environment: economics MA Department of Environmental Protection real-estate sustainability
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Year 2, Month 6, Day 5: We Need This Land For Future Exploitation!
Something a little different today. The Fall River Herald News (MA) runs a guest editorial from a couple of real-estate guys, extolling the importance of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection — from an economic POV. Good stuff, especially for those people who aren’t persuaded by anything other than the slavering jaws of naked capitalism:
It’s not every day the real estate community and the environmental community share common ground.
Increasingly, however, we understand a healthy economy and a healthy environment are mutually beneficial. We also understand the commonwealth, like every other state, faces a fiscal crisis that must be met with painful budget cuts and a disciplined focus on economic development. But we must avoid cuts which undermine the very economic growth and job creation essential to our recovery.
The commonwealth’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is more than a protector of the environment.
The “climate change news” for today (5/24) is all Australia, all the time. I haven’t gotten into an Aussie newspaper yet (though I did make New Zealand once), so I did a search for something closer to home. Sent May 24:
The “conflicting interests” of the real estate and environmental communities vanish when things are viewed from the proper perspective. It is only in the past century that people began purchasing land in order to make a quick profit; the notion of real estate as a short-term, high-yield investment is a relatively novel one. It’s also an idea with profoundly damaging consequences for the long-term health of entire regions, for if the land’s owners never know the land as our forbears once did, nothing can prevent grotesquely destructive exploitation. Nothing, that is, except local regulations and the Department of Environmental Protection. Needless to say, both of these are under attack from budget-cutting proponents, which makes the authors’ cogent defense of the DEP’s core mission very welcome. The interests of real-estate investors and environmentalists necessarily coincide; both groups have an interest in keeping the land alive and beautiful for centuries to come.
Warren Senders
environment: Australia media irresponsibility rising ocean levels
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Year 2, Month 6, Day 4: Lending A Word Here And There
An editorial in the Australia Courier calls for “Less Hot Air On The Climate Change Debate, Please.” A good piece, and worthy of some support from over here on this side of the marble:
For every scientist who supports common acceptance of global warming, the sceptics can roll out one who says the opposite.
But there needs to be a point where we, as a nation, take a side. And in this case, the cautious approach is to act, rather than do nothing.
It is time for the conversation to move past the debate and onto what we can do to ensure that we are acting before a crisis is upon us. Simply, the time is now.
Sent May 23:
The facts of climate change have been incontrovertible for a fairly long time. As early as 1953, Arctic ice melt was predicted as a consequence of the greenhouse effect, and for the past six decades the evidence has been accumulating. At this point the scientific consensus on human causes of global warming is extremely robust; the only people in the climate science community who disagree turn out to be in the pay of industries with much to lose in a transition to a low-carbon energy economy. And by presenting these “skeptics” as equal countervoices to the thousands of very worried climatologists, the world’s news media provide protective cover for those who seek to delay a shift to energy sustainability. Were this a trivial political matter, it would sort itself out, given a chance. But these stakes are very high indeed; it is not only Australia whose future hangs in the balance.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialism idiots Republican obstructionism Rick Scott
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Year 2, Month 6, Day 3: Rick’s A Dick
The Miami Herald’s Fred Grimm has a column reprinted in the Kansas City Star, noting the ignorance of Rick Scott and the problems it presents:
Climate scientists are lending their computer modeling and data analysis and research findings and learned assumptions to the new governor’s first state hurricane conference this week. Gov. Rick Scott seems fine with that, as long as the brainy guys confine their theories to the short term.
In his short speech opening the conference Wednesday, for example, Scott didn’t object to warnings that Florida is statistically likely to absorb a big hit in 2011. He promised Florida would be ready. “We’re going to be very prepared.”
Scott, however, only accepts climate science devoted to the upcoming hurricane season. When it comes to the long-term stuff – the overwhelming research that warns of man-made global warming – he remains Florida’s denier in chief.
Idiot. Buffoon. Psychopath. Sociopath.
Sent May 22:
Of course Florida governor Rick Scott has seen nothing to persuade him that global climate change is real and dangerous. He’s a perfect specimen of the modern Republican politician: obsessed with short-term gain, oblivious to long-term consequences. For Governor Scott and others of his ilk, “future generations” exist only as a phrase to be used in public in order to manipulate low-information voters. Like the Rapturists whose vision of the future ended last Saturday, these politicians think no further than the next election cycle; their corporate sponsors, similarly, think no further than the next fiscal year’s profits.
When it comes to the dangers posed by climate change, we need genuinely far-sighted leadership — leaders who are ready to confront the scientifically confirmed bad news head on and help all of us understand what we as a country need to do in order to secure a sustainable future for our descendants.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes climate zombies florida idiots ocean levels Republican obstructionism Rick Scott
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Year 2, Month 6, Day 2: How Many Times Must A Man Turn His Head?
The Miami Herald runs a piece on how climate change has become a low priority for Florida’s government since the Scott takeover. Big surprise.
Four hundred scientists gathered in Copenhagen recently to talk about the warming temperatures in the Arctic. Their conclusion: The Arctic’s glaciers are melting faster than anyone expected due to man-made climate change.
As a result, the world’s sea level will rise faster than previously projected, rising at least two feet 11 inches and perhaps as high as five feet three inches by 2100, they said.
In low-lying Florida, where 95 percent of the population lives within 35 miles of its 1,200 miles of coastline, a swelling of the tides could cause serious problems. So what is Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection doing about dealing with climate change?
“DEP is not pursuing any programs or projects regarding climate change,” an agency spokeswoman said in an email to the Times earlier this month.
(snip)
Crist’s successor, Gov. Rick Scott, doesn’t think climate change is real, even though it’s accepted as fact by everyone from NASA to the Army to the Vatican.
“I’ve not been convinced that there’s any man-made climate change,” Scott said last week. “Nothing’s convinced me that there is.”
That guy is really a pustulent sore on the body politic. Sent May 21:
When Governor Scott pronounces himself unpersuaded about the reality of global climate change, saying that nothing’s convinced him of its existence, he reveals more about himself and the contemporary Republican party he represents than about the state of contemporary climate science. In the world of science, nobody needs convincing anymore; evidence for the human causes and catastrophic consequences of climate change is overwhelming and utterly unambiguous. In GOP-world, however, the laws of physics and natural phenomena are subordinate to popular preference; the disasters attendant to the greenhouse effect will be nullified by tea-party decree. Why isn’t Mr. Scott convinced? Hint: it’s not because he’s examined the evidence. Rather, it’s because he (along with his ideological allies throughout the country) is philosophically opposed to any policy that doesn’t generate higher profit margins for the fossil fuel industry. The Governor’s already made up his mind; don’t confuse him with the facts.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Army Conservatives denialists geopolitical strategy idiots military wars
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Year 2, Month 6, Day 1: I Wanna Go To Andorra
The Guardian (UK) notes that the US armed forces are actively preparing for the problems of climate change:
Federal legislation to combat climate change is quashed for the foreseeable future, scuttled by congressional climate cranks who allege the climate-science jury is still out. What’s become clear is that, for some, the jury will always be out. We can’t stack scientific facts high enough to hop over the fortified ideological walls they’ve erected around themselves. Fortunately, though, a four-star trump card waits in the wings: the US national security apparatus.
The comments are priceless. Sent May 20:
The cognitive dissonance involved in being a modern-day Republican is extreme, and it will no doubt be further exacerbated by the conclusions drawn by the United States military on the dangers posed by climate change. With a record that includes decades of posturing about “deferring to the generals” on defense issues, the GOP is now in a bit of a box when it comes to responding to the armed forces’ consensus on the strategic consequences of the greenhouse effect. Forced by the exigencies of Republican primary elections to deny simultaneously both scientific evidence and the advice of their military leaders, these anti-science legislators have an impossible needle to thread. Were the issues involved not ones of such great moment, the dilemma of contemporary conservatives would be irresistibly comical. Alas, this is no laughing matter — an assessment bolstered by every single strategic analysis of climate change and its epiphenomena.
Warren Senders