Month 12, Day 12: Grouchy Edition

Sunday POTUS, written in a bleak mood. What the hell happened to the guy we elected?

Dear President Obama —

I was one of your fervent supporters in 2008, in part because it seemed obvious to me that a man of your intellectual depth would understand that the long-term threat to our planetary environment posed by global warming would be the central issue for our survival as a nation, as a civilization, and as a species.

Now, after two years of your administration, I’m not so sure. I first ascribed the failure to reach a genuine agreement at Copenhagen to incompetence and intransigence; now it seems at least plausible that my own government colluded with that of China to ensure that no meaningful emissions control agreement would be reached. This is beyond disappointing; this is outrageous.

Now comes the news that your administration’s E.P.A. is reversing its commitment to new environmental regulations, saying it needs “more time to analyze” the effects of proposed rules on pollution. Forgive me for not taking this at face value; if it looks like a capitulation, walks like a capitulation and quacks like a capitulation, I say it’s a capitulation.

And what a capitulation it is! The past several years have offered ample evidence that the world’s fossil fuel industry is a hotbed of mendacity, cupidity, sociopathy and idiocy. From environmental destruction to the subornation of scientists, Big Oil has demonstrated that it can only be trusted to act in its own interests, and that those interests are emphatically not aligned with the people of this country and this planet.

These companies should be nationalized; their assets redistributed and their leaders jailed.

I voted for you because I had hoped for justice and environmental policy that would be based on science. Now, as I watch the criminals who destroyed so much reap the rewards of their corruption, I have abandoned hope for justice — and as I watch your administration’s E.P.A. kowtow to some of the world’s worst environmental criminals, I must abandon hope for science-based policy as well.

Please tell me: what (if anything) can I hope for in the months and years to come?

Yours Sincerely,

Warren Senders