Month 2, Day 13: Invite the Republicans to Talk in Public About Their Climate Stupidity.

It’s Saturday. Time for another email/fax/letter to the President.

It’s late. I’m tired. This letter is kind of a mishmash. I like the “swollen belly of a starving child” analogy so much I’m using it for the third day in a row.

Dear President Obama,

It is crucial for our country that you continue highlighting the obstructionist tactics of the G.O.P. minority. Your upcoming bipartisan conference on health care will do a great deal to make it clear to the American people where their real allies are. We need more such events, each focusing on different critical issues for our country.

It is absolutely crucial that our nation’s citizens learn the truth: failure to pass meaningful climate legislation will lead to a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions. Right now support for robust regulation of Greenhouse Gases is low; there are not enough Americans who are convinced of the reality of anthropogenic global warming. Recent events like Washington’s amazing blizzard have inflamed climate denialists, who are trumpeting the ludicrous notion that a snowfall somehow disproves global climate change. This is analogous to claiming that the swollen belly of a starving child disproves the existence of world hunger!

Please, Mr. President. Do a public bipartisan conference on climate issues. Bring expert climatologists to speak about the likely consequences of continuing our present level of Greenhouse emissions. Bring people from the Department of Defense to speak about the sociopolitical scenarios they envision as a result of catastrophic climate change. Bring people from the insurance industry to describe how they are refusing to insure properties in areas likely to be affected by rising sea levels. Bring economists to testify about the cost of action versus the cost of doing nothing. The American public is watching you more intently than any president has been watched in a long time; if you do something like this it will have a huge effect.

It is absolutely vital that we fight back against the climate-denial lobby and those members of our government who are in their thrall. This issue is too important. Waiting for the Rapture may be Senator Inhofe’s preferred environmental policy. For good and obvious reasons, it cannot be the policy of a rational Administration.

Your recent approach to dealing with the Republicans has been galvanizing. Please keep it up. Please intensify it. And please apply your keen focus to transforming our national understanding of the climate crisis. If ever there was an issue that calls for the Fierce Urgency of Now, this one is it.

Yours Sincerely,

Warren Senders