls, nefarious Republicans, and duplicitous Democrats.  It is - unfortunately - about much, much more. 

A system of government that worked sort of OK for over 200 years, is the greatest threat this country and this planet face for their futures.  Asking the current governing arrangement to address an issue like climate change, is like asking a porpoise to knit you a sweater.

It is time to call the United States for what it is.  A failed state.

Randy Cunningham

No one wants to critically evaluate themselves.  It is always far easier to list the dirty so and soes who brought you to grief.  It is always that other guy, not me.  The fact is that the same old Seattle tactics were used time and time again.  And the opposition figured it out.  A very old story in the annals of activism. 

Randy Cunningham

My dad was the head of the Chamber of Commerce, and I ended up being a socialist singing revolutionary Sandinista songs in Nicaragua.  My Mom's journey to being a religious sceptic began with her Southern Baptist upbringing.  Take care with how you impose your beliefs on your boy, Ken. You don't want him to end up working for Massey Energy blowing the tops off mountains, now do you? 

Randy Cunningham

We are hamstrung by cowardly and stupid leaders, a dysfunctional political system, a speculative economic system that produces nothing, and no collective imagination.  Now if the health reform initiative fails, along with the climate and energy bills, it will be quite evident to all that we are yesterday's news.  Even if those measures are taken, we will be hard pressed. We are experiencing the sclerosis of the successful.  You get to the top and don't want to rock the boat, and don't want to take any risks, and don't even talk about making any significant change.

Randy Cunningham

George Voinovich is a creature of the utilities and the coal industry in Ohio.  As governor he helped devastate the Ohio EPA - which has never recovered from his administration.  He has always been a toady to the corporadoes.  When they helped overthrow Kucinich from the mayor's office in Cleveland, and replaced him with Voinovich, he commented something to the effect that what they wanted was a caretaker - a C student - as mayor, and a caretaker is what he was.  The man has long been proof that mediocrity has its rewards. 

Thankfully, he has announced that he is retiring.  Don't let the door knob hit you in the ass, George.

Randy Cunningham

Our form of government does not confront a crisis until it is on top of us, snapping at our throats.  We call it democracy, when in fact it is dithering.  As a result we have suffered a civil war, numerous panics and depressions, and while the german army was perfecting its panzer tactics, we were shooting blank guns at trucks painted with signs that said TANK.  So why should we expect our august institutions to respond any differently to the crisis of climate change?  Blame it on the sainted founders.  They screwed us by saddling us with a government and constitution where making any change at all is like turning a battle ship in a bath tub.  There may have been some good reasons for it in the 18th century, but the shelf life on those reasons expired decades ago. 

Randy Cunningham

I am from Missouri and grew up there.  One of the reasons I left were politicians like Kit Bond, who has long had a reputation for being dumber than a box full of rocks. 

Then I went to Ohio!!!  Go figure!!!

Randy Cunningham

This is the type of mentality that will sink this country and this civilization.  It is not the wild eyed jihadies blowing themselves up in market places in the Middle East that will destroy us.  It is the timid and cautious souls who do not want to be too rash, or too extreme, even when they are facing a threat of monumental porportions. 

"Yes, I agree that global warming is a threat." Bull shit. As Edward Abbey said, "Sentiment without action is deadly to the soul."  And the planet.  We are hostages of timid little minds.  They will be the death of us. People like McCaskill make Inhofe look principled.  At least you know where he stands. 

To hell with them all.

Randy Cunningham

With the emphasis on "clean coal" and now "renewable nuclear power" perhaps we should name the Senate Bill the Rube Goldberg or  the Mad Hatter or even the Dr. Strangelove climate bill.  One thing is for certain, this bill will have its goofy to outright crazy side of it, meaning it is a accurate reflection of the politics and society writing it. 

Randy Cunningham

When I look at the current political atmosphere regarding climate change, I am not reminded of the Clinton administration.  I am reminded of the period leading up to World War II.  A period of galloping denial, and rampaging wishful thinking.  When I see the various international conclaves I am reminded of the Munich capitulation to Hitler.  The same forces that were in denial about Hitler then, are in denial about climate change now. 

India's declaration that it will not accept any emissions caps or controls is proof positive that nation states can harbor a death wish, and can commit suicide.  The hardships that the US can expect from climate chaos will look like minor inconveniences, compared to what is headed India's way.  The only thing I can figure out is that the India's economic movers and shakers were all educated in American universities and were indoctrinated in American economics - which is notoriously blind, deaf and dumb when it comes to the environment.

Finally, environmentalists will never understand politics, culture or society until they recognize that societies doing crazy shit is not unusual.  It is normal.  We think reason plays a role in human affairs, when in fact it only plays a bit part.  We need to recognize the irrational.  It is in the driver's seat more often than we like to admit.

Randy Cunningham

Delightful.  However for people of a certain age and political tendency, embracing the flag is kind of like embracing someone who broke your heart, emptied the bank account, got sole custody of the kids, and turned all your friends against you.  It is also the symbol of people who used to beat you up.

Glad you can do it, but it is still a bridge a little too far for me. 

Randy Cunningham

Troll alert! Troll alert!.  I am just suprised that while trashing MoveOn, Catmoves did not also find some gratuitous reason to also trash Nancy Pelosi, ACORN, Cindy Sheehan and other favorite targets of right wing demonology.  Watch out for the green helicopters, catmoves.  They used to be painted black, but under Al Gore's influence they are now green.  Our environmentally correct police are coming for you!

Randy Cunningham

I don't think anyone has stars in their eyes or is going gaga over this bill.  After all it is not our bill, it is Congress's bill - god help us.  But this is what is hard about being active on an issue.  You mull it over, read all the pros and cons, and then take a leap and hope like hell it is for the best.  I just don't want us to get into a bloodbath over this.  At the end of the day, both the pros and the cons will have a hell of a lot more in common with each other, than they ever will with the deniers and planet killers.  Let's remember that.  From my past life in the sectarian left, I saw way too much of that and do not want to see it over this.  Let's keep a cool head, and even though you think the other side has drunk the Kool Aid on this issue, realize that they are your brothers and sisters in struggle all the same. 

Don't worry. I am not going to urge us to join hands and sing Kumbaya.   

Randy Cunningham  

This legislation was not written or approved in our play pen.  Environmental activists did not make up the members of the House of Representatives.  That even this monument to mediocrity was passed is remarkable.  If it passes that cess pool of reaction known as the US Senate, with even two worthwhile provisions we should be prostrate in wonder and adulation.   

Our problem is institutional.  Our institutions were designed to exploit people and resources, and protect the exploiters and despoilers.  What we have just seen is our institutions dispensing with their duties exactly as that bunch of slaver owners, indian hunters, and real estate speculators who founded this country intended. 

Put down your nature manual, crack open some history books and learn about what we are really facing.  Then you will realize it could've been far worse, and will probably be so after the aristocrats in the Senate get through messing with it.  The mighty do as they will.  The weak do as they must.  Guess which camp we are in?  And that is what we must correct.

Randy Cunningham       An actual activist

Jon,  I just think that if activists had had the internet in the 1960s, and been as web dependant as we all are today for our activism, there would still be a half a million troops in Vietnam, and there would still be White and Colored signs up at public accomodations.  I have this real free floating angst about whether the way we are going about things now is the right way.  It is why I enjoy Ken Ward's stuff.  I think he knows that there is a big problem out there with contemporary activism. 

People need to quit hiding behind their computers.  

Randy Cunningham

This is the part I found interesting, "2. They did it without having any grassroots intensity in support of a strong carbon cap to hold skittish congresspeople’s feet to the fire. In fact, Waxman and Markey had to do these deals precisely because they had no grassroots political leverage."

Ever since the Dean campaign in 2004, the punditocracy have been falling all over themselves celebrating the power of the netroots.  Is that power real, or is the power of the netroots one of the biggest frauds ever perpetrated on the activist community? 

I suggest that what we are seeing with the climate bill, and with health care, and with so many other issues is the Netroots Emperor parading down the street in his underwear. The Netroots - all bark, no bite.  The Netroots - the Bernie Madoff of American activism.

Randy Cunningham     Cleveland OH 

Jon, I think what you are going to see - regardless of W-M's fate - will be a continuation of the old Big Green/Little Green split in division of labor and different ways of looking at the world.  There is a palatable difference in how the Beltway crowd operates, and how the grass roots local groups operate. I think - I hope, that a lot of the dynamism on the local level that David mentions, will continue. 

Randy Cunningham  Cleveland OH

It's kind of like a dramatization of Jared Diamond's Collapse.

Randy Cunningham  

Will this never end!

Randy Cunningham

Fighting trolls is like those old Kung Fu movies where the hero is fighting his nemesis in a maze of mirrors.  Recognize that all they have to do is produce doubt.  Meanwhile they demand that you produce whole stadium fulls of documentation.  It is an old racket, first perfected when the chemical and agribusiness industry marshalled their response to Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. They as much as said that they did not intend on refuting her positions.  All they had to do was raise doubt and keep the debate rolling, and rolling, and rolling. As long as the debate continued, no action would be taken and they won. Their rule book was picked up by the tobacco companies and another several generations of people smoked their way into the grave. 

Finally, there is ideology. Climate change denial is on the short list of things you must believe in to be a politically correct conservative. Ideologies become fused with identities.  You will never budge this bunch. 

My suggestion. Disengage and get out of that hall of mirrors, grass hopper.  Argue with fools, become a fool.

Randy Cunningham

We began this process with admonitions to not let the perfect stand in the way of the good.  Then we were told to not let the good stand in the way of the mediocre.  How it looks right now we will soon be told to not let the mediocre stand in the way of the truly disgusting.  Heh, be of good cheer.  We haven't even gotten to the Senate yet! 

Randy Cunningham   Cleveland OH

We see in Washington and Bonn the lackluster results of an activism that is dependant on the Internet and e-mail.  These are tools that are important, but they can also be alienating and isolating and worst of all of questionable efficacy.  We have to get people out from behind their laptops and computer terminals, and rebuild the face to face activism of old.  Now some people would say the people in Iran are showing the power of twitter.  But what got people out in the street were the dumb ass mullahs shutting down the Internet.  A move I hope they come to regret.  People facing people, talking to them in person, building relationships, wearing out shoe leather, taking to the streets and taking the streets from the powers that be, taking risks - that is what democracy and change looks like. 

The people in West Virginia know that the internet is not going to save their mountains and communities.  They are doing it the old fashioned way.  The only way that has ever worked. 

Randy Cunningham  Cleveland, OH.

You gotta be kidding to think this report will have its desired impact on those who must be moved inorder to derail our merry trip over the falls.  First, a significant percentage of Congress - moslty in the Republican camp - do not believe in science.  Second, a significant number of  Americans don't believe in science.  Third, too many of our leaders in the private and public sector, could not give a damn about the future past the date of their life expectancy or retirement.  The only thing they care about is the next election or the next quarterly report.  The generations that are to come, won't be voting for them, and won't be buying their products or services.  To hell with them.  Which is precisely where the report says we will be sending them.     

Randy Cunningham  Cleveland OH

This is one of those forehead slapping moments we have had lately that can give you a mild concussion.  National Security!  The trump card of all those who want to promote stupidity, injustice, tyranny and every form of malady that humanity can inflict on itself. 

I need a drink, or maybe some really heavy duty drugs.

Randy Cunningham

There is one area where they are consistent.  They want to limit the ability of citizens and environmental groups to give input into the process of making energy decisions.  This is their love of democracy.   

The Repubican Party is to the environment, what the Aryan Nation is to Jews and African Americans. Wish it weren't so, but it is.  Saying that the issue is not a partisan one, is to show that you are as out of touch with reality as the GOP is.  Which is really scary.  Believe me.  I have tangled with Republicans before.  They don't "get it."  They aren't interested in "getting it." The reason is ideological and they are as rigid in this ideology as their former enemies the communists were.  Until there is a revolution in the GOP that will throw the jihadies out, Republicans will continue to spit when they hear the word environment.

Randy Cunningham

If anyone derives any hope from the Obama administration on these cosmetic "reforms" then I want them to contact me immediately.  I have one hell of a lake to sell them.  It is just north of town.

Randy Cunningham  Cleveland, OH

Cry havoc and unleash the dogs of direct action and civil disobedience.  "Hit" (to use an old community organizing term that he knows) him every time he shows his face outside of Washington.  Federal buildings should be picketed.  His environmental representatives should be given  paper sacks to put over their heads in shame.    

Reform MTR? That is like reforming rape or torture. 

Randy Cunningham

I think we need to step back and ask what is wrong with strategies that do not seem to be working.  I am not talking about just climate.  On issues from health care to Afghanistan, there is a thunderous silence in the progressive community.  The only thing we hear is the sound of clicking key pads as we e-mail, blog, text and twitter.  This is what activism has devolved to today, and I think it is one of the reasons we are blowing some really historic opportunities.  Technology is great, but it has been substituted for movement building, activism, and the irreplaceable connecting of person with person, face to face - not over a message board, but in the "real" world.  I frankly think the boasts of internet activism are fraudulent, and are failing to deliver the goods that old fashioned shoe leather used to bring.  We need to e-mail less, and raise hell more. 

Randy Cunningham

This is a particularly relevant article given our situation in Ohio, where there is an almost annual effort made to turn our state parks, forests and nature preserves over to the drillers.  The latest scam is a part of the war that is on its way between the Repubican Senate and Democratic House over the budget.  The Republicans slipped in another drilling proposal as part of their budget resolution.  The Democratic House Speaker tried to do the same earlier and was told in no uncertain terms by the rest of the causcas that the proposal was DOA.  The excuse in the past was to provide natural gas to Ohioans facing an energy shortage.  The excuse now is that the state's cut in the action, will be able to help fill the fiscal melt down the state is in.  Behind it all, is the fact that a state that is poor in public lands that its ciitizens could enjoy, has a state house that does not respect our public lands, really would prefer not have any, and looks upon what we have as a plumb to reward supporters in the timber and mining industries. 

Randy Cunningham   Cleveland, OH

The issue is what do you do to keep both the earth and WV from going under.  I have a modest proposal based on what happened years ago when the advent of container ships spelled doom for the east coast long shoremen.  Their union and the shipping companies made a deal to continue to give pay and benefits to the long shoremen until they could claim retirement. 

We should pension off those who are still mining, as renewables come in and coal starts to decline. Anyone who is a child of a miner can claim benefits equal to the GI bill.  Turn states and areas like WV from the least educated to the most well educated, with resulting economic gains.  I would even suggest some sort of tax on energy from renewables, enacted in a manner that would pay benefits to those displaced by the end of coal. 

We have to take care to make whole, those who by economic necessity depended on the old climate wrecking industries.  It is just.  It is smart.  It will cut the feet out from under those fighting climate action.

Randy Cunningham   Cleveland, OH

I have noticed a definite recent fondness in Grist for what used to be called "cheese cake."  First there was the eye popping lingere report from Umbra (was that Umbra modeling? Please say yes.) and now this hubba hubba cover of Rolling Stone.  

I know you all want to be popular in your appeal, but where will this stop?. Pant, pant.

Randy Cunningham  Cleveland, OH

I usually run the other way, when I see programs on climate change.  I am glad I didn't on this.  It was excellent.  ABC was smart to use GuerrillaFX as the illustrator of Lucy's story.  The commentators were top notch.  I had to pinch myself to believe that ABC was doing this.  One of my friends commented that it put PBS to shame. 

I know people who avoid TV as a matter of principle.  Good green people. Well, they were the losers on this one.  Too bad ABC is probably getting swarmed by the hell spawned legions of deniers, and that most people ran to change channels when they saw the topic. 

Randy Cunningham

This bill is not before the legislature of Ecotopia. It is - god help us - before Congress.  One should be exceedingly modest in what you expect to get from the beltway.  In fact if it 51% good and 49% bad, I call it a victory.

As much as we may bitch, moan and kvetch about this climate bill, I have to ask those who are opposing it if they want no bill at all. If we would get no bill at all, in order to wait for that great, getting up morning when we get all that we want, I want to ask the detractors how they will feel if it goes down.  I, for one, will feel like shit. And if it goes down, what will that do to the morale of the entire environmental movement, here and around the world. I think that morale will collapse, and despair will set in. And please explain to me what coalition, that is even conceivable in the present political status quo, will give us what we want? Bet you can't.  In my book, something beats nothing every time. Maybe other people prefer nothing.  Maybe they enjoy the view from Mt. Disdain. That's their call.

Congress is the playing field.  Plan for the parking lot.  Remember where the action is. 

Randy Cunningham, Cleveland OH

This past week, might end up being a week that will go down as historic.  Not because of Pelosi's problems, or the latest rantings of Cheney, but because this week was when we started disenthralling ourselves from the Obama worshipping mentality of the campaign.  On health care, Guantanemo, Afghanistan and many other things, people started waking up to the fact that in the age of Obama, activism is more needed than ever before.  We must not only support him when he is right, we must not be afraid to kick his ass when he is wrong.  This is what was missing from the scene.  I am glad that people are getting arrested in Congressional hearings about health care.  What is needed now is for some people to get arrested at the Interior Department over these horrendous decisions on mountain top removal coal mining.  Obama is not the Messiah.  He is a politician, and politicians operate best when they are given a good, old fashioned thrashing from time to time. 

The dream is over. Reality is back and so is the need for old fashioned, take names and kick butt activism and militancy.  

Randy Cunningham, Cleveland OH

When it comes to regulation of CO2, this will be seen as an Emancipation Proclamation for the environment. Flawed, limited and not close to enough, but a very, very big step. As far as Obama is concerned, I have just been paid back for all the drudgery of the fall. As far as the rest of us? Keep on pushing!

Brought to you by 40 years of law and order,

and eight years of anti-terrorism hysteria.

The result is a toxic atmosphere for dissent. We have police departments that do not hesitate to make mass arrests of demonstrators regardless of the pretext. The goal is not to make a case in court. The goal is to suppress dissent.

Everyone has meekly agreed to free speech zones at such events as political conventions. No one so much as notices mass arrests of the press at such events. When a political convention comes to town the bill of rights goes out the window.

We have draconian security laws such as the Ohio Patriot Act, which has chilled the atmosphere for dissent or any form of civil disobediance in the state, because to do is to risk being charged with a felony and your organization being declared a RICO type organization.

In ways large and small, we have become like the proverbial boiled frog. Today we live in a soft police state. The bill of rights had might as well be printed on toilet paper. That way it would be of some use.  

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

It started with Silent Spring

The play book of what I call the Triple Ds (deny, delay, dither) was first written by the chemical and agribusiness industries to counter Rachel Carson's arguments in Silent Spring. The goal is not to necessarily defeat your foe. It is to spread doubt, and keep the debate going. The longer you keep it going, the less chance there is for risk and change adverse politicians to actually do something about the problem. So when you agree to debate the Triple Ds they've got you right where they want you - namely wasting your time and energy on them. Gore did not fall for this trick bag to his credit, no matter what the mouth breathers have to say.

There is a big weakness with our side. We seem to think that if we just present reasoned and logical arguments we will win the day. WRONG! The side that uses only reason and logic in political (which is what this is) conflict, usually loses. We have to talk to the whole person - their hearts and their minds, and avoid like the plague the post-graduate seminar template that is all too common in the environmental movement.

Finally, I would really like to hear some good analysis of the American right and its antipathy towards environmentalism in general and the climate change issue in particular. Having locked horns with my share of right wingers, let me say that this animosity is deep, ideological, and based on faith and culture. If someone has done such an analysis I would like to know where to find it.  

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

Obama

says he is for change, and so far he is delivering on a dizzying number of fronts big and small. The problem is that he is trying to take us into the future, with a staff that is firmly tied to the old neo-liberal verities of the recent past. Verities whose finger prints are all over the current economic disaster. The fact is that Summers and Geitner come from the Robert Rubin school of economics, and look at the history of the Clinton administration. Rubin was a sworn enemy of taking any initiative on climate change. Robert Reich is still trying to remove the shiv, Rubin put in his back.

Obama has two big problems - both legacies of the past. The first is Afghanistan, which is a huge historical IED waiting to go off under Obama's presidency. The other is how he is depending on the very same people who got us into this fix, to get us out of it. My big fear is that the environment and thus the future will be thrown under the bus, either by such advisors, or by Obama not being able to deliver on his promises because he is brought down by economic catastrophe.  

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

Obama demobilized his own base

with decisions on his cabinet that made you wonder if his administration would be the first Obama administration or the third Clinton one, to say nothing of welcoming Republicans into his cabinet. Then he spent an inordinate amount of time courting the Republicans, who to use an old Texas political saying "drank his whiskey, ate his chicken, screwed his women, and still voted against him."

Meanwhile, those who worked their hearts out for him were starting to wonder "Heh, what about us?" Once again we see a fundamental genetic difference between the two parties. Republicans cling to their base, and Democrats run away from theirs.

That is why Republicans were so successful in mobilizing their base, and drowning Congress in letters, emails and phone calls objecting to the stimulus package.

Obama, better learn the meaning of another Texas political saying. "You dance with them that brung you." I think he is starting to wake up to that. The energy department speech was a starter. He needs to get his blood up.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

You know Curtis,

I am not a happy go lucky type person. If chicken little came up to me on the street and told me the sky was falling, I would hiss "Of course it is, you little fool!" I mean Cassandra is my patron saint. I consider Leonard Cohen's old downer albums to be party music.

But you, Curtis, you make me look like Mary Poppins. No small accomplishment.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

Thanks, Ken.

Another great Gramsci line was: "The old is dying and the new cannot yet be born. In the meantime, all manner of morbid characteristics appear."

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

PETA has a chink for kink.

I have an excellent topic for some PhD candidate in Social Psychology, Sexology, or Sociology. The Psycho/Sexual Culture of PETA: An example of the use of sexual themes in the animal rights movement.

Come on, grad students. You have a gift right in front of you!

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

David, give the man at least a little credit!

I have had to pinch myself at least once a day since last Tuesday, as one executive order after another comes down repealing the hateful legacy of the Bush administration.

As my posts have attested to, I am an advocate of tough love with the Obama administration. But! Let us dish out blame and praise as called for! I think environmentalists and other progressives have been kicked in the teeth so many times that we are all have PTSD. You know, where the slightest stimuli causes us to go off - often at friends and family.

So, lets give the man some credit for the next 24 hours. Lord knows, there will be plenty of opportunities in the future for us to have some real greviances with him.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

Is this critical?

Should activists dance to the latest poll? In the grand scheme of pushing for change, are polls really what we should be looking at?

If the polls were critical during the war for independence, we would still be toasting the Queen's health. After all, a third of the colonists were in favor of independence, a third for the Brits, and a third probably wished a plague upon the first two catergories. And I hate to tell you this, especially in the kumbaya afterglow of the Obama inaugaural, but if in the 1950s you would have made your decisions based on polls, I would wager we would still have White and Colored drinking fountains.

This poll mania, is the twin of another mirage, the search for the mythical center in politics - the god head of the chattering classes.

Our job is change, which is never "smart", never "practical" and never "popular." Our job should not be groveling before conventional wisdom, polls and the mad search for the right message to use to manipulate people with. If that is what we are about then I am sure there are a lot of other things we would rather be doing, and the Grist staff could find far more lucrative jobs with their proven talents.  

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland OH

Randy Cunningham

Thanks Pangolin

for displaying your "masses are asses" line that is so very helpful in making the case that environmentalists are latte sipping elitists, who don't give a squat about ordinary people. Environmentalists like you are a constant joy for the interests and ideologues we just said good riddance to with the Bush administration.  

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

Our resident troll was not impressed

but this was at least an address of a president who does not spit when he says environment, from a party that has not made itself into the servant of every polluter in the country. Now his work begins, and more important our work begins.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

A Bloviator

In short a bullshit artist. The word was first coined by President Warren G. Harding to spoof his own speaking style. And Lou Dobbs is one of the most able of all practioners of the art old Warren first named.

Dobbs reminds me of what a Latin American commentator on the media once said. "The more news we watch, the more ignorant we become."

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

It is the duty of all of us

to fight buzz words, which are the linguistic equivalents of zebra mussels and asian carp. One word I treat with scorn is sustainable. If it ever meant anything to begin with, it was long ago rendered useless by the greenwashers. Empowerment is another word I love to hate.

The big word we have to worry about is environmental. It is to the tongue, what the Star Spangled Banner is to song. An abomination. I think that Grist should start a contest to find its replacement. It has to be short, but potent and not seen before. It would be nice if it did not lend itself to easy adoption by the green washers. I volunteer to be on the panel of judges.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

After some underwhealming appointments

I now have some people to cheer for. This appointment, plus the national science advisor, and Helen Solis to labor - the clouds have broken up over my head and the sun is out.

Today, I am a happy camper.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

He will be President.

Not a God King. History does not spring from the brow of the occupant of the oval office. It is made, for the most part, outside the beltway. I worked my ass off for Obama, but I did so knowing that he was my friend up unti January 20th. Then it will be another day and we will see what we will see.

We didn't solve our problems by electing him president. We just chose a new set of problems. And the burden is with us to make history, not to wait around for Obama as Santa Claus to come down the chimney.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

I hope Dowie's book is not out of print.

I think Losing Ground might be a very good book to put on your holiday vacation reading list, because it focuses on environmental politics during the last Democratic administration. There are a lot of things that are different, but a lot that remains the same - especially given Obama's dependance on so many veterans of the Clinton administration.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

On the other hand!

The problem we get into, is when we start to get bogged down by the ultimates. "Ultimately, there is no difference between ______. Fill in the blanks.

The problem with such ultimate thinking, is that most people and most issues we deal with, are dealt with in the short term - not the ultimate. This is where the differences between respective governments become critical. Utlimately, the forest service will continue to whore itself out to extractive industries. Like it has for a hundred years. But a new administration may quit trying to roll back public input, or subvert the NEPA. That may not mean much to those of us obsessed by the ultimates, but let me tell you, it means the world to forest defense groups and their work.

I did not work my ass off for Obama thinking it would bring me a stair way to heaven. But I thought that it would significantly alter the political terrain in a more friendly way. That seems to be happening, and that is good enough for me at this moment. The metaphysics of ultimate thinking, does not matter all that much in my activist life.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OHOn Protests heat up over Australia's climate plan posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago 5 Responses

Obama in Not Our Sugar Daddy

I hope that is not a bolt from the blue for most of us. We did not make our lives easier by getting him into office. We merely traded one set of difficulties for another set of difficulties. It is a set of difficulties I am happy to be burdened by, compared to eating bitterness under Bush. They are difficulties all the same.

But! On January 21, 2009 we will start it all over again. No vacations. No easy street. Our work will continue.

Yeah. I know. Life sucks.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

Overall impression of Obama's green team.

They seem to be a bunch of solid B students. None of them are on the cutting edge of environmental thinking. None of them are risk takers or trail blazers. Instead they are competent functionaries. They also benefit from lowered expectations on the part of an environmental movement that has been traumatized by eight years of hacks, ideolouges, and former industry lobbyists setting policy.  

Come to think of it, I am glad that the best and brightest of the environmental movement have not been tapped. We will need the talent out in the hinterlands as we both support and oppose the initiatives of the new administration.

So I am not hyperventilating about any of the choices. We have to keep the initiatives coming from the grassroots, from local governments and NGOs. As Obama himself said, that is where change comes from.  

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

Reason for squemishness on population.

There are some very good historical reasons why so many environmetalists are so hesitant to deal with population issues, even though the basic argument for population stabilization and even reduction is a no brainer.

The issue of population has been a happy hunting grounds for fascists, racists, nativists, and other unsavory characters that no decent person would want to rub shoulders with. These thugs help justify many of the negative sterotypes that our foes delight in beating us up with. Namely that we are elitists, racists and "green imperialists." It shares this characteristic with the issue of immigration.

Unfortunately I see little to no recognition of this historical burden on the part of population activists in the environmental movement. To them it is just a matter of numbers, and nothing else matters.

Until population activists do an exorcism of the issue, in order to cast out the demons who have flocked to it, they can continue to expect to receive a cold shoulder from many environmentalists.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OHOn Obama's energy and environment appointments unveiled posted 11 months, 3 weeks ago 2 Responses

Moderation and Expertise

First moderation or the vital center is a mirage, a collective hallucination of the chattering punditry. Moderation only has whatever meaning that the right or left allows it to have. It is political stance without any significant literature, philosophy, or thinkers.

It will be good to have an intelligent president for a change. But the sad fact of the matter is that most of the catastrophies that are currently falling upon our heads, were created by "experts." Experts with a lot of experience screwing up the world in previous administrations. Those of us of a certain age can well remember the scourge of our youth - the Vietnam War. Brought to you by the Best and the Brightest.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

Road Kill

The auto industry and its friends have been living in a dream world where all the calendars read 1960. They have fought tooth and nail any safety legislation, any fuel economy standards,and any environmental and climate legislation for over 40 years. Whenever anyone has proposed any changes to their 1960 version of business as usual, they have told us that they can't do it, because it will drive them out of business. The American automobile industry always tells us what it can't do. It never tells us what it can do. If they really get desperate they take their employees and their communities hostage. "Do as we say, or the little guy gets it!"  

You can respond to change in two ways. You can buy into it, or you can get run down by it. The auto industry and people like Dingel chose to stand in its way. They are road kill.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

Wolverine,

I think it is important for progressives to start to admit that they are operating in the USA. Not Europe. Not the 3rd world. When I hear people recommending the Green Party, Nader, etc I realize that they probably need a GPS, because they obviously don't know where they are.

American progressives always say they are about making social change. It is too bad they have shown so little interest in, and displayed so little competence at how to make change in the USA.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

Caution vs Audacity

Under the current conditions, I think caution is far more perilous than audacity. There are many in Washington and the punditocracy who are counseling centrism and caution. I think they are wolves in sheeps clothing. Centrism to me means do nothing. Don't rock the boat. Play it safe. Those who are giving such counsel to Obama, are the same people who have wanted us to do nothing about climate change, nothing about health care, nothing about inequality, and nothing about the war in Iraq.

They are drawing the wrong lessons from history on two fronts. The first is that the Contract with America, and the GOP overeach during the Clinton administration proves the danger of overeaching. Yes the GOP lost in its next round of Congressional elections. But it kept a lot of the ground it had gained by being audacious. It maintained the dominance of conservative politics and values in our country, and even forced Clinton to do its bidding on welfare reform. The second mistake is the dogma that we live in a center right country. Ergo, any policy proposal to the left of Attila the Hun has no chance. Bull shit. Don't let the labels people use to describe themselves, obscure where they really stand on issues. They say the French talk left and vote right. A case can be made that Americans talk right and vote left. Get beyond the labels, and there are polls showing strong support for government intervention in the economy, to help the hapless, and to protect the environment.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I hope Obama ignores the Pharisees in his midst who are urging caution. If he listens to them, then he will go down in history not as the worst or best President, but as the most disappointing.  

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

I can't think of a better example

of an issue the environmental movement should mobilize around after the new administration comes in. Both the new administration and the coal industry will be particularly vulnerable to a well organized effort.

MTR is like clubbing baby seals. The more information you put out there and then more pictures you show to the public, the worse it gets for the coal companies. It is the soft underbelly of the coal industry.  

Even if Obama wins, this will be an opportunity for the e-movement to show him that he might be our friend, but we aren't just going to roll over for anything he does. Such independance should be established early.

I love Obama. But I would not hesitate a second to throw up a picket line in front of his WH on an issue like that. It would be a sign of professional respect from one organizer to another.    

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

How to walk and chew gum at the same time.

Yeah, I keep my vomit bucket handy for when the O man praises clean coal. But I understand perfectly why he is doing it.

The fact of the matter is that most people who say they are for change in this country - from environmentalists to pacifists - are totally clueless on how change is made in this country. When it comes to electoral politics their IQs enters the realm of negative numbers.  

It is because they are - like most Americans - addicted to perfectionism. To the obsessive separating of the goats from the sheep. This is totally American from our protestant roots, where a disagreement over one obscure passage of bliblical text could cause communities to split, with the most aggrieved population heading off into the wilderness so they would not have to deal with the other side - who were surely in league with Satan and headed for damnation.

The only reason that I have maintained my equanimity through all of this, is that before the election really got rolling, I read David Kennedy's Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War 1929 to 1945. This is a book on how change is made in America. Not pretty but the truth. Pick it up. If the O man wins, start reading it. You will profit greatly by it.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

Support anyone doing good stuff.

But we are currenty digging ourselves out of the rubble of our financial system because we had a child like faith in the Masters of the Universe in the corporate world. They have made a shambles of the world economy and now we are saying they are the key to saving the world environment????? It is sort of like giving the keys to someone who is both a convicted drunk driver and a sexual predator, and asking them to drive your daughter to college.

The market is a good servant and a lousy master.
It seems we should've learned that by now. We certainly should keep it in mind and avoid being like the Mustache, who has never met a CEO he hasn't slobbered over. I say work with CEOs, but don't for a moment forget that they live for profit, not the greater good.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

Beware the fine print.

Even if clean coal proves economical, and practical - two very big IFs - there are problems with coal that have nothing to do with CO2.

We have to consider the following issues: mountain top removal coal minining and its impact on Appalachian forests and their role as carbon sinks, mine waste killing streams, coal slurry ponds which hang like a Sword of Damocles over coal country communities and residents, the fine particulate material that comes from burning coal even with scrubbers, the undermining of farm land and disruption of underground wells and streams from traditional coal mining.  I am sure I have forgotten half a dozen other problems.

We often find ourselves in a situation like Hercules. We chop off one of the Hydra's heads and two sprout in its place.

We say switch to biofuels, and in so doing sign a death warrant for the world's tropical forests - another carbon sink down the drain. Then we say burn natural gas as an alternative to coal. This leads to a boom in natural gas production.  Pipelines and well heads spread throughout the landscape, fragmenting forests and disrupting biosystems.

We see this in Ohio where the much beloved Mohical Memorial State Forest has been shredded by NiSource clear cutting buffer zones around its pipe lines and well heads. To make matters worse, NiSource has now applied for a permit that will give it 50 years of relief from any Endangered Species Act reviews along a mile wide corridor of its pipelines and well heads in Ohio - about 3,000 square miles of territory. Never smile at a crocodile as the old song goes.

So beware the fine print on technological miracle cures for global warming. Such cures can turn into snakes, just waiting in the grass to bite you.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

The environment: always forgotten as an issue.

Let's discuss the role of the environment in the 2008 election. Easy to do, because it has not been an issue in this election. In fact, it is seldom if ever an issue in American politics. Yet environmentalists every two to four years reward being ignored by loyally working on campaigns that act as if they do not exist. Occasionally we do shine, like when we helped knock off the truly horrid Pombo in California. That is the exception, not the rule.

I would venture two among many reasons for this dispiriting state of affairs. First, the economics profession holds American society in its thrall. Economists play the same role in our society that the church played in feudal society. They explain the will of god (ie the Market) to the peasantry. If it isn't an issue for economists, it isn't an issue. For about 99% of economists the environment is an "externality" ie it is irrelevant. If it is irrelevant to them, it is irrelevant to Mr. & Mrs America and will never get any attention by the politicians seeking that one killer issue that will put them in or keep them in office.

Second, the environment has been safely scrubbed clean with green washing and consigned to the living death of the life style section of America's mind. It isn't a matter of survival. It is a matter of will you or won't you try to find a contractor who will do over your house like Ed Begley has. How many elections are decided on the issue of green friendly counter tops???

Finally, in spite of the best efforts of the League of Conservation Voters and some of the Big Green groups, American environmentalists still don't know how to walk and chew gum at the same time when it comes to politics. You have the purists whose principal concern is the preservation of their political virginity, and those who suck it up and agree to be chumps for politicians who want to add some token greens to their list of supporters. And we provide this service for free, not even requiring the candidates mention our issues. Don't rock the boat. The American environmental movement needs fewer organic growers and solar power experts, and more James Carvilles and Karl Roves. Try to ignore or paternize them, and you will lose an arm.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

Strip mining forests?

Before we start dancing for joy about another "great green hope" let us consider some fine print. First, after battling timber companies for well over a decade over salvage logging, now we will face having our forests devoured for yet another reason. See now, stopping MTR coal mining, by throwing our forests under the green energy bus does not seem to me to be a cause for jubilation. Will trees be the new coal?

Second, timber companies are already lusting for genetically modified tree species for celulose for ethanol. Then they are also wanting to introduce eucalyptus to the south for the same reason, not considering what this water ravenous species will do to a drought prone area. Burning wood for power, seems like a new twist on some dubious ideas.

Finally, what we are greening are the same old energy dinosaurs that got us in this jam in the first place. Is it change, or is it change to prevent change?

Sorry to rain on the parade, but these are some things we should think about.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH
Retired board member
Buckeye Forest Council

Randy Cunningham

On this topic,

nothing could cause me greater happiness than to be proven wrong. But proof is about deeds and not words.

Look forward to eating my words with fava beans and a fine Chianti.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OHOn In Canadian national election, economic worries trump environmental agenda posted 1 year, 2 months ago 7 Responses

Denial

is a part of the ideology of the right. It is their identity. It helps define "political correctness" for a conservative. If anyone thinks that they will change, short of a Saul on the Road to Damascus type experience, they are fooling themselves. I have argued enough with these types to know, that argument with them is like arguing with a log. Not worth your time or effort.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

Oh when the trolls, come marching in!

I have noticed we have been getting our share of trolls posting on Grist lately. Espcially regarding global warming. I guess that is a back handed compliment to Grist. It has become significant enough to get noticed and thus swarmed (or is it skunked up?) by the opposition. Such is the downside of success.

Too bad there is no such thing as sheep dip for a web site. The ticks are getting bothersome.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

Hope over Experience.

Republicans for Environmental Protection reminds me of Catholics for Choice, or the people trying to get the Catholic Church to have female or married priests. Their's is a hard, lonely road.

The spokesperson has drunk the McCain as Maverick Kool Aid. McCain has rolled over for the right time and time again. The culmination of this process was Sarah Palin. He cannot win without the jihadi wing of the party, nor can he rule without them. If he defies them, they will make him into a caretaker president whose record will be devoid of accomplishments. They will patiently wait for him to die off and then get who they want - Sarah. Then god help us all, because only god will be able to clean up the debris she leaves behind. He also has an LCV rating of 27, which should get the attention of REP.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

The Republicans

have one big advantage over all the rest of us. They believe in themselves. They do not know doubt. They are relentless. In short they represent people who believe they were born to rule.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

The problem with a lot of conservatives

who call themselves conservationists, is that they do not heed the maxim of John Muir that everything is "hitched together." They want their politics regarding the land to be nice, neat and discreet so that it does not interfere with property or business as usual, and I stress the word business. Environmentalism is too all encompassing to them. It not only preaches, as the old joke about the two old Baptist ladies went, it meddles. Conservative conservatism wants to save the land and that which dwells on it, as long as it is convenient and does not interfere with what is really at the heart of conservatism - greed.

I am constantly amazed at how conservatives who shout to the heavens their love of the out of doors, while consistently backing the rape, loot and pillage politics of the Repubican Party. Maybe the problem is that what we are dealing with here is not conservatism, but a brand of corporate driven, reactionary politics that is more than willing to use the state as its enforcer and bag man.

I think mreingold should pay a little less attention to the speck that is in the eye of environmentalism, and a little more attention to the log in his own eye.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

George Voinovich

has been in the pocket of the utility companies all his political life. The Ohio EPA has never recovered from his tenure as governor. When he defeated Dennis Kucinich for Mayor of Cleveland, he as much as said that the powers that be in Cleveland wanted a C student who they could control, and he was their man. While a governor, he approved of and bullied regulatory agencies to allow a coal mine to flush its slurry down a realtively pristine stream that was destroyed by the decision. A decision that cause jaws to drop in wonder throughout the state. Voinovich would have been right at home in the Robber Baron era, when politicians danced to whatever tune, the plutocrats called. He is a toady. A very good toady. A very skilled toady. But a toady all the same.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

Palin and the right wing machine.

Bart posts about Palin "She does not seem to be part of the Right-wing machine that's taken over Republican politics." As the old song goes, "it ain't necessarily so."

Check out an article "Christian Cabal Vetted Palin" by Max Blumenthal in the web page of the Nation. When people like Dobson, Grover Norquist and the rest of their hell spawned crowd are on their feet applauding a candidate, then you should reasonably suspect that something wicked this way comes.

McSame's strategy all along can be summed up as "I am not a maverick in real life but I play one on TV." He is a down the line right winger. He has an LCV rating in the basement. Palin is given the same kid gloves treatment, just because she has criticized the old guard in Alaska. That is kinda like saying Kruschev was not a communist because he criticized Stalin.

It is not only possible, but probable that something will happen to McCain in office. Palin would be there waiting to take over. It would be a virtual coup by the most far right sector of the Republican party. See what happens to the environment under these earth haters.

This election is our last chance to make progress on issues that will determine the habitability of the planet. There will not be another bite from the apple. Obama is no guarantee. But we all know what McCain means. Everything else is BS.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

A few thoughts on left vs envrionmentalism

The left came out of enlightenment and its argument was not with the industrial revolution. In fact the early Marxists were the greatest admirers of the plutocrats of the 19th century. To them the capitalists were progressive. They were doing what they should be doing to create the conditions for socialism, such as: destroying traditional societies, dragooning the peasantry into the factories, socializing the means of production and creating more wealth than society had ever seen before.

Neither capitalism or socialism cared a wit about the environment. In fact the environment did not exist in their calculations. The old so called socialist countries met and exceeded the destruction visited upon the environment by the capitalists. The current crop of socialists are just as deaf, dumb and blind as their predescessors when it comes to the environment. In fact they are - once again - the greatest cheerleaders capitalism has.

Looking upon agribusiness and extractive industries and the rise of global middle class that is just as insatiable in its consumptive appetites as Americans, as a positive thing takes classic left political economics and turns it into a mad hallucination. Mad because it is not sustainable. In short it promises a ride in a party wagon that is headed over a cliff. Years ago, Eduardo Galeano, a leftist writer who is still sane, condemned this drive "to be like" the Americans.

I spent most of my life as a hard core socialist. But if Lula's priorities represent socialism and the left, please tell me where I can send my resignation letter. Might as well just elect plutocrats. At least we know where they are coming from and how to fight them. With friends like these, as they say, who needs enemies.  We need to completely reconfigure the political map. The current one is out of date and is a prescription for global suicide. Then we might be able to distinguish between the sane and the mad and act accordingly. That's what I am looking for.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

I liked

Van Jones and the two young people from the Energy Action Coalition the most. Jones is brillant as usual - espcially his mentioning the "dirty greens" - and I appreciated that the young people were not yet encrusted with the zebra mussels of real politik and inside the belt way deal making.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

Now, Al has to nudge Barack

away from this clean coal nonsense. Behind that stand are the electoral votes of West Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Wyoming and Montana. Both coal and nuclear are Rube Goldberg technologies that have a habit of collapsing under the weight of their own abusurdities. First get Obama elected. Then have a "come to Jesus" conversation with him on those boondoggels.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

Insult to injury.

To make matters worse for a great brewery, that produces great beer, with a green consciousness, they will be forced to buy electricity from a public power company that rammed through a dirty coal plant deal earlier this year. We are leaving the ordinary screwed up economics and regulatory rules of our archaic energy system, and entering a new realm that is demonic. Green City on a Blue Lake? ROFLOL.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH  

Randy Cunningham

Hearts and minds.

After World War II, the head of the Italian Communist Party was asked why his party was beaten by Mussolini and the Fascists in the 1920s. After all, the Communist Party, and the entire Italian left was very powerful and as in the rest of European society, was competing with the extreme right in mobilizing discontent after WWI.

His answer speaks to us today. "We spoke to their minds. The fascists spoke to their hearts."

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

I would love to coopt the GOP

but reality is reality. Outside of Republicans for Environmental Protection - which is irrelevant to the main direction of the party - the GOP is to the environment, what the KKK was to the civil rights of African American.

For now, and for the forseeable future, they are the enemy.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

Yes, even Obama is a sinner.

Was that a surprise? A lot of environmentalists and progressives are like the Egytian god of the underworld, who is constantly balancing the heart of the deceased against a feather. If the heart does not pass muster, it is thrown to the dogs of hell. What they want is an excuse to remain aloof and unsullied from normal politics. Yes, ultimately, on some rarified level there is no difference between Obama and McCain. But in the world that matters, and where decisions that will decide the survivability of the planet are made, the differences that exist are important.  

This is what matters. First, the Republican Party has made environmentalism its substitute for communism, as its favorite anti-Christ. Second, the Republican Party's rule has been a long trip through hell for American environmentalism. They have not just stymied environmental progress. They have actively subverted almost every environmental law on the books. McCain claims green credentials. However, he will not be able to defy the heavy dancers of his party who are sworn enemies of American environmentalism and everything it stands for. Third, there is NOTHING that is more important than defeating the Republicans this fall. If they get back in and are able to continue to pursue their earth hating ways, then we all had might as well pack it in and do what we want to do based on the assumption that it's all over folks.

The Democrats will disappoint us and frequently betray us. Bet on it. But at least they will create a atmosphere where progress on the federal level moves from pure fantasy, to the realm of real possibilities. At least we will not be under a government that considers us to be the spawn of the devil. We will just have to beat them up when appropriate, and praise them when they do something right. But it will be a far different world, from the world we have gotten used to, under the GOP boot.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

The joys and sorrows of non-profit status.

I have spent over twenty five years working for non-profits in Cleveland, Ohio - not in environmental matters but in inner city housing issues and community organizing.

In my humble opinion, the 501c3 non-profit status is one of the most fiendishly effective devices for the control of and/or suppression of dissent ever devised. You don't have to control people directly. Recognizing their own vulnerabilities, they will yank their own leash for you.

I would be the last to totally denigrate the accomplishments of non-profits. The world is much better off with them, than it would be without them. Many brave, excellent people, whose dedication is beyond reproach work for them.

However, there are two things that are very wrong with them.  First, they allow the true heavy dancers in our society to appear concerned about issues, when they are not. It is no coincidence that non-profits have spread and flourished in a reactionary political time that has witnessed a roll back of regulatory action and redistributive welfare state programs. No coincidence at all.  Second, they politically emasculate activists who otherwise might be causing real problems for the status quo. If you want a career in the non-profit field, you often have to take a vow of political chastity, and you certainly tread very carefully before you allow yourself to use militant, direct action tactics.

I think one of the reasons for the political irrelevancy of the environmental movement, its timidity and its ineffectiveness, must be laid at the door of the non-profit method of organization. At least this must be a topic for our debates on the issues raised by Ken Ward.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

What do you call 26 elder statesmen

at the bottom of the ocean? A good start.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

Another Ghost Dance

In the late 19th century the Native Americans rallied around a Paiute holy man, who prescribed a spiritual revival called the Ghost Dance. It promised to make the natives invulnerable to bullets, bring back the bison, and make the whites go away. It just gave whites another excuse to kill more natives and oppress them even more.

This oil drilling proposal is the Ghost Dance of oil addicted Americans, who hope it will bring back the good old days. They will end up just as disappointed as the native americans were.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

When I was a child,

I thought and acted as a child, but now that I am a man, I think and act like a man and no longer care what the Green Party does or thinks.

Been there. Seen it. Done it.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

Look upon it as a parting

upraised middle finger, from an administration that has not let any opportunity to pass over eight years, to screw the environment and smack around the environmental movement. We would have been much better off if there had been no environmental policy from the Bush administration all this time, than we have with its out right hostility.

Just one more environmental IED.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

I'm glad Obama said that.

Let's be prepared to remind him of it, when he is in the White House and Big Carbon is telling him to fetch and roll over.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

Head smacking moments.

The problem is that the big green groups who are State House and Inside the Beltway focused live in a world where access, and deal making are foremost, and principles and values are taken out with the trash every night. One has to remember that their real constituents are not the environmental grunts who are fighting the good fight out there in the hinterlands. Their consituents are funders, and those they can cut a deal with.

Our only hope in dealing with them and green washing politicians, is to build the environmental grass roots, and the little green groups who fearlessly do battle with the gods of our society, while lovingly kicking the asses of the big greens when they do something stupid. Which they do. On a regular basis.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

Our Number 1 Troll has spoken.

Why are we not surprised.  

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

I watch Planet Green

and I think it has way too much life style programming, but on the other hand that is what most cable programming is and they have to swim in the sea like all the other fish.

The most annoying thing about the life style and home improvement style programming it has, is that it makes me want to be a writer for a program called "Environmental Living for Ordinary People." My wife and I are lower to middle, middle class. There is no way we could environmentally retrofit our house like the people they feature on Planet Green. I think most grass roots environmentalists are like us, and instead of hollywood stars. Until they start aiming their marketing at people of our income bracket, environmental living will be a pass time of the rich.

Finally, I like the Wasted program on Planet Green.  Imagine a Green Nanny, hectoring environmental sinners on how to Come to Jesus. Very funny.

Planet Green is a mainstream program. It isn't an Earth First! reunion. Warts, distortions and all, I think we are better off having it available than not. Judge it accordingly.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, Ohio

Randy Cunningham

If I were Obama,

would I take advice from Carville????

I don't want all our e-celebrities and leaders to go flocking to a future Obama administration. We need them on the outside organizing and causing trouble, not neutered and muzzled on the inside.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, Ohio

Randy Cunningham

The Cunningham Maxim of American Public Policy

If it makes sense, it has no chance of being enacted in the United States. Universal health care makes sense. DOA. Doing something about global warming makes sense. LOL. Leaving Iraq and not getting into another such fiasco. ROFLOL.

My wife dreams of being able to get on a light rail in Cleveland, and being in Dayton in a few hours to see her sisters.

Not going to happen. Not in our life times.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

Needs to be a Rust Belt Strategy.

As I said in another post, the rust belt states such as Ohio, are to climate action, what the old Dixiecrat South was to civil rights. There is only one way this nut will be cracked and that is an inside/outside strategy. Namely mobilize climate activists in the rust belt, and get ideas, money and technical advice from the more advanced parts of the country, and then CHARGE!

Regarding Ohio and Democratic Senator Brown's vote against the Climate Security Act, a correspondent of mine brought up an interesting point. Brown has now provided cover for Republican Senator George Voinovich, who is one of the most notorious of the Triple D crowd (Deny, Delay, Dither). This really screws things up for Ohio environmentalists in opposing Voinovich's next election.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

Do not fear, caniscandida

Dennis will be back. Dennis is a tough little SOB in a city that values tough SOBs. I am a consituent of his, have worked on his campaigns, and proudly have a "Dennis!" (thats all you need to say in Cleveland) on my bumper across from Obama.

The man is great. Really supported us with our Step It Up rallies, and was with us when we fought a coal fired power plant that Cleveland Public Power bullied the city council into buying into. He's the real thing.

Dennis is eternal.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

Rust belt worries

I think we have to think up how we are going to move states like Ohio that are still in the 19th century in their thinking, into the 21rst century. Really, gang, all the calendars in Ohio that say it is 2008 are lying.

Now that I have dragged Sherrod Brown's name through the dirt, I think we need to study him to see what makes him tick and what would close off any potential excuses for him to make another dreadful vote like he did yesterday.

Brown made his reputation in Ohio as a friend of the working person, first and foremost. His great fear is that backing a climate change bill, he might add to the already horrendous burden that deindustrialization has put on the backs of working Ohioans, and leave him open to a challenger for the title of "friend of the people." Yes, we helped him get elected. But people holding on by their finger nails helped him even more and if the choice is between us and them, them will win (and in reality continue to lose.)

Also, and this is something that I think Van Jones is very on the mark with, the last thing we need is for demagouges on the pay of the fossil fuel industry to promote a populist backlash against environmentalists in general, and climate change action in particular. It does not take much of a political imagination to think up scenarios where people pissed off about $4 & $5 a gallon gas, look for a scape goat and find it in you and me. Any way you cut it, the changes we have to make, and in fact will make whether we like it or not, are the stuff of social dynamite and we have to give up smoking right now!!!!

If we can untie the Gordian knot in Ohio, we can handle just about anything.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

You're preachin to the choir on that one.

Randy Cunningham

On Sherrod Brown.

The richest comment on Sherrod Brown was a line in a news story in the Plain Dealer. It said "...Brown, a liberal congressman before going to the Senate." That's what the Senate does to people.

Brown has so far only shown a talent for sterling rhetoric, and wonderful statements on the need for action on climate change. As an old community organizer in Cleveland once said, "A statement a day, keeps the Devil away."

We who have backed him in the past are undergoing a massive crisis of faith. We are still waiting for deeds. I wonder if that great getting up morning will ever arrive?

I wonder. Will I be breaking the law if I take my Sherrod Brown yard sign out to my front lawn and burn it?

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

I grew up in a world of yes.

Now I live in a country where the operative word is NO. I grew up in a country that prided itself on a can do spirit. Now all we hear, especially from industry is what they can't do.  

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

Someone who is really well versed on this

is John Blair of Valley Watch in Evansville, Indiana. I met John as part of our fight against the AMP coal plant in Cleveland. His organization's web site is www.valleywatch.net. His e-mail Ecoserver1@aol.com.

John is great on this issue. If he doesn't know it, he knows where to find it out. A great battler against "the enemy of the human race."

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland Ohio

Randy Cunningham

Something Hansen missed.

Ms Hansen neglected to mention one of the most contentious environmental issues to ripple through Cleveland this year. This was the decision of the City of Cleveland to buy into a coal fired power plant in Southeast Ohio, to provide power for the local public power company. This decision was fiercely criticized by the environmental community of Cleveland, as a gross contradiction to how Cleveland is trying to portray itself as a "green city on a blue lake." Well, there was nothing green about this decision, and the impact of this plant which we are now saddled with for 50 years, will dwarf all the pretty words, bold statements, and other initiatives launched by the city's leaders. In fact it made them look like greenwashing hypocrits.

Furthemore, it appeared to some activists in Meigs County, Ohio to be a case of energy colonialism. Cleveland blesses another dirty power plant to pollute the air, blight the health, and poison the water of Meigs County, while signing the Kyoto Protocol, and announcing beautiful green initiatives. The residents of Meigs County would be justified in laughing at such hypocrisy, if they weren't so busy coughing and wheezing.

This controversy also revealed to all, the best kept secret of the environmental movement in Cleveland. Namely its political irrelevancy. The fact that it is a dog that is all bark and no bite. The fact that politicians can pander to the environmental movement when dealing with a symbolic issue, but when it comes to the really tough issues, they can ignore local environmentalists because it costs them nothing. That is what Ms Hansen missed.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OhioOn Can Cleveland bring itself back from the brink? posted 1 year, 6 months ago 7 Responses

No surprise.

Voinovich has been a whore for the utilities and coal industry from the earliest days of his career. The guy's got to retire sometime.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

Separating Sheep from Goats

is a old habit that dies hard.

I have taken a page from Ronald Reagan who followed the commandment, "Though shall not speak ill of another Republican."

Now there are groups in the green world that I wouldn't walk across the street to spit on. But I don't put our "business out on the street." I may bite my tongue, but I follow the rule of "thou shalt not speak ill, of another environmentalist."

Dave is right. There are plenty enough real bastards to go around. We don't have to love everyone in our movement. But we should apply ourselves to changing the world. Not going to heaven.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

The accomplishments of the ELF.

There aren't any! Zip! Zero! Can the ELF point to one development prevented, one road blocked, or one bio-region saved by their activities? No they can't. Reason? Because the ELF is not about saving the earth, it is about fulfilling their own crazed delusions about themselves. There are two types of people you meet in social change movements. Some want to change the world. The others are interested in therapy.

So far all ELF has done is get a bunch of its members thrown in prison. Perhaps in their next communique they can describe all the good work they are doing for the earth within the confines of a six by nine cell. It should be a fascinating piece.

Randy CunninghamOn Folks with ties to the Earth Liberation Front indicted in Michigan blaze posted 1 year, 8 months ago 5 Responses

Ideology and identity

I used to argue with the denialists on another blog and finally qave it up as useless. Being a denialist is not a policy position. It is a fundamental part of your identity, it is who you are. In the American right it is a precondition for being a politically correct conservative. Just note how many conservatives have been suspicious of McCain because of his climate politics.

Finally it is an ideology because almost any scenario for dealing with climate change is going to involve more government regulation of the economy, and an activist public sector. And that is anathema to the American right. It is the equivalent of communism to them.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

Meanwhile, outrages continue.

In Ohio, one of the most notorious corporate criminals on the loose is Ohio Valley Coal Company. They are owned by Robert Murray - famous or infamous as the operator for the Utah coal mine disaster of a year ago. Murray is an old buddy of the Buckeye Forest Council, who fought him for years to prevent mining beneath Dysart Woods in Belmont County. Dysart was one of the few bits of old growth forest still standing in Ohio.

Now comes news that as part of mining Dysart, Ohio Valley Coal has discharged coal slurry into Captina Creek, turning it black for miles. Add this to Murray's rap sheet.

Coal - the closer you look, the worse it is.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

Something I would like to see Dave

is a survey of noted environmentalists and how they are coming down between supporting Obama or Hillary.  I have heard you comment in the past that the differences between the two are just about a wash as far as who is greener, so I think this would be of interest to the Grist community.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

The broadly defined

very broadly defined progressive, left, liberal whatever movement - of which the environmental movement by default or intent is a member of, has never been able to figure out how to operate in the American electoral system. Never. The very same debates we are having in this forum were happening twenty, forty, seventy, a hundred years ago. It is almost like the movie Groundhog Day, no matter what we do, we end up in the same place. A few things we might consider.

(1) OK, focus on this thought real clearly. We are operating in the United States. Not Canada. Not France. Certainly not in some country in the lesser developed world. Any successful movement first has to have a keen sense of the terrain it operates on.  The overall left in the country, resoltuely refuses to recognize this fact.  

(2) There are those of us who want to make change. There are others who want to get to heaven. There are some of us who want to make change. There are others who want social therapy. Let's ask ourselves why the hell we are here.

(3) We need to have a good sense of the difference between politics as practiced in the US, and how movements are built and interact with politics.  

(4) How does social change happen in the United States? Stunned silence is usually the response to this question, but it is a question that must be asked every day.  I really don't think that those who say they are dedicated to social change have the foggiest f'in idea of how it happens in this country. Not a clue.

Consider the above and maybe we can start to have an intelligent conversation.

Randy CunninghamOn Ralph Nader jumps into the presidential race posted 1 year, 9 months ago 31 Responses

Report from Cleveland

Cleveland City Council went through the motions of reconsidering its approval of the AMP deal, but in truth it was just a smokescreen to hide behind. Council, the mayor, and Cleveland Public Power (CPP) were determined to ram it through. I was part of an effort to derail it, but we would've spent our time more effectively talking to Lake Erie.

Behind the scenes were fears that if the city did not join the deal, CPP would be driven out of business by cost per kilowatt hours, because it does not enjoy a monopoly in the city of cleveland, but must compete with its old foes in the private power industry.

Cleveland is so battered and beseiged that it reminds you of a third world country that thinks that it cannot risk anything but the same old, same old it has depended on in the past. Call it the conservatism of the oppressed.  

In the end, Cleveland will get taken to the cleaners by this deal, and the environmental reputation of the Jackson administration and individual councilpeople who like to portray themselves as environmentalists, has been reduced to rubble.

This says nothing of what will happen to the beseiged residents of Meigs County, Ohio who are having to watch as their country becomes what used to be called in the 1970s, a "sacrifice zone." Good luck to Elisa Young founder of Meigs Citizen Action Now, who should be nominated for a Goldman prize. (David Roberts you should get Grist to do an interview of her elisayoung1@yahoo.com or 740-949-2175)

Sorry we could not stop it, but it is kind of hard to have a conversation with people who have already made up their minds before the conversation even starts. What was the last time any of you conversed with a brick wall?

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

I was a Nader supporter

in 2000. Yes, I know. I take personal responsibility for the Iraq War, the trashing of the constitution, the trashing of the climate and all other sins and crimes since January 2001. Mea culpa.

Now that we have that covered, let me say that Nader running for President redefines absurdity. I am behind Obama, not because he will raise the dead or initiative the millenium of perfect justice and peace.  I am behind him because (1) His victory in the nomination process will finally drive a stake in the heart of Team Clinton. (2) That I think he will give us the best opportunities to make progress on a whole range of policies. The burden - however - is on us. As FDR once said to a delegation of people who were lobbying him, "I agree with you. Now go out there and make me agree with you." That will be our - not Obama's - job should he win the election against the hell spawned forces of McCain.

I will be a loyal supporter of Obama until January 20, 2009. Then we will see what we will see. We environmentalists need to become much more cynical and hard nosed about our political decisions. Quit acting like babies.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

I avoid such shows like the plague.

First off, it is not important for me to see these shows. I am already convinced and very active on the issue. Other people who are still in denial are the ones who should watch these shows.

Second, after watching such shows my wife has to hide all the sharp cutlery in the house.

So, that is why I do not watch such shows.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

the basic problem

is that throughout history the American left has been a bunch of mecca watchers who are quite fluent in telling you how social change is made in other countries, and utterly illiterate in how change is made in their own society. The Green Party shows this willfull ignorance is still flourishing.

The key to any successful movement is to develop a strategy that is tailor made to fit the society it is working in - not to ape someone else's movement.  

I think the overall progressive movement in the US needs to take it right down to the joists and studs, and remake itself to fit the realities, limitations, possibiities and opportunities that exist in the USA, 2008. Then, for the first time in our existence we just might find out what it feels like to be relevant and successful.

Anything else is just bull shit.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

It is practically illegal

to be out of sight or sound of a TV any longer. Do any of you remember such a thing as a "quiet bar" where you could have real discussions, maybe initiate a seduction, read a book?

I remember the great northeast blackout a few years back that hit Cleveland. I saw people curled up in fetal positions, sucking their thumbs while desperately thumbing their dead cell phones. People afterwards were swearing to get battery powered TVs because they were so bored in the dark. Meanwhile I was enjoying the fact that I could see the milky way in the city for the first time in 20 years.

If the terrorists were smart they would find a way to destroy our system of mass distraction. Forget the rest. Take that out and our society would fall apart within days.  

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

ATV riders

are openly contemptuous of anyone other than ATV riders. Their sub culture is semi-criminal at times. They laugh at regulations to stay on designated trails. Some signs you will see that remind them of regulations are filled with bullet holes. There is a ton of anecdotal accounts of ATV riders bullying and even assaulting other recreational users.

They have a philosophy that they can do anything they want in the name of freedom and the hell with everyone else. They are the apogee of American individualism gone berserk. The roots of the problem began with the dogma of multiple use, which I call mutliple abuse. The fact is that ATV use is not compatible with the recreation rights of other visitors to public land. But they are well funded and organized and have become the 800 lb gorillas of ourdoor rec. Just go to a forest service planning meeting where they have turned out.  It is sobering.

Randy CunninghamOn Off-road vehicle use has surged in Western wilderness areas posted 1 year, 11 months ago 5 Responses

Palm oil plantations are the

tropical world's version of our mountain top removal coal mining.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

Why the GOP won't budge.

(1) Romm makes a frequent progressive mistake. He assumes that if you only use the right arguments powered by reason, your opponents will have a Saul on the road to Damascus experience, will come over to your viewpoint, and will join you on the path of righteousness. Unfortunately this seldom happens. Romm chooses to ignore how often the irrational rules in human affairs, and how often the winning side triumphs because its opponents die off before it does.

(2) In order to get really serious about the climate, the GOP would have to put a knife in the back of industries & interests that it has been loyal to since the Civil War. It is not going to happen.

(3) In order to get really serious about the climate, the GOP will have to machine gun a whole stable of its sacred cows. It will have to renounce its loyalty to the Market God, embrace regulation, and reign in corporate power. Not going to happen.

(4) Romm thinks that the current regime that rules the GOP is conservative. It is not. It is radically reactionary, and high on its list of enemies is the environmental movement - which in some GOP venues is a substitute bogeyman for communism.

(5) Romm is blind to the power of ideology in the current GOP and how that ideology becomes welded to the identity of its activists & stalwarts. For the past generation one of the main requirements to be a PC Republican is to be a climate change denier. The current ruling generation in the GOP will have to pass from the scene before this will change.

While reading Romm's piece an old tune kept echoing in my mind. "Wouldn't It be Nice" by the Beachboys. Well, it would be nice, but for the forseeable future we will find slim pickings in the GOP when it comes to progressive, much less sane climate policies.

The GOP must fall in 2008 or we can kiss this planet good bye.  

1-20-09

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

You did us proud David.

But you have a point. Distinguishing yourself in such a forum is like giving a good performance in a WWF smackdown. Don't feel bad about shouting down a denier. The bastards deserve it.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

TV weather people the worst of the lot.

I'd like to know if anyone has ever witnessed a TV weather person addressing climate change in a serious way. Most of them are hard core deniers. Only the Weather Channel will touch the issue with a ten foot pole. I think climate activists should start to jack up these hair cuts. They are way too influential on how ordinary Americans see the issue.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

The fact that this was posted

at 12:13 pm today and there has not been any comments on it, speaks for itself. There is little enthusiasm for what we got for our efforts, and we have already moved on.

Randy CunninghamOn U.S. House approves toned-down energy bill, Bush to sign it tomorrow posted 1 year, 11 months ago 12 Responses

Grist Needs a Review

I have a suggestion to the editors of Grist. After much sound and fury on the just passed energy bill, of the sort that causes people who normally agree to quit talking to one another, it is time to step back and do an assessment. Some questions I would like to hear answered follow.

(1) Just where the hell are we right now in budging the beltway monolith on global warming, a new energy regime, etc?

(2) What does the history of this campaign tell us about the political effectiveness of American environmentalists.  

(3) What does this history tell us about what we should expect from a Democratic Congress and/or administration should that great getting up morning come about in 2008. Where do our hopes have some basis in reality and where are they just hopes.

(4) What does this history tell us about the Republican Party in the future. Are they still brain dead on the environment? Or are they merely the corporate whores they have always been.

(5) Lets talk about the divisions in the environmental movement as exposed by this campaign - Big Greens vs Little Greens, The Beltway Crowd vs the greens of the hinterlands.

December is always the month when news programs do an end of the year assessment.  I think Grist should do the same. It has plenty of bright people in its community, could be easily doable, and would be a great service to Grist readers.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

This harumper will act

I will call Voinovich's office here in Ohio. (ROFLOL)

But really gang, we are in the twilight of an autocratic and reactionary regime. Although its reputation is ruined, its popularity has vanished, and its legitimacy is gone, a wounded dinosaur is still formidable. Bush on the environment is what the Czar and Bismark were for Europe in the 19th century - the boot of reaction. Until we get that boot off our kneck, little is going to happen.

Two thoughts: 1-20-09 and demolish the GOP in 2008. That - not this vote is when history will be made. I am going to be from now on in my posts like that Roman senator who ended all his speeches with "Carthage must fall."

The GOP must fall.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

At last one of the climate gurus

answers a question I have always had. What do we do if we miss the witching hour that is projected out into the next ten years.  

Scary, but at least someone is thinking the unthinkable.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

Bless them all!

I don't think there is any substitute for demoes like this. Everyone has become so clever with e-mails, podcasts, blogs and the sort, but people in the street, being with other people, creating a living, breathing reality for their hopes, dreams, angers and demands, can never be dispensed with. We can be quite skilled at political horse trading, working the hall ways of Washington and our state houses, but without some street activity, our efforts are like a three legged stool that is missing one leg.

Bless them all.

Randy CunninghamOn Thousands of protesters in over 50 cities call for climate action, now posted 1 year, 11 months ago 2 Responses

The two faces of realism

Those who have been praising the efforts of the house and what they have produced - now at the tender mercies of the Dark Side in the Senate - do have a point against the harumpers like yours truly. It does represent progress. It even represents progress that is remarkable compared to the miserable record of the US Congress in the past. So we should be realistic about what can be obtained under the current status quo. Frankly I chalk this up to a trial run, that is probably not going anywhere this session.

But we should be careful about not surrendering to reality, in the name of being realistic or its dreaded soul killing twin - being practical. We should paricularly be careful of getting sucked into the "deal at any cost" dynamic prevalent within the Beltway.

We have to learn an art that has had to be mastered by every significant social movement in history. Namely, how to manage multiple personalities within one movement body. How to be just a little nuts. How to be pragmatic and utopian. How to wear a tie and coat and talk nice to the Devil, and then turn right around and be outrageous in the streets. How to say "thank you, kindly" to the legislators who have just moved a none too exciting piece of legislation down the field and given you some victories, but then turn around and say "We want more." How to be active without being predictable so your foes can get a bead on you. How to use the tough cop/nice cop routine.

In short, how to walk on both legs and be an effective movement that can go out there and get what we and the earth need for a viable future.

Randy CunninghamOn Landmark energy bill stalls in the Senate posted 1 year, 11 months ago 14 Responses

Well what do we do?

Eat crap, or insist on what we want even if it means no bill this year. I think our wise ones on Grist should discuss this dilema for our edification.

The sickening record of the GOP from the war to global warming, should be shoved down their throats, and up certain other orifices that I will not be so crude as to describe or name.

Let's not get mad. Let's get even in '08. It is war, let's get on with it.

Randy CunninghamOn Landmark energy bill stalls in the Senate posted 1 year, 11 months ago 14 Responses

To paraphrase Mao into American terms

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Have a drink and celebrate. Then get ready to fight like hell for the other 999 miles.

Randy CunninghamOn House passes landmark energy bill; Senate up next posted 1 year, 12 months ago 6 Responses

OK, Mr David Roberts

I will just have you know that this grumpy old harumper just (1) Called my Congressman to support your beautiful bill. (2) Coordinated a letter from the forest organization I am on the board of, to the Ohio Congressional delegation, supporting what you praised.

Not bad for a harumper, eh?

Now let me say I hope we can do much, much better in the future and I sure hope this bill does not make people complacent, nor get in our way in the future.

Harump!

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

From one of the harumpers.

Let me brush aside the clouds of pessimism and doom that surround my worried brow. You see, I am one of those strange souls who operate with two entirely different mentalities inside my head. Intellectually I think we are screwed. But that is perfectly useless in real life, so I set it aside and work in the practical world.

While harumping away on Grist, I been out there humping for precisely what I am denouncing. Functional schizophrenia.

Its a beautiful thing.

Randy Cunningham.

Randy Cunningham

Oh my God!

Something bold! Kill it before it multiplies!

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

35 mph and the laugh test.

It doesn't pass. Right now we have the tech to go way over 35 without breaking into a sweat. Once again our low expectations of Congress are vindicated.

The common thinking of the beltway environmentalists is that something beats nothing. Examples such as this deal cause one to pause and question the wisdom of that nostrum. It is funny how what looks like wisdom or being practical at first, can look dumber and dumber in retrospect. I think that is what is going to happen to this accomplishment.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

An impolite question.

I have about as much confidence in our pulling this off, as I have expectations that Hugo Chavez will ride an Armadillo across my lawn. Possible, but not probable.

So this is my impolite question to everyone. What do we do if we do not make Jim Hansen's or the rest of our experts' deadlines? Go home and take a drive in our cars with the garage door closed?

In organizing it is always a maxim to have your next step thought out, win or lose. What do we do if we lose? That is something I would like our gurus to answer. They owe it to us.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

I guess that it is the downside of success

that Grist posts have begun to attract those David Roberts has called "trolls." Have you noticed the upswing in the activities of John Bailo, and now the ravings of Earth Shaman? I find the trolls are especially active whenever the topic of Al Gore comes up. Only Hilary and Cindy Sheehan cause their juices to flow faster than Al.  

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

Ah yes, and MLK

cheated on his wife, etc, etc, etc. All you give are excuses that are identical to those of the oil companies and deniers. Please tell us how wonderful it is to live a pure life. Tell us how it enables you to look down from your lofty heights upon a person, a flawed person at that, who has done more in the past year and a half to shape the public consciousness about global warming, than you, me and everyone else on Grist could have managed in a dozen life times.  

Tell us, oh great one.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

Organizing is behind most of the changes

I have witnessed over the past 40 some odd years. The only problem is that is seldom if ever gets the credit. Instead the media focuses on one particular person - such as a Martin Luther King, or with the climate Al Gore - and the narrative that comes about is that they did it all by themselves. Which, of course, is utter rubbish.

We build on past organizing. What I call lineages of activism. The real stories are always much more complicated than what appears on the TV or the internet. Most of it is beneath the radar screen. Who for instance, noticed the organizing that went on before the Battle of Seattle? No one, and that is why the powers that be were caught flat footed and totally stunned.

Organizing is critical. I am working with one of the Greencorps people on our Step It Up activities in Cleveland. Enjoy the event. The organizers of tomorrow deserve a hand.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

Wow! You really think so?

Anyone who has lived under W, and by anyone I mean any life form capable of conscious thought on a level above that of lichens, knows that nothing positive on the environment in general, and on global warming in particular will happen while W is in the oval office. I mean is this a state secret??????

Our question should be whether anyone after W, will do anyting. That is what should have us staring at the ceiling at 2 in the morning.

As far a Lieberman is concerned, just ponder that he thought the Iraq War was a good idea. Why does anyone listen to this loser any longer? I mean, duh!

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

In defense of protest.

My how commentators to this story, look down their noses at anyone protesting the old fashioned way. How superior we are, we actvists who never leave a computer terminal, and who make the powerful of the world tremble with our e-mails, blogs, and list serves. Yup, those monks in Burma should have known better and confined their protests to their blackberries. That would have caused the generals to soil themselves in fear!

Let me speak in defense of old school activism. Activism that involves real face to face interaction with other human beings. Activism that involves something other than tapping your way on a keyboard. Activism that - horror of horrors - might involve some risk, some courage.

People wonder why the war continues, in spite of popular disapproval. People wonder why we continue set ourselves up for environmental suicide. Perhaps we see the limits of internet activism. Maybe we should take another look at what smashed Jim Crow, brought down apartheid, derailed the WTO, caused one president to bow out of an election, and a superpower to back down from a war.  

So, let us quit being so superior. You stay at your terminal. Me, I am with the monks.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

I heard about it,

I laughed. I forgot about it. There is only one date that we should take seriously on climate politics. That is January 20, 2009. When we finally get rid of the prick. And god help us, and the planet if we get another GOP president in office. If that happens, then I will reconsider my scepticism regarding the Book of Revelations, because the anti-Christ will truly be on the throne.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

We win one, we lose one

This news on the same day that the car companies got an old fashioned ass whiping before a federal judge in their efforts to stop the local efforts to restrict auto emmissions. So don't stick your head in the oven yet, Dave.

Listen, it is time to remind everyone that the last place on earth to change is Washington. Long after the rest of society has shifted and started to change, they are still napping in the past. Always has been, always will be; no matter what the issue.

Finally, Bush is still in the White House. If anything decent survivied conference committee, he would veto it. They have gone to the mattresses in the White House, and instransigence and running out the clock are their watch words.  

Back away from that oven door, Dave. We knew this was going to happen - or should have.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

The bottom line lobotomy.

I think the greatest problem we face is not with the mechanics of American politics, or this or that theory of social change.

The biggest problem is that we have an aristocracy of economists in our country who have succeeded over the past several generations to lower social and political thought to their level. Everything is about the bottom line. All eyes are on the stock market.

The second problem is that the way economists look upon the world instantly shuts out a whole host of considerations that the environment is a part of. All economic activity, from making cars, to cleaning up after Katrina is economically good because it puts money into the economy.  There is no measurement of the social or environmental costs of this or that economic activity. It is also a view of the world through a soda straw.

Economists really do not think the future of the environment is relevant to their concerns. It is an "externality" ie something that can screw up their mathematical models, so it is ignored. Because they ignore it, the society ignores it.

Finally, economics is amoral. It is does not judge something as right or wrong, only if it contributes to efficiency, or the maximization of profits. If destroying the planet fit those criteria, economists would toast it.

Our cause must be a moral cause. Otherwise it will lose.  Otherwise it will never find its political voice, much less win political victories.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

Coyote Wrong.

Coyote waxes nostalgic for the days when both Democrats and Republicans passed the landmark environmental legislation of the early 1970s. Well, that was then and this is now. The conservative movement in the United States has no more relationship to Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot, than I do with a Homo australopethicine.

The conservatives and the GOP which they control, are to the environment what the KKK is to African Americans. They hate environmentalism. They hate environmentalists. It is kinda hard to make a deal with people who wish you did not exist, and that your issues have no validity.

By default, the left broadly defined and in practical terms the Democratic Party, is the only game in town for greens.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

That is a pretty standard cynical response.

Guess what, there were plenty of such kids back in the hallowed 60s when we were all supposed to be so idealistic and so radical.

There always have been, are and will continue to be young people who care. Along with old people, and middle aged people, and poor people and even a few rich people who have not had their hearts turned to stone by their status. Attaching a particular amount of idealism to any one group usually fails to pass a second look. Just look at the alledgedly idealistic baby boom generation. Man, what a flaming disappointment we have been.

My point, though was the rise of repression in America. The bike protestors that were mentioned in the other post, will experience the Iron Heel soon enough. You can bet on it.

Randy Cunningham.

Randy Cunningham

We know what we fear.

"However, there is empirical and historical evidence that, by and large, markets work."

"When people don't understand things, they tend to fear and attack them."

I don't think that environmentalists are being naive about the wonders of markets. I think they are basing their suspicion, on the way that the world actually works. Those trumpeting market solutions are those who are wedded to academic never, never lands.

You have to wonder, in fact, whether there has ever been a moment in the past 500 + years of capitalism, that there has ever been a "free" market. So let us look at the actual record of actually existing market economies. I don't think that you can say it has just been a coincidence that as they have spread and consolidated their grip on the globe, we have witnessed a tanking of the world environment. If market efficiency, and benovolence were so inherent to the system, then we would be living in a very different, and much healthier planet.  

The environmental buck stops with market economies as they have developed over 500 years, and those who defend them. It is the market economy, not nefarious government, that has driven the planet into the ground. Now to expect them to undo what they have done, is either blind faith, or sheer lunacy.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

Americans won't support it.

The American way is not to simplify. It it is to complicate. It is what we do best. Look at our health care system. Hell, just look at the PC or laptop you are using and ask yourself a simple question. Do I really need all the software that it came with? For most of us it is a resounding NO. Look at your cell phone, do you really need all that crap that it comes with. For the most part NO is the answer.

The reason for this is that the more complicated you make something, the more profit centers you create. If the project is backed with public money, then all the better, because Congress will make sure that everyone in every important state or district gets a taste of the subcontracting.

Simplicity may sell in Africa. But in America, it is un-American and will be stamped out at the first opportunity.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

Dennis

as we call him on Cleveland's west side, is my Congressman. I have voted for him, worked for him, given him money, and always have his sign on my tree lawn. He is the real article. One of the best, shoe leather politicians in the state of Ohio. He runs and wins the old way. He is a million miles to the left of his constituency, but they continue to send him back to Congress because he fights for what he believes in. In an era when politicians are constantly polling and focus grouping to see what they will say, Dennis says what he means. If you like it, fine. If you don't like it, fine. But people respect that in him and they vote for him. Why? Because he is Dennis, and you don't need to say anything else in these parts.  

I liked two things in his interview. The Works Green Administration, and his forthright opposition to the war in Iraq and American militarism.

Now, how about voting for him? Well, I will quote the late great Molly Ivins, who said she votes her heart in primaries, and her head in the general election. In Ohio, I will vote my heart and vote for Dennis. Then I will see what my head says.

Randy CunninghamOn An interview with Dennis Kucinich about his presidential platform on energy and the environment posted 2 years, 4 months ago 34 Responses

Gee, whiz, Mr Wizard!

That is my visceral response to Amory Lovins, whenever I read him. One of those insufferably bright people who only hang out with other insufferably bright people, who cannot understand why everyone does not see what they see.

I have one major reservation about Amory. He seems to be in the thrall of what I call the Cult of the Market God. This comes about as close as we get in this society to a state religion. It says that the Market God's word, as interpreted by the priest hood of CEOs and economists, is always to be obeyed by us dumb peasants who grovel before its altar. The Market God, like the Wizard of Oz, is all knowing, all wise and broaches no disobediance. Above all, don't pay attention to the men (for the most part) behind the curtain.

Other than that reservation, I think we are much better off having people like Amory running around, in spite of my reservation about his religious preference.

Randy CunninghamOn A conversation with energy guru Amory Lovins posted 2 years, 4 months ago 11 Responses

Don't feel bad Dave,

You were in a fist fight with a Pit Bull. No way you are going to look good (and you did not look bad)in such a format, because the format is designed to make anyone Hannity does not like,  look bad. I would like to know. Has anyone Hannity opposes, ever gone on his show, and kicked his ass. If it did happen I am sure that the clips are buried deep in a secret vault.  

Do you think for a second that if you stood any chance of delivering an ass whipping to Hannity they would have you on? You wouldn't even be allowed in the lobby.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

All very true, BUT

you have to start where people are and that may not be a very smart place in our view. Live Earth used mass culture and mass media to move the ball down the field. This was not a reunion of Earth First! Yes, there was a good share of pimpin' for corporadoes and lots of green washing, but remember that the corporations just a few years ago did not want to touch this issue with a mile long pole. They are hustling like they always will, but they are being dragged along by the issue as well.

Social change is messy, contradictory and frequently involves alliances between people who just a short time ago, wouldn't have been caught dead in the same room with one another. I think we gained yardage with Live Earth. That's good enough for me.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

What about the people in the coal fields?

You often hear the coal hacks talk about how great coal mining is for people in areas such as Appalachia. Jobs, jobs, jobs.

Yet no one can explain to me why if coal is so great, the areas where it dominates, are universally just this side of Indian Reservations when it comes to poverty, bad health, pollution, corruption of politics, and other assorted woes both small and huge. Let me put it this way. About the last thing you would ever wish on your community, would be to have all the "benefits" that coal brings to coal towns.

THAT ALONE is enough to be against any expansion of the coal industry. The only way that people can accept "clean coal" is if they agree that the areas of Appalachia prone to mountain top removal coal mining, should be turned into complete waste lands, and that the people who live there should be utterly devastated and be turned into refugees.  

Lets put that into our carbon and energy calculations.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

The Devil is Never Idle

I have heard through the forest defense grape vine many dark omens of what is ahead for forests under the guise of saving the climate.

Take biofools for instance, no really please take them.

One of the big agriculture concerns is trying to get approval for genetically engineered trees that grow super fast so they can be harvested for cellulosic ethanol. The rationales are: the trees, while standing up will sequester carbon, and when we cut them down and chip them they will become earth friendly bio fuels.

The problem is that tree plantations are not forests. They have no similarity to forests in the propagation of ecological diversity. They don't even look like forests.  

It is an excellent example of how environmentally commendable motives can be put to hellish use.

I think eastern forests have about as much future as peace and democracy in Iraq. You have the regime of sprawl. You have timber companies turning themselves into real estate companies. (Who would've ever thought we would miss our old foes?) Every year debutes a new invasive pest from hell, like the emerald ash borer that is sending our Ash trees the way of the Chestnut and American Elm. Then the drying out of the West will reverse the dynamic that took the pressure off eastern forests a century ago, with the turning of the west through irrigation into the nations bread basket. The West in a few years is going to resemble the Dunes triology. Where will everybody go? Back to the East and you will be glad to find five trees standing in close proximity to one another. Then we have the cellousic ethanol scam coming down the pike.

The eastern forests? Stick a fork in them. They are done.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

More than emissions condemns coal.

Everyone is hot about coal's cost to the climate. I think we should add another page to the indictment. Namely that there is a long list of things that are bad about coal, that would recommend its retirement and that have absolutely nothing to do with green house gas emissions.

I am reading Lost Mountain by Erik Reece right now, and if any of you have missed it, shame on you. Among the sins of coal are: devastation of the environment, the permanent sort from mountains leveled, to streams and farm lands destroyed by acid leakage and coal slurry pond dam breaks. Then you have coal's corruption of our politics, and subversion of regulatory policies. You have the alienation of an entire populace from its landscape in a devil's bargain of jobs vs land & heritage. The jobs that are granted are dangerous, and poison not only miners but their families. Coal is not just the enemy of humanity. It will make you believe in the existence of the Devil.

Finally, I think we weaken our arguments when we just make them about climate change. The entire energy regime we are fighting is rotten to the core with greed, corruption, anti-democratic policies and a smorgasbord of envrionmental crimes. If CO2, melting ice caps, and drowning polar bears did not exist, there would still be an argument to overthrow the old regime and bring to the fore a new energy regime.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

I am a Democrat,

I come from a Yellow Dog Democrat family. I work on Democratic campaigns. I give money to Democrats. Do I trust Democrats?

Hell no.

You see Republicans tend to embrace their base. Democrats tend to run away from theirs. They remind me of the up and coming young entrepreneur who does not want to admit that he grew up in a trailer park.

Environmentalists, African Americans, and union members seldom see their loyalty to the DP returned in the quantity in which they give. I think some environmentalists thought that it would be easy now the Dems are back in. The energy bill should disabuse them of this nonsense. We will need to kick plenty of Dem ass to get even a scrap of what we want.

As far as this energy bill is concerned, I have to say in the spirit of horror films past, "This monster must die!"

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

The real issue with the energy bill.

Forget the liquified coal nonsense, ethanol, and future subsidies to the oil and nuclear industries.  The real target of the energy bill are the burgeoning local movements happening in city halls and state houses to deal with global warming.  The past is headed to the nursery of the future with a pillow in its hand.  

Washington has a big problem. The problem is that it has lost control of the energy issue. Those who are trying to install a new energy regime have been most successful at the local level. The defenders of the status quo own Washington lock, stock and barrell. But that is not enough. They must restore control of the provinces, and that is what the energy bill is all about.

I hope the damn thing collapses in flames. It would not cause me to lose a moment of sleep. How the legislation is shaping up right now, it reminds me of the title of the famous science fiction novel "Something evil, this way comes."

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

In search of a good explanation.

Why are American conservatives so deaf, dumb and blind when it comes to climate change. No, that's not it. Better still, why is climate change denial a requirement in the US for one to be a politically correct conservative?

Other conservatives in such countries as France and the UK do not seem to have this problem.

Explanations anyone?

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

The mixed legacy of environmentalism

First, let me say that it is an honor to comment on a work written by Van Jones, who I think is one of the brightest new stars in the environmental cosmos. Gives me a Wayne's World "I am not worthy" moment.

On to the unpleasant truth. The traditional conservation and environmental movement was often virulently racist. You can go through statements made by Teddy Roosevelt, John Muir and more recently Edward Abbey that would embarrass Don Imus. One of the only leading lights to take on the issue of racism in the use of public lands was Bob Marshall, a founder of the Wilderness Society, who in the 1930s challenged segregation in the use of the public lands. He was also a scion of a Jewish family who were prominent funders of civil rights causes and the founding of the Adirondack Park.

Recently we have seen in the Sierra Club those concerned with over population via immigration in an unholy alliance with the most virulent racist and nativist forces currenty active. Happily, the Sierra Club has repeatedly rejected these siren calls.

We have to stay conscious of this history, and work hard to counter it. We have to do it for two reasons. First and foremost it is right. Second, to be crassly opportunistic, is that any movement today that carries a "Whites only" sign on it has no future.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

Another good book to pick up.

David should add another unsung classic to his reading list. "Dream: re-imagining progressive politics in an age of fantasy." by Stephen Duncombe. New Press 2007.

Duncombe is merciless in his treatment of the reign of dispassionate reason in left discourse. It is simply one of the most brillant critiques of how the left does business I have ever picked up. If I won the lottery I would order a gross of this book and give it away.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

What is peculiar about American conservatives?

The Tories in the UK look like Earth Firsters! compared to their ideological soul mates in the US. This quote from the new French leader is another example of how marginal American conservatives are on this issue. Being in global warming denial is not a precondition to membership in conservative circles around the world, but it sure is in the United States. To be a politically correct conservative in the US you have to be in with the carbon crowd.

I don't know what is to blame for this. Maybe the dominance of the Sunbelt in the GOP, or the strangle hold present and former oil men have on the party. The reasons for this is a discussion we should be having on Grist.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

Alex the Terrible

Alex Cockburn is the Patrick Buchanon of the Left. A real pit bull, I often read and enjoy his columns. Sort of appeals to my Id.

But no one should lose any sleep over him doubting global warming. He is a classic loose cannon. He loves trashing the left and other progressive causes, just a little more than he does the conservatives and reactionaires.

There are plenty of other people who you should worry about much more than Alex. Alex is Alex; love him and hate him. However if there is a smack down between him and Monbiot let me know. I will get on my old World Wrestling Federation t shirt, and be in front row. THAT would be a show.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

I have met two types of people

in the assorted movements I've been active with for justice and environmental sanity. One type wants to change the world. The other type wants to go to heaven. We want those who want to change the world, even if they get some dirt on themselves. The ones who want to go to heaven, should be given a directory of local churches.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

What is being proposed.

OK, so we have two to three years to save the world. Not going to happen, so we are screwed and might as well go home and stick our heads in the oven, eat a bullet or drink poison. So do we have until September 1rst 2010 or March 23rd 2011? And what time of the day on either of those dates, 9:30 am or 10:00pm to distinguish between salvation and damnation? GMT or EST?

What is Ken saying to the environmental movement afterall? Do we tell the people fighting moutain top removal in West Virginia, or environmental racism in New Orleans, to stop their projects and join a one issue movement?

A few years ago everyone was talking about the Death of Environmentalism. Now David Roberts and Bill McKibben are announcing the death of the Death of Environmentalism thesis. They are praising a movement that is diverse, active from the international to local level, and spread out over a zillion issues. This is the movement that made Step It Up a success. Now are we telling that movement to close up shop on any other issue than climate change?

Then the responses to Ken's posting read like a blog from the Hemlock Society. I am apocalyptic too, but I see little to minus utility in it. We have to learn to walk on both feet. We get into these death spirals of despair, and no one is asking what it means for our organizing? Answer that question and you will have my rapt attention.

It reminds me of a speaker at our recent Step It Up rally in Cleveland. He said that climate change could be solved if we quit driving our cars. Now there is a practical, easily achievable goal! He, by the way, drove to our post rally celebration.

Climate change is the big kahuna. I am just looking for ideas that can direct organizing. I sometimes think environmentalism shares some apocalyptic genes with the wilder environs of fundamentalis Protestantism, with talk of rapture, end times, getting right with god, and the sheep being separated from the goats. Makes me nuts. I am rambling. I am out of here.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

The Mustache Strikes Again

I say Amen to everyone's caveats about Friedman. The guy is a corporate lick spittle. He is one of the Market God's most servile supplicants. BUT, he at least legitimizes the idea of taking us into a new energy future. He has been a big help in getting people outside of our charmed circle to start thinking the unthinkable. We need to take over from there.

Because of those services rendered, I do not start foaming at the mouth, like I used to whenever he would deliver his homilies on how wonderful corporate criminals are.

Kunstler, on the other hand is brilliant, but maddening like so many of his fellow doomsters are. I think his Geography of Nowhere will be a classic, if it is not already. But really, folks, flower beds must wilt when this guy walks past them. Birds quit singing. The sun disappears. And he is definetly of the misanthrope tradition of environmentalism. A modern day Malthus - who was a legendary sour puss of his day.

With Friedman you want to entertain hope. With Kunstler, you want to go home, and suck on a gun barrel. Which do you think is going to influence the future?

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

Report from Cleveland

Braving hypothermia on the shores of Lake Erie, approximately 100 Clevelanders rallied at Edgewater Park to say Step It Up Congress. The rally featured speakers, a speak out, music, and networking. What was particularly significant was the number of young families and children at the event. Afterwards organizers convened to celebrate at Great Lakes Brewery, a local brewery that has a bio-diesel truck, and that is one of the most environmentally friendly businesses in Cleveland. Today's event was preceeded by a press conference on Thursday, attended by representatives from government, business and labor. Everyone felt it was a very successful effort in Cleveland.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

Good for David

If you all do not know Tom is the author of what I consider an unheralded classic of environmental thought: "The Divided Planet." Grist has an excellent scouting program when they land people like Tom.

Randy Cunningham.

Randy Cunningham

You gotta get this book.

I have been experiencing a prolonged Saul on the Road to Damascus type of event, since starting to read AN ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL book. It is called Dream:re-imagining progressive politics in an age of fantasy by Stephen Duncombe. The New Press 2007.

David's comments fit like a glove with Duncombe's observations. I have read few books that have supplied me with so many "Ah hah!" moments. If I hit the lottery I would spend a healthy part of my fortune buying and sending this book to people in the environmental and other movements.

If Duncombe had been at the event, security would have had to drag him out of the building - screaming.

GET THIS BOOK! See you all on the road to Damascus.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

Who will replace Gen. Jack Ripper

played by George C. Scott, inspired by Curtiss LeMay? In this movie we will need a character like Ripper to represent the coal industry in general:someone levelling Applachian Mountains. Maybe Robert Duvall would be available. Instead of saying "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." he could say something equally crazed about blowing the tops off mountains. Zarkov could be his reclamation specialist.

Somebody stop me!

Randy

Randy Cunningham

Zarkov is the great grandchild of Dr. Strangelove

That is the ticket folks. Where is Stanley Kubrick when we need him? What we need to do is quit being so dour and earnest about climate change, and start producing dark comedies that will do for climate change, what Dr. Strangelove did for nuclear war. "Dr. Zarkov or How I quit Worrying about Global Warming, and Learned to Love it."  

I am waiting by my phone for Hollywood to call me for my script!

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

Is naturescene a troll?

Inquiring minds want to know.

randino

Randy Cunningham

Sour Grapes.

Oh you poor bitter souls. Here is something to think about. You will never, in your entire, cynical little lives, do for the planet what Gore has done.

I voted for Nader in 2000. I never missed an opportunity to trash Al. But the man is second only to perhaps Jimmy Carter, as someone who has risen from defeat, and now is far ahead of the person who beat him, in public esteem.

Eat your heart out, losers.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

My post.

I meant to say "Thou shalt not speak ill, of another environmentalist."

Grist needs a device where you can revise your post and save yourself from appearing to be illiterate, drunk, or asleep!

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

Cleveland Weathermen

This is not rocket science. Take a stop watch. Start watching your local news. Time the number of car ads, utility commercials and other assorted fossil fuel friendly businesses, over the entire news hour. Do your arithmetic. Now, what is it that you do not understand?

The Weathermen in Cleveland, are not idiots. They just know which side of the bread is buttered and which side is dry. They are listening to their master's voices. They do not and never will bite the hands that feed them,  no matter how many studies you cite.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, Ohio

Randy Cunningham

Is that President Klaus or President Borat?

Randy Cunningham

Conservationist vs Environmentalist

I have noticed a number of environmental organizations trying to "rebrand" themselves by reclaiming the term conservationist. In doing so they ignore that fact that words are not just vacant labels that you can sling around at will. Words have real meaning.

I think of conservationist as someone of the old school that looks upon species and eco-systems as separate from the surrounding society.

To me an environmentalist is someone who agrees with John Muir, that everything is "hitched together." That is what gives environmentalism its reputation for extremism, because even old timers like Aldo Leopold were very, very radical in their outlook precisely because they refused to set up nice, neat boundaries between "us" and nature.

That said, environmentalist, environment, environmental - they are mouth fulls and not really adapted to most people today who have the attention span of a knat with ADD. I would be more than receptive to a new term, but lets not throw the baby out with the wash water. I think our development over the past generation of a comprehensive critique of society is where a lot of our power is.

Randy CunninghamOn GOP strategist Frank Luntz argues enviros are failing -- and they're mean to boot posted 2 years, 10 months ago 35 Responses

Lamers

Did David have a bad day today? Is this an emotional reaction from having to watch the SOTU? Maybe Grist should install one of those special rooms like in Japanese factories where you can hit a dummy with a stick, or write bad things on a black board about people who piss you off.

What he seems to be getting at is the curse of perfectionism. Perfectionism shows an unwillingness to put up with all those nasty contradictions in life.  Unfortunately unless you want to live in a monastery, you have no other choice but to suck it up and live an imperfect life among the heathen. A community organizer I once knew said you have to choose between activism that is a form of social therapy and activism that brings about social change. My spin on it is that you meet two types of people in social change movements. Those who want to go to heaven, and those who want to change things.

Take the rest of the day off David. I am worried about you.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

Be careful about your firewood.

Ohio, along with many other states around the Great Lakes, is currently under siege from the Emerald Ash Borer. The borer, an exotic, promises to do to our native ash trees, what the Dutch Elm disease and the Chestnut blight did to our native elms and chestnuts.

One of the reasons the bug has spread so quickly is the trade in firewood where diseased ash firewood can be transported for hundred of miles, giving the bug a chance to spread to new areas.

So only burn wood that you know comes from your local area, and burn it completely. Otherwise you may be helping to drive another nail in the coffin of an important American hardwood. For more info: www.emeraldashborer.info

randinoOn Umbra on which wood to burn posted 2 years, 10 months ago 8 Responses

Bush sees the light.

I am with David Roberts on this. W has made intransigence a prime operating feature of his administration. He takes great pride in sticking to a stand, even if that stand is obviously wrong (as in Iraq) or mad (as in Iraq and global warming.) The more shit people give him for a position, the more honor bound he feels in sticking to it.

January 20, 2009. That is the date to keep in mind.

randino

Randy Cunningham

Lieberman

is a sanctimonious shit. Only enviros whose breath of vision is a soda straw would give him the time of day, because the war is one of the greatest environmental issues today. Why?

First, it has totally derailed any and all other issues that we should be paying attention to, that are much more deadly for our future that everything the jihadies have done, are doing, or ever hope to do.

Second, this war is to help buy some more time for our Jurasic Park energy system.

Third, when war comes in the front door, democracy goes out the window. The so called anti-terrorism measures cause everyone to keep their heads down and are a reason there is not more protest going on today.

Since Blair is on his way out, I don't think he would mind if we bequeath his title on Lieberman. He is Bush's new poodle.  

randino

Randy Cunningham

Counter currents.

You can see counter currents against laissez faire all around. You have the revolt against the Robert Rubin wing of the Democratic Party, signalled by the election of people like Sherrod Brown in Ohio. Within China there has been a rise of a New Left, that while largely confined to universities is making its influence felt and it is sceptical to hostile to laissez faire, and very insistent on environmental protection. Seems even pig headed Communist bureaucrats in China listen to intellectuals. I think it is part of the culture that has been around for a few thousand years. You have the fact that the traditional WTO trade initiatives aka "unleash the fury of the ruling class" have gone nowhere over the past several years. Even Pat Buchanan (ye gods!) says that the era of free trade is over with.

What is very interesting, principally because Washington DC has become a great sucking black hole over the past six years, is you see a vitality on the grass roots level unseen in years. The place to be in environmental politics today is the city, or state level. Now here is where you see the return of the activist state, the state as the "tribune of the people".

Just some of my two bits.

randino

Randy Cunningham

My suggestions.

I am recommending two books and an author. The first is Losing Ground: American Environmentalism at the Close of the Twentieth Century by Mark Dowie. Dowie analyzes environmentalism as a movement and as old fashioned politics. His greatest contribution, was pointing out that the "little" green groups play a role at not only fighting the evil doers, but also play a role in making the "big" green groups accountable.  My second book is  At Odds with Progress: Americans and Conservation by Bret Wallach. Wallach is an author that has not produced near enough. He is geographer and does a tour of the US, illustrating forces behind land use, and tells about the complex politics behind the founding of such agencies as the National Forest Service. This is the line that sold me. "Conservation has been our way of doing what cannot be done. It has been our way of saying what must not be said. It has been the way for us to resist."

Finally, I want to recommend anything by Lewis Mumford. He was the urban and architecture critic for years for the New Yorker. He had a run in with Jane Jacobs, that I don't think he ever got over. His reputation has faded, while hers still survivies her. They don't make'em like him anymore. He can take a subject or issue and give you views of it from culture, to economics to history. I only know two people active today who can do that: Mike Davis and Rebecca Solnit. Most important of all, this man had down the environmental challenge in the 1930s, and people are still eating his dust on the issue. Don't be put off by his first half of the 20th century language and writing style. He was the real thing, and did not even go to college!

randino

Randy Cunningham

Hope in the profit motive.

Looking to the profit motive to pull our chestnuts out of the fire is like appointing a member of the Crips or Bloods to head up your neighborhood crime watch.

Pay attention! Who do we always end up butting heads with trying to save the environment? Corporations. What is the last name of the people we always end up having to fight? The last name is Inc. It is not like we all decided to become leftists for no good reason. It is because we always end up running up against corporations and the wonderful free market system.

The profit motive is behind four centuries of raping the earth and f-ing over people. You know what has brought about what little progress we can point to? Not the profit motive, but people organizing AGAINST the profit motive.

I have a saying when it comes to corporations and capitalism. I got it from the movie Peter Pan when I was a kid. It has never failed me. "Never smile at a crocodile, oh you can't get friendly with a crocodile, he will lure you in, with his friendly grin, and imagine what you'll taste like when you are within."

randino

Randy Cunningham

Displacing miners.

We need to realize that the greatest destruction of mining jobs took place after WWII, when the UMWA and the coal companies agreed to bring in automation which ended the days of the pick and shovel miner. Appalachia saw a population drop as everyone filled the factories of Ohio. Then deindustrialization came in. Ain't capitalism beutiful?

We should recognize the hustle that we are always on the receiving end in the environmental movement. Any time we do or suggest anything, anytime we try to protect some patch of land from the Great Appetite, corporadoes howl that we are putting a bunch of poor workers out of a job. Why, they sound practically socialist in how concerned they are for the working class. Meanwhile, for reasons having nothing to do with the environment, they will gleefully destroy the jobs of thousands, and get rewarded by Wall Street for their bottom line ruthlessness. Is there any concern shown for the workers at these moments? Don't make me laugh.

randino

Randy Cunningham

The Mustache.

The Mustache (by the way, I love that nickname) is a real trick bag. Half the time he has me applauding, and the other half he has me dry heaving.

The Mustache is first and foremost a full throated unabashed believer in the Market God. In this respect he is a throw back to the common sense of the Gilded Age. He seems utterly incapable of seeing any flaw in the world run by corporations and fundamentalist free market ideology. He has utter contempt for anyone who does not see the self-evident benevolence of corporations uber alles. If you dissent, you are either on the pay roll, or you are a fellow traveller of petrol authoritarianism. But, he is a brillant representative of the current corporate bedazzled common sense. Our time deserves him.

It is a common sense that has been seducing a lot of the environmental movement I am afraid. When I was a child, a favorite song from Peter Pan, was "never smile at a crocodile." I think the modern corporations are the crocodile, and we forsake our critical attitude towards them at our peril.  

Appauld the Mustache when he deserves it. But let us not forget for a moment where he is coming from. A place many of us, for very good reasons, have a lot of problems with.  

randino.

Randy Cunningham

Doom II

I think a lot of apocalyptic thought comes from our Puritan heritage. After all, one of the first true pieces of American literature was "Sinners in the hands of a Wrathful God," by Johnathan Edwards. Just substitute environment for god, and you will have a standard contemporary environmental tract.

Humans are the only animals who can perceive, and fear the future. But we take a perverse delight in peering into the abyss. Heh, Hollywood knows us better than we know ourselves, and it has been selling us such cheerful epics as On the Beach, Blade Runner, and any host of other movies where NYC or LA is being destroyed. We flock to churches where the sulphurous vapors of hell are a favorite topic.

Admit it, we are apocalyptic because we enjoy being apoclyptic. We love to piss ourselves with fear and it doesn't matter if the source is melting glaciers, or the maniac who has just selected a tool from our knife rack in the kitchen, and is now creeping up the stairs with a mad gleam in his eyes, headed to our bedrooms to commence the slaughter.  

Booooo!

randino

Randy Cunningham

Reasonable conservatives.

There is this mass hallucination that is gripping the country. It says that after the elections Bush & Co on any number of issues are all of sudden, warm and fuzzy and reasonable.

I think we should go with what we know, not what we hope. What we know is that this is an administration of hard ass ideologues, possessed of an almost messianic zeal. They are a bunch of people who say what they mean, and mean what they say. They will fight you til the last dog (or Iraqi) is dead.

Hell, they have told the EPA to destroy their library. That is like the action of a caudillo who is shredding documents, shooting prisoners, and looting the treasury on the way to the airport.

Do not look for progress on the environment, especially global warming, or the war in Iraq under this President. He had always said what he was going to do, and people have always chosen to ignore him, thinking "This crazy bastard can't be saying that." Then they are amazed when he does just what he said he was going to do. They are the fools, not him.

randino

Randy Cunningham

After hangover review.

I would hope that in the aftermath of being bitch slapped for six years under Bush, none of us are still babbling on about there being no  difference between the DP and the GOP. I used to spout such nonsense, too. The difference between the two reminds me of the difference between an ordinary hive of honey bees, and a hive of africanized killer bees. They are both bees. However disturb the nest of one and they will chase you for a hundred feet. Disturb the nest of another, and they will chase you a thousand feet and then not be satisfied until they kill you. Ultimately they are the same. But it is what lays between here and the ultimate that is a very serious problem. Ultimately we are all dead. No one lives there.

Quick and dirty, we will not have confirmed environmental criminals like Inhofe chairing committees. We will not have insult daily added to injury at the hands of e-criminals. We may not be able to make real progress, but we can quit losing ground.

What I don't want to see is all the Big Greens suddenly shifting all their focus back to DC, abandoning all the fantastic work that has been done in the states. That state work is the foundation for the future.

Finally, we cannot afford to say that the revolution is over and we can now all go home and let the dems manage things. They have helped us in the past, but they have also betrayed us in a heartbeat. As an old community organizer I knew once said of politicians "They are our friends today. Tomorrow is another day."

Unfortunately most of us have been self emasculated by working for or with 501(c)3 non-profits. I think environmentalists within the DP should form Bob Marshall Democratic Clubs, from the ward to the national level, like the Stonewall Democrats have with gays. Those environmentalists who are Republican should today, in fact this moment, send in their dues to Republicans for Environmental Protection.  

In sum, after a day of celebration it is back to work: organize, organize, organize.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

Pombo Adios

I haven't been so happy to see a news flash from California, since the person I share a name with, Randy "Duke" Cunningham, went to jail. Any more good news like this and I will have to reconsider my traditional disbelief in a god.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

Tree hugging.

I like the bumper sticker I saw at an environmentally oriented web site "I not only hug trees, I kiss them to." Then I remember the scene in The Piano Lesson, where all the kids are humping trees.

This all reminds me of the term politically correct. This was a term the right stole right out from under the left's nose. My earliest memory of the term politically correct, was that is was used by the left to laugh at the left. We would always say things like "We went to see Reds the other night. Everyone was there. It was so PC."

I suggest make the term a term of respect and honor. If you do not mind it and embrace it you will ruin the fun of those who use it as a term of denigration. People will only laugh at you if you let them.  

RandyOn The history of tree-hugging, and the future of name-calling posted 3 years, 1 month ago 9 Responses