environment Politics: assholes coal EPA idiots
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 3, Day 4: And The Straw Boss Hollered ‘Well Damn Your Soul!’
The Courier-Press (KY) runs an article about another House Republican who’s gunning for the EPA. Because Kentucky is a coal state, this guy is in their pocket, and he wants to remove the EPA’s authority to regulate emissions in order to make the lives of the mining companies easier. Easier for Kentuckians who’re part of the profit chain from Big Coal, too — at least in the short run. In the long run? Don’t even ask.
The recent Republican attempts to defund or defang the Environmental Protection Agency are examples of short-term, politically-driven thinking at its most egregious. Rep. Whitfield knows perfectly well that the current Congress will never pass any legislation addressing the threat of global climate change, since a majority of its members were elected with the help of money from the petroleum and coal industries. The problem that we face is that the greenhouse effect is a result of the laws of physics and chemistry; climate change is inherently long-term and non-political. While muzzling the EPA may benefit Kentucky’s economy for a few years, does anyone seriously believe that the coal companies will really care about the state and its citizens once the coal’s all gone, the mountains are leveled and the streams poisoned? By carrying out the bidding of his corporate masters, Rep. Whitfield is doing a disservice both to his constituents and to the country as a whole; by treating the environment and its advocates as enemies, conservatives make a livable future for our descendants more and more unlikely.
Warren Senders
environment: allergies asthma extreme weather pollen
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 3, Day 3: A Cashew? A Tissue? A Fichu?
The Sonoma County Press-Democrat reprints a story from the LA times on the likelihood of an increase in asthma from global warming (hotter, wetter weather equals more pollenaceous plants).
Sent February 22:
A person racked by sneezes and coughs, eyes and nose streaming, is a convenient figure of fun for those who don’t suffer from allergies. Global climate change’s effect on the atmospheric pollen count has similar humorous potential — as long as we avoid looking at the ways in which all of us are affected. And it’s not just asthma and allergies. As planetary warming changes our environment in unpredictable ways over the next decades, we can anticipate some of its effects: hotter temperatures will help spread tropical diseases; unpredictable and extreme weather may destroy local infrastructure (impassable roads, unsafe drinking water, rolling blackouts); agriculture will suffer (and food will get more expensive). Any of these by itself is a mere inconvenience. Collectively they are the localized face of a threat that’s planetary in scope, existential in nature. Environmentalists seek to limit the damage; Republican politicians, by contrast, are investing heavily in antihistamines.
Warren Senders
The title references Ogden Nash’s poem “Allergy in a Country Churchyard.”
environment Politics: assholes Bobby Jindal denialists idiots IPCC volcano monitoring
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 3, Day 2: Eruptions of Ignorance
Missouri Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer is the guy who introduced the amendment to kill funding for the IPCC, which (given our all-new teabagger-friendly House) passed handily. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has the story.
The guy’s a moron, but is that news? Anyway, I started remembering Bobby Jindal for some reason, and generated the following letter, sent 2/21:
Those of us who still recall Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal’s disparaging remarks about “something called ‘volcano monitoring,’ ” back in early 2009 will also remember that only a few weeks later, a real live volcano erupted in Alaska — and that the Government’s Volcano Monitoring service was credited with giving essential warnings that saved lives and property. Blaine Luetkemeyer is in a position analogous to Jindal’s; his hostility toward the I.P.C.C. has nothing to do with its essential work on the likely effects of global warming and everything to do with short-term political exigencies. As the scientific evidence mounts, climate-change deniers use multiply-debunked arguments to delay and weaken any action on the most significant threat humanity has faced in millennia. The smoke from Mount Redoubt made Governor Jindal’s mockery of volcano monitoring an embarrassment; one wonders: what sort of environmental catastrophe will bring Representative Luetkemeyer to regret his similarly ignorant grandstanding?
Warren Senders