environment Politics: Arnold Schwarzenegger Proposition 23
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 4: NOW You Tell Us?
I’m glad Jerry Brown won in CA. I’ve always liked him, and Meg Whitman’s plans to sell off the state on Ebay were hard to swallow.
The San Francisco Chronicle posts an AP article which carries the somewhat hard-to-believe news that Arnold Schwarzenegger and George Schultz are going to try and persuade Republicans to do something about climate change. They also quote the big cheese from the NPRA about how Proposition 23 was badly misunderstood and all the environmentalists were mean to them:
The National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, which contributed $100,000 to the yes vote, called the measure’s defeat “tragic.” The association blamed it partly on the voter wave that elected Jerry Brown governor, re-elected Barbara Boxer to the U.S. Senate and sent their fellow Democrats to several other statewide offices.
The association’s president, Charles Drevna, also accused the measure’s opponents of leading a “sophisticated multimillion-dollar misinformation campaign” that he said would ultimately drive companies out of the state.
Schwarzenegger and Schultz both agree that climate change is real, and they think this is the perfect time to bring it back on the national stage.
Good luck with that, guys. I’m afraid that your party may have gone too far in deliberately cultivating stupidity as an ideology for that to work. But if you try, I’ll write letters in support, OK?
It is a glimpse into true bizarro-world when the head of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association can state with a straight face that the opponents of Proposition 23 ran a “misinformation campaign.” The initiative’s resounding defeat is more than just good news for California; it’s a rebuke to the anti-science agenda promoted by the Koch brothers and their associates. Governor Schwarzenegger and Secretary Schultz are members of an increasingly small and exclusive group: Republicans who recognize the severity of the threat posed by global warming. It is heartening to hear that they’re planning on pushing for legislative action on climate change at the national level. However, given the House takeover by GOP legislators who reflexively dismiss scientific expertise when it is inconvenient to their ideology, the “Governator” is going to have his hands full. Meanwhile, steadily increasing atmospheric CO2 is bringing the planet ever closer to the precipice.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes Darryl Issa idiots
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 3: This Is Awful.
In the wake of the bloodbath, I wrote the following to the Boston Globe, hanging it on a generic article about how having a Republican-controlled house will slow President Obama’s agenda.
Gee, ya think?
The bright spots are few and far between. As of this writing it looks like California is safe and the odious Proposition 23 has gone down. But given the post- Citizens United climate in our country, I am not sanguine about our future. If you thought the last two years were ugly, just watch the next two.
With the Republican takeover in the House of Representatives, we can look forward to a long two years of show trials from luminaries like Darryl Issa and James Sensenbrenner. These two worthies have already announced their intentions to hold hearings into the multiply-debunked “Climategate” non-scandal; like the rest of the GOP caucus, they are ideologically wedded to the notion that climate change is a liberal conspiracy cooked up by Al Gore and his henchmen in the scientific establishment. The climatologists who are working around the clock on the dimensions of global warming (arguably the worst threat humanity has ever faced) are now going to have their time squandered on empty theatrics by a group of anti-science congressmen. It would be nice to imagine that these politicians could have their minds changed by scientific evidence, but given the troubled relationship between reality and these Republicans, I wouldn’t count on it.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes Deepwater Horizon EPA idiots
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 2: An Election Day Letter
The Guardian comments on the expected barrage of Republican idiots investigating things. If I were a believer, I’d be praying. If you’re a believer, please pray…but GOTV either way! I’ll probably be driving people to the polls tomorrow at some point…not sure how that’s going to work with a kid in tow, but wotthehell.
It is surreal to imagine Republican congressional inquiries into the Obama administration’s inept handling of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. How would these anti-environmental zealots keep the scope of their investigations from moving back to the Bush-era EPA’s carefully nurtured culture of incompetence and corruption? Given that the Tea Party Republicans are overwhelmingly ready to reject scientific evidence, it should be no surprise that they are anti-reality in other areas as well. While their handling of the Gulf catastrophe was hardly the Obama team’s finest hour, it’s incontrovertible that the Bush/Cheney administration laid the foundation for BP’s destructive and callous behavior. The spill in the Gulf may have poisoned multiple ecosystems beyond recovery, but the behavior of Republican politicians demonstrates that oil kills rationality, logic and accountability just as thoroughly as it wipes out fish, turtles and sea birds.
Warren Senders