environment Politics: Nancy Pelosi
by Warren
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Month 3, Day 23: Loving Nancy
I was inspired by Nancy Pelosi last night. She’s done a fabulous job. Even though a climate bill has already passed the house, I thought I’d send her a letter letting her know that at least one American Democrat is hoping for more from this Congress on climate issues.
Dear Speaker Pelosi,
Congratulations on your extraordinary efforts and your extraordinary success in bringing the Health Care bill to passage. My wife and I were glued to the screen last night, and as the final vote total reached 216, we both cheered, clapped, wept and embraced. Your advocacy and passion were integral to bringing this about. I look forward to seeing the reconciliation fixes go through the Senate in a few days’ time, and to cheering, clapping, weeping and embracing my wife again!
This letter, though, is not simply a congratulation. I write to urge you: apply similar passion and strength to the passage of meaningful climate legislation in the coming years. Waxman-Markey is an excellent start, but it’s only a start. We are going to need much stronger and more robust approaches to the climate crisis in the next few years, or the consequences to our nation and our planet will be unimaginable.
This is a harder sell, I know. Persuading members of an elected body to support legislation that addresses problems which are only beginning to happen is contrary to the usual practice of American politics, which is to wait until things are at crisis point until doing anything. Unfortunately, that won’t work with the Earth’s climate, which doesn’t care about the exigencies of American politics. By the time things are at a crisis point, it will be too late.
For a century we’ve heard from timid politicians and pundits that “it’s not the right time to fix health care.” Yesterday, you proved them wrong. We’ve also been hearing that it’s not the right time to address climate change, for there are so many other priorities that occupy our political attention. But it will never be “the right time” to address climate change, because the lag between climate action and climate response is greater than the electoral cycle of a U.S. Senator (let alone a member of the House of Representatives).
While it may not be “the right time” to tackle the climate crisis — it’s the only time we’ve got. I’m glad you’re the Speaker of the House right now, for this problem can’t be kicked down the road for a future Congress to handle.
Thank you for all that you have done for our nation.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Joe Lieberman John Kerry Lindsey Graham methane
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Month 3, Day 22: More Fart Jokes, Please.
I’m listening to health-care debate, so I’ve only got a small fraction of a brain. Here’s the latest terrifying news: more on polar methane. I really wish I could remain ignorant of all this.
Dear Senators Kerry, Lieberman and Graham,
I write to urge you to include language in your proposed climate legislation that specifically addresses the problem of polar methane release. A recent study reported in Science News* indicates that microbes living under ice sheets in the polar regions may be churning out huge amounts of this powerful greenhouse gas. If this wasn’t bad enough, we already know that methane is already entering the atmosphere as the permafrost cap that’s been keeping it underground melts, due to increased atmospheric temperatures.
Climatologists’ projections of global warming haven’t yet taken this methane into account, which means that even the worst of the worst-case estimates are undoubtedly too optimistic. We need a world-wide Manhattan Project, bringing together the top scientific minds of the planet to address these multiple interlocked problems.
Rather than allowing that methane to enter the atmosphere and trigger incalculable damage to planetary ecosystems, we need to solve the problem of harvesting and collecting it for use as fuel. While burning methane also releases CO2 (which means that it is unsuitable as a long-term fuel source) this approach is vastly preferable to allowing it to trigger a greenhouse tipping point that would lead us much closer to the Venusian worst-case scenario outlined by Dr. James Hansen.
Any proposed climate legislation needs to acknowledge the magnitude of this problem, and outline steps to engaging the world’s scientific expertise and imagination on methods of ameliorating it.
There is no time to lose.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
* – (http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/57353/title/Methane-making_microbes_thrive_under_the_ice)
environment: ancient sunlight Medford Transcript
by Warren
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Month 3, Day 21: Keepin’ it Local
Figured I’d follow my letter to the President with some more built around a similar perspective. This one goes to my local paper, the Medford Transcript, which has been printing some of my letters over the past few months. I’ll scan them in sometime soon and post them.
Have you written to your local paper recently?
With the hubbub around health care legislation, people may have missed President Obama’s recent announcement (in Executive Order 13514 on Federal Sustainability, dated January 29,2010) that the U.S. Government will aim to cut its own emissions of greenhouse gases twenty-eight percent by 2010. While that’s a great start, it’s nowhere near enough. The world needs a new energy equation where none of our energy comes from oil and coal. A world without fossil fuels is as important to our long-term survival as a world without nuclear weapons.
The fact that rising greenhouse emissions increase the already very real possibility of a global climate catastrophe should be enough to force us to change our energy usage drastically. And yet, there is another element to be considered.
We wouldn’t turn a thousand-year-old sequoia into toothpicks or dismantle Stonehenge or the Great Pyramid and grind their stones into gravel, for to do so would be to disrespect their antiquity. Fossil fuels, as their name suggests, are the transformed remains of ancient life. We squander a precious and limited resource every time we burn the sunlight that fell on Earth hundreds of millions of years ago, turning it into CO2 and dissipating it into the atmosphere. To burn oil and coal is to spend our principal, to eat our seed corn, to waste our inheritance.
Renewable energy sources are the ecological equivalent of a “pay as you go” policy; a change in our energy use patterns is not just good environmental and fiscal policy, it is also morally sound and philosophically correct. The President has started the ball rolling with his Executive Order. Now it’s up to us to take it further, finding ever more inventive ways to shift our energy sources from the sunlight of the Paleozoic era to that currently streaming in our windows.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: ancient sunlight Barack Obama
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Month 3, Day 20: Wasting The Oldest Thing We Have
I was thinking about yesterday’s letter when I sat down to write, and then discovered that I had a philosophical point to make. I hope somebody reads this one.
Dear President Obama,
At the beginning of 2010, I made a resolution. Every day, I would write a letter to politicians, media outlets or important figures in our national discourse — focusing exclusively on climate change and related environmental issues. I’m proud to say I haven’t missed a day so far. And Saturdays are my day for a letter to you.
Today I’m writing/faxing/emailing to applaud your recent announcement that the U.S. Government will aim to cut its own emissions of greenhouse gases twenty-eight percent by the beginning of the next decade. That’s a great start.
But it’s just a start, and if we only get to 28 percent, it’s nowhere near enough. America needs to lead the world into a new energy equation, one where none of our energy needs are supplied by burning fossil fuels. A world without fossil fuels is as necessary to our long-term survival as a world without nuclear weapons.
We need to increase federal funding for all forms of energy research. I encourage research into so-called “clean coal” technology, but not because I think “clean coal” is technically feasible or economically sensible. I suspect that investigations of carbon capture and sequestration will yield other benefits that will positively impact our “footprint.” I would like to see funding for wind, solar and geothermal energy research increased geometrically. These sources rely on the energy our earth is receiving and generating right now — unlike oil and coal, which are ways of storing solar energy our earth received a very long time ago.
Taking carbon out of the ground and putting it in the atmosphere is irrefutably bad for the planet. There is no good side to an increase in GHG emissions; the possibility of a global climate catastrophe is a statistically significant risk. This alone should be enough to force us to drastically revise our energy usage. And yet, there is another and more philosophical element to this equation.
Human beings are awed by ancient things, yet we easily forget that in burning oil and coal we are wasting one of the oldest resources we have: the stored sunlight that fell on our planet hundreds of millions of years ago. We would not think of chopping down a thousand-year-old sequoia to make toothpicks; we would not dismantle Stonehenge or the Great Pyramid and grind their stones into gravel, for to do so would be to disrespect their antiquity. This should be our attitude towards the consumption of fossil fuels.
To burn oil and coal is to spend our principal, to eat our seed corn. Solar, wind, hydroelectric and geothermal energy sources are the ecological equivalent of a “pay as you go” policy. Ultimately, the only way human beings can survive is to stop wasting our inheritance.
Twenty-eight percent by 2020? A good start. But just a start. We need our atmospheric CO2 to be at 350 ppm or below if our grandchildren are not to curse us for our prodigality and irresponsibility.
Yours sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment Politics: 350 Nancy Sutley White House Council on Environmental Quality
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Month 3, Day 19: Inside the White House?
Looking around for someone new to badger, I located Nancy Sutley, the Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. She posted on her organization’s website (buried in the White House site) about President Obama’s proposed Greenhouse emission reductions for the US Government. I liked that, although the target numbers as mentioned don’t go nearly far enough.
So she gets a letter. She’ll get a fax, too, if I can figure out what the number is.
Dear Ms. Sutley,
I was delighted to learn of President Obama’s commitment to reduce the U.S. Government’s carbon emissions. A 28 percent reduction is indeed substantial. With a target date just ten years in the future, this will require swift and decisive action on retrofitting buildings, changing energy use strategies, and rewarding conservation initiatives within bureaucratic systems.
President Obama’s proposed reduction is commendable, and an excellent step in the right direction. But it’s not enough.
America needs to lead the world in achieving genuine and total “energy independence.” That phrase is often used to mean “energy we don’t have to buy from OPEC,” or “non-oil energy.” What it should mean is “independence from fossil fuels.” Whether it’s oil or coal, it’s the same thing in the end: taking carbon out of the ground and putting it in the atmosphere. And that, quite simply, is no longer sustainable.
The scientific evidence is clear and unambiguous: we need to bring atmospheric CO2 down to 350 ppm or below if we are to prevent a climate catastrophe of unimaginable proportions. It is time for the Administration to address this issue clearly and unambiguously; there is little time left if our actions are to have any effect.
A 28 percent reduction in GHG emissions is a laudable but inadequate target. I hope that in the months to come, you and the White House Council on Environmental Quality will be advocating forcefully for much stronger policies on sustainability, and towards the ultimate elimination of fossil fuels from our government’s energy diet.
Thank you,
Warren Senders
environment: Ban ki-Moon Boston Globe United Nations
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Month 3, Day 18: The United Nations Is On The Case?
It’s relatively difficult to take an AP report about internecine disagreements within the U.N. Climate team and turn it into a letter. In the event, I used the article as a hook for a relatively standard polemic, which went to the Boston Globe.
It’s reassuring that the member states of the United Nations continue to keep climate change on the table, despite the failure of the Copenhagen conference and the inability of the U.S. Government to do anything substantial towards reducing America’s grossly disproportionate contribution to the climate crisis. The 1997 Kyoto agreement would have been a good first step to addressing the problem — if it had been ratified in the 1970s. Climatologists agreed years ago that Kyoto’s proposed 5 percent reduction on carbon emissions is a pathetically tiny band-aid on a gaping wound. The nations of the world need to do more than “expand” Kyoto — we need to recognize that an extraordinary situation demands an extraordinary response.
Global climate change is a crisis of environment, because human activity is on the verge of making our relatively benign biosphere a lot less welcoming. It is also a crisis of perception, because for the first time human beings must abandon “local thinking” in both time and space, and take responsibility for one another everywhere on the planet, and across the centuries to come. Are we up to the challenge? Ban ki-Moon thinks so. I hope he is right.
Warren Senders
Jazz music: Eddie Jefferson genius vocalese
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Eddie Jefferson Makes Me Smile
Trane’s Blues
Eddie Jefferson (3 August 1918 – 9 May 1979) was a celebrated jazz vocalist and lyricist.
He is credited with having invented vocalese, a musical style in which lyrics are set to an instrumental composition or solo. Perhaps his best-known song is “Moody’s Mood for Love”, though it was first recorded by King Pleasure, who cited Jefferson as an influence. Jefferson’s songs “Parker’s Mood” and “Filthy McNasty” were also hits.
One of Jefferson’s most notable recordings “So What”, combined the lyrics of artist Christopher Acemandese Hall with the music of Miles Davis to create a masterwork that highlighted his prolific skills, and ability to majestically turn a phrase, in his style [jazz vocalese].
Jefferson’s last recorded performance was at the Joe Segal’s Jazz Showcase in Chicago and was released on video by Rhapsody Films.
Wiki
So What
The first time I heard his studio version of “So What” it just knocked me out. He captured Miles’ lyricism and openness perfectly…all the while singing a paean to the trumpeter. The live version is a bit faster, and Richie Cole plays great.
Here’s a studio recording from 1976 of “Sherry”
His voice is so full of warmth and welcome. I always felt that Eddie Jefferson was my friend.
Although there were a couple obscure early examples (Bee Palmer in 1929 and Marion Harris in 1934, both performing “Singing the Blues”), Eddie Jefferson is considered the founder, and premier performer of vocalese, the art of taking a recording and writing words to the solos, which Jefferson was practicing as early as 1949.
Eddie Jefferson’s first career was as a tap dancer but in the bebop era he discovered his skill as a vocalese lyricist and singer. He wrote lyrics to Charlie Parker’s version of “Parker’s Mood” and Lester Young’s “I Cover the Waterfront” early on, and he is responsible for “Moody’s Mood for Love” (based on James Moody’s alto solo on “I’m in the Mood for Love”). King Pleasure recorded “Moody’s Mood for Love” before Jefferson (getting the hit) and had his own lyrics to “Parker’s Mood,” but in time Jefferson was recognized as the founder of the idiom.
Jefferson worked with James Moody during 1955-1957 and again in 1968-1973 but otherwise mostly performed as a single. He first recorded in 1952 (other than a broadcast from 1949) and those four selections are on the compilation The Bebop Singers. During 1961-1962 he made a classic set for Riverside that is available as Letter from Home and highlighted by “Billie’s Bounce,” “I Cover the Waterfront,” “Parker’s Mood,” and “Things Are Getting Better.”
“Filthy McNasty”
environment Politics: Lindsey Graham whining
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Month 3, Day 17: Graham is a Cracker
Read earlier today that Huckleberry Graham was getting his knickers in a twist because the Democrats were going to pass Health Care Reform through reconciliation. If they do this, he whined, why, it’ll jus’ make it impossible for anythin’ to get done afterwards.
This is the Republican who’s working with Kerry and Lieberman on a climate bill. Ick. It sure sounds to me like he’s preparing to abandon the process.
“Now that those dreadful Democrats have gone and ruined bipartisanship, I just can’t bring myself to associate with any of ’em!” (sobs, dabs temples with eau de cologne)
What a jackass. So I wrote him a letter.
Dear Senator Graham,
I’d written to you, Senator Kerry and Senator Lieberman recently on the issue of your work on climate change legislation. It is self-evident to any thinking person that global climate change is the most important existential threat that humanity will face in the coming century.
I was distressed to learn of your recent statements on ABC’s “This Week” to the effect that if Health Care legislation is passed using the reconciliation process, it might “poison the well” as far as creating any sort of bipartisan initiative on another issue.
Really? This sounds to me like you’re not as serious about climate legislation as your previous statements would indicate. If you agree that the future of this country and of the planet we all inhabit is at stake, then it is terribly immature to allow pique at being legislatively outmaneuvered to stop you from doing productive work elsewhere.
It is too important for all of us that the U.S. Senate gets meaningful climate legislation passed this year. There is no time to waste, and there is a lot more at stake than Senatorial ego.
Thank you for your attention.
Sincerely,
Warren Senders
Education music Warren's music: games improvisation
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Musical Game Structures
Quite early in my musical life I became interested in Game Structures. I’ve already mentioned discovering some avant-garde composers through my high-school library’s bizarre decision to subscribe to “Source: Music of the Avant-Garde” during my junior year (two issues/year…and at the end of the year, noting that I was the only person who ever read them, and that I read them constantly, the librarians gave the magazines to me; they’re on the shelf behind me as I write). A few years later, living in Cambridge, I worked with Karl Boyle, who was writing some quite astonishing music that radically transformed the conceptual frameworks of everyone who participated in it.
Particularly important was a set of three pieces called the “Sound/Movement Murals,” an attempt to create performance structures which would engage musicians and dancers in the interpretation of a single set of instructions; all of us were “reading off the same score.” They were performed on stage in Boston; if I recall correctly it was as part of a festival of performance art.
These pieces have continued to influence me, off and on, for the last thirty years or so. Perhaps Karl has them somewhere in his files, and perhaps he would consider releasing them for others to learn from. I hope so.
In 1996 I was developing a music and music-making curriculum for the City of Boston’s After School program. As part of the materials, I wanted to include samples of alternative “notations,” so I generated a few pieces for inclusion in the curriculum (which is still available through Arts in Progress under the title “Ways of Listening”)
Education environment Politics: Brian Baird energy use habits USA Today
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Month 3, Day 16: Personal Habits and Public Policy
This one goes to the National McNewspaper. Some days I just look through the big publications to find something worth writing about. USA Today had a good interview with retiring Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA), and he made a lot of excellent points about the need for changes in our energy use patterns. Read the comments if you’re a fan of idiocy. Climate-change news seems to bring out a particular kind of mindlessness that is absolutely resistant to information or logic.
So USA Today heard from me. Plus which, I put this letter up in the comments, which should earn me a bunch of derision from the clueless denialists who’ve stunk the place up. What fun.
Brian Baird has the right idea. We need to make big changes in our habits of energy use if we want to avoid the worst effects of global climate change. Shorter showers, better equipment maintenance, more careful driving — all of these can go a long way to reducing our national level of greenhouse emissions.
But it’s not enough. Why? Because some of the worst offenders aren’t individuals. A massively polluting corporation cannot reduce its carbon footprint by taking a shorter shower or driving at the speed limit. As long as energy conservation leads to a lessening of profit in the short run, no corporate entity can be expected to go along with it. If wasting energy becomes more expensive, corporations will find ways to conserve. Which is why we need laws and enforcement mechanisms.
Neither voluntary behavioral changes nor legislative strategies are sufficient by themselves. Once America recognizes the severity of the crisis, we will have a genuine national response to the looming climate emergency — bottom-up (from the citizenry) and top-down (from the government). There is no time to waste. All of us need to change our habits, and all of us need meaningful climate legislation on the President’s desk.
Warren Senders