environment Politics: climate bill Scott Brown
by Warren
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Month 7, Day 21: A Pound For A Brown on The Bus
Continuing to write to Senators this week.
Dear Senator Brown,
The CBO scores are in, and it’s been confirmed that the Kerry-Lieberman climate bill will reduce the deficit by nineteen billion dollars.
Which means that “deficit hawk” arguments against the bill are irrelevant.
Meanwhile, July 2010 is on track to be the hottest July ever recorded in the world. Scientists at Perdue University just concluded a study which predicts a significant increase in so-called “killer heat waves” in the American Southwest. The lobster population in Southern New England has diminished so much because of climate change that a five-year moratorium on lobster fishing may be necessary. Lake Superior is twenty degrees warmer than usual for this time of year. Arctic glaciers are breaking apart, and mountain glaciers that provide water for billions of people around the world are vanishing rapidly.
It was in the early 1960s that scientists began predicting problems brought about by global warming. We have had fifty years’ worth of warnings, and we’ve chosen not to act. Senator, if we don’t act now, the problems we’re going to see a few years from now will make many of our current crises seem trivially insignificant. Since the deficit argument has been rendered moot by the CBO scoring, you have only a few possible reasons to vote against a climate bill:
1. You’re afraid of what Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and James Inhofe will say;
2. You think scientists are just making it up because they like scaring people;
3. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the big oil companies will pay you well to help scuttle climate/energy legislation;
4. You really don’t understand the problem — after all, didn’t it snow heavily last winter?Whereas there is one overwhelmingly good reason to vote for climate legislation: our future and the future of our children and our world depend on it.
Please, Senator Brown. Do the right thing. Vote for a strong climate bill.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment Politics: 350 Global Work Party John Kerry
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Month 7, Day 20: Two Hundred and One. But Who’s Counting?
I figured I’d invite John Kerry to be part of a work crew on October 10, 350.org’s Global Work Party. Are you planning on doing something?
Dear Senator Kerry,
I am hopeful something will come of all your hard work on putting together a meaningful climate/energy bill. If you can find a way to persuade Ben Nelson that the security of America’s agricultural, forest and water resources are even more important than next year’s utility bills (even for Nebraskans), I would be very happy.
But this letter is to ask you something else. I’m writing to ask you to commit publicly to joining a work party on October 10 — the international Global Work Party sponsored by 350.org. People all over the world will be pooling their resources, putting their sweat equity into their communities by helping with weatherization, solar panel installation, bicycle repair, tree planting and countless initiatives. As of today’s date, there are at least thirty separate work parties already planned in Massachusetts, and over twelve hundred actions in 116 countries around the world. They’re all listed at the 350.org website (www.350.org).
I’m not officially affiliated with this group, but as an ardent citizen activist, I think that what they are doing is tremendously important. I hope that you are already aware of their work and accomplishments.
It would be enormously meaningful if you were to come to one of these actions and pound a few nails. If you were to encourage members of your staff to get involved, that would be even better, and if you were to make a public statement of support for the October 10 action (which is, after all, exactly what citizens are supposed to do: get involved)….it could have a profound impact on the thinking of our fellow citizens.
I know that you and I agree on the urgency of the climate crisis; I hope that we’ll see you on October 10.
Thank you for all that you’ve done.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Barack Obama Ben Nelson climate bill
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Month 7, Day 19: Ta-Daaaaaah!
Today is Day 200, which makes this the 200th climate letter I’ve written since making my New Year’s resolution. Yay, me.
Dear President Obama,
The time is rapidly approaching for a showdown on the climate/energy bill in the Senate.
Please use all the resources at your command to persuade Democratic senators like Ben Nelson that their opposition to meaningful climate legislation is shortsighted and misguided. The consequences of global climate change are being felt right here, right now, all over this country and the world. We’re going to have hotter summers and more droughts, which means more wildfires. There are going to be devastating effects on agriculture everywhere in the world, and states like Nebraska are not going to be immune.
In this context, Senator Nelson’s unwillingness even to vote for cloture is absolutely bizarre; he claims it’s because he doesn’t want Nebraskans to pay higher energy bills.
Unfortunately for all of us, the bill for the energy we’ve used in the past century has now come due, and Mother Nature appears likely to cut off our credit. We’re all going to be paying higher energy bills from now on. Genuine climate/energy legislation is the best first step to making sure that our economy won’t be completely crippled in the decades to come.
I’ve written to Senator Nelson, and to Majority Leader Reid. Now I’m writing to you. I hope you can make some of your erstwhile colleagues recognize the nature of the climate crisis. There is no time to lose, and no time to waste.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment Jazz June 12 Action music vocalists
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Dominique Eade’s Set (excerpt)
Because of technical issues, only these two tunes from Dominique Eade’s wonderful set at the “Singing For The Planet” concert are available. She is accompanied very sympathetically and supportively by Will Graefe on guitar and Will Slater on bass.
Here is her version of Hoagy Carmichael’s “Buttermilk Sky,” a song which I’d never heard before.
This is her original piece, called “The River.” She begins with some nice singing and kalimba:
The other performances from “Singing For The Planet” can be found here:
environment Politics: Ben Nelson climate bill Harry Reid idiots U.S. Senate
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Month 7, Day 18: Keep The Pressure On!
Not much to add to this. Asking Harry Reid to throw a few punches and twist a few arms. Not feeling too hopeful about that.
Dear Senator Reid,
As you move towards bringing the upcoming climate bill to the Senate floor, please take some time out of your schedule to try and talk some sense into your colleague, Senator Ben Nelson. His announced readiness to vote against cloture goes against the grain in multiple ways.
He has previously supported climate legislation on the Senate floor, as happened in 2008, when he voted to proceed on a bill authored by Senators Lieberman, Warner, and Boxer. He has also voted for cloture on a Boxer substitute amendment which would have established a carbon trading system and capped greenhouse emissions. His cited reason is a fear that Nebraskans’ utility bills will go up.
Well, as I’ve written Senator Nelson, everyone‘s utility bills are going to go up, whether we like it or not. And they’re going to go up catastrophically if we don’t do something about the greenhouse gas buildup in our atmosphere — which a recent Purdue University study concluded will lead to a dramatic increase in “killer heat waves” in the American West and Southwest, within a few decades.
Senator Nelson’s obstructionism is short-sighted, selfish and terribly destructive to what may be our nation’s last chance to secure an environmentally sustainable future. Please do not allow him to hijack climate/energy legislation; we have already procrastinated for more than four decades, and now is our time to act.
We can no longer afford to live wastefully, and first off, that means we have to stop wasting time.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Claire McCaskill idiots
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Month 7, Day 17: Rightly Is They Called
There is a reason I use the tag “idiots” when I write to politicians.
Dear Senator McCaskill,
When you made an analogy between climate legislation and the half-century of work that laid the foundation for our recent health-care bill, you said the following: “I think it’s still a work in progress. You know, it took 50 years on health care…”
Which seems to imply that you think getting a climate bill passed could take fifty years, and that isn’t such a bad thing. And y’know what? In fact, we’ve got fifty years to get it done. Except for one thing: our fifty-year window of opportunity opened in 1960, when scientist Dave Keeling first developed a method of accurately measuring the carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere. It was around that time that climatologists began to develop projections of the effects of global warming, and the idea started circulating that maybe, just maybe, this might not be a very good thing for all of us in the long term.
Nobody took them seriously enough to do anything. But if we’d started then, we could have made quite a difference. We could have headed off some of the most immediate problems, such as the likelihood that the next several decades will see a huge spike in the number of so-called “killer heat waves” affecting the American South-West (according to a new study from Purdue University scientists). Or the fact that temperatures in Lake Superior were recently measured at twenty degrees higher than normal for this time of year. Or the catastrophic loss of Arctic sea ice. Or the release of frozen methane on the Arctic seabed into the atmosphere. Or the acidification of the oceans, which threatens the food chain for easily a sixth of the world’s population.
But, as I said, nobody took the climatologists seriously. And the scientists kept making their discoveries over the ensuing decades, and time and time again the following things happened: scientific predictions came true, but were ignored; scientists made more predictions, and were ignored. Other nations began trying to integrate the burgeoning awareness of climate change into their policies; the United States refused. As George H.W. Bush said at the Rio Climate Conference in 1992, “The American way of life is not up for negotiation.”
Instead of listening to our scientists, we mocked them.
And now we’re at the end of that fifty-year window, and it’s closing rapidly in our faces. Are we going to advance genuine climate legislation, or are we going to offer our descendants a blighted future full of heat waves, water wars, catastrophic weather, and crippled agriculture?
We can’t take fifty years. We’ve already taken it.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Ben Nelson climate bill idiots
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Month 7, Day 16: You Can’t Always Say What You Want…
My original draft of this letter to Ben Nelson led off with the phrase, “you unspeakable turd,” but I decided to be more polite.
Dear Senator Nelson,
I was distressed to read that you plan on voting against cloture on the upcoming climate bill. Leaving aside the question of the political implications of a failure to support your own party in a simple cloture vote, I want to say that your unwillingness to support meaningful climate legislation is based on faulty reasoning.
You are quoted as saying that “A carbon tax or trade piece would significantly increase the utility rates in Nebraska for businesses, agriculture and individuals,” and thus make it clear that you are placing the interests of your state above the interests of the nation as a whole, and the world as a whole.
Fine. That’s your prerogative. But your stated position is remarkably shortsighted. A recent study by Purdue University scientists predicts that because of the effects of climate change, the upcoming decades will see a dramatic increase in so-called “killer heat waves” in the Western and Central United States. Let’s say your state gets through the 2030s with only three or four crippling heat waves (fewer than expected for your neighbors to the South); that doesn’t mean the following years are going to get better.
They’re going to get worse. A lot worse. And it won’t just be in the Western United States. Everywhere around the globe people are recording the hottest temperatures they’ve ever seen, and not just on isolated occasions, but day after sweltering day after sweltering day.
We are at a point in history where only strong action today can prevent a catastrophic future for our children and their children. No matter how you look at it, that’s more important than this year’s utility bills. If we don’t act now, our great-grandchildren may not be alive to curse us for our inaction.
Please change your mind, and support cloture on climate/energy legislation.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Corporate Accountability Deval Patrick Water
by Warren
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Month 7, Day 15: Keep The Oil Out Of Our Water, Keep Our Water Out Of The Oil
The people at Corporate Accountability International have a great action: the Think Outside The Bottle campaign. CAI is asking people to write their governors, requesting them to institute a change in state policy regarding the purchase of bottled water. Good idea. I took their form letter and made it my own.
Dear Governor Patrick —
I write to urge you to change Massachusetts state policy on the purchase of bottled water.
Since Massachusetts has an excellent public water system, it would be no hardship to implement a policy whereby state government offices and events are required to use tap water. Not only will this save money (San Francisco alone spent about $500,000 a year on bottled water until Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered the shift to tap water), but it will help restore confidence in our water supply (especially important after the May 1st water-main break in Weston).
There are many reasons for this, but the most important is simply that the manufacture of millions and millions of water bottles (each of which is used only once before being recycled) requires millions of gallons of oil. If we as a nation are to wean ourselves from our addiction to oil, we have to do more than just cut down on unnecessary trips to the 7-11 — we have to eliminate products that consume oil.
The steady drumbeat of bad news about climate change lends grave urgency to this requirement. We must move away from any reliance on fossil fuels, and getting the Commonwealth of Massachusetts permanently off bottled water will be a significant contribution. Please make a public commitment to ending state contracts with bottled water suppliers, promoting public water systems across the state, and advocating for a renewed national commitment to water infrastructure funding.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
India Indian music music: genius Gwalior gharana improvisation khyal Krishnarao Shankar Pandit
by Warren
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Krishnarao Shankar Pandit: Raga Darbari Kanada
One of the greatest recorded performances of Hindustani music, this 30-minute gem comes from 1957, when Krishnarao Shankar Pandit was in his prime. The force and power of his improvisations are astonishing; there is nobody else in Hindustani tradition who can imagine some of the things he comes up with, let alone execute them with such verve and clarity.
Anokhey Lal, who was known for his brilliant and supportive theka, is accompanying on tabla. The violinist is not credited. Any thoughts?
Enjoy.
environment Politics: climate bill Jeff Bingaman
by Warren
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Month 7, Day 14: O.F.F.S.
Senator Jeff Bingaman thinks we need to be very cautious about how we build a climate bill.
Dear Senator Bingaman,
I was disturbed by a report that quoted you as saying, “There is a big gap between what the scientists say we should do to deal with climate change, and what the politics of the Congress today, and particularly the politics of the Senate, will allow us to do.”
Now, I’m not suggesting you’re misrepresenting things. There is such a gap, and it has had a terrible effect on our nation’s ability to make and implement policies that can actually have an impact on people’s lives. What upsets me is that you appear to be treating this “gap” as a reason to do as little as possible of what climatologists say we have to do.
What you and your Democratic colleagues in the Senate need to be doing is making the point, day after day, that we are facing a planetary emergency that is more urgent than anything humanity has yet contended with….and that the Republicans choose to believe Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin rather than an overwhelming majority of the scientists who actually study the field and know something about it.
Your quote is an excellent example of “learned helplessness.” Faced with an ideologically driven opposition that is ignorant and proud of it, you choose to avoid conflict, instead producing a measure that does not significantly reward utilities for being the first to have their carbon emissions capped, and blocks the EPA from regulating industrial sources’ greenhouse gas emissions for another eight years.
Senator, the 1992 Rio conference made it clear that this problem was not going to go away. President Clinton said good words but delivered nothing…and President Bush made matters infinitely worse. Are we going to kick the can down the road yet again?
But look on the bright side: if biologist Frank Fenner’s predictions are correct, climate change will bring about human extinction within this century — so our descendants won’t be able to curse us for our inaction.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders