environment Politics: Arnold Schwarzenegger idiots Proposition 23
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 16: Die Voise Uff Sveet Reason
I find it somehow depressing that Arnold Schwarzenegger was the only person available to fill the role of the Reasonable Republican.
Arnold Schwarzenegger is alone among contemporary Republican politicians in accepting both the scientific reality of global climate change and the economic necessity of doing something about it. For environmentalists, the electoral failure of the anti-climate Proposition 23 in California is one of the few signs of hope in an otherwise desolate and depressing vista of climate denialism. The current crop of GOP legislators includes a record number of so-called “climate zombies,” whose minds are made up and impervious to facts. And who can blame them for resisting? The facts of climate change are very scary. It’s far easier to pretend that “the science isn’t settled” (although it is) and that addressing the problem “costs too much” (it will be a fraction of the costs of inaction). Our political leaders need to understand that our approach to climate change cannot hinge on electoral exigencies if we are to survive as a species.
Warren Senders
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: Arnold Schwarzenegger James Cameron Koch Brothers Proposition 23
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Month 10, Day 29: The Auteurial Imagination….
The Modesto Bee, a small California paper, notes that film director James Cameron has come out against the odious Proposition 23.
That is to say:
It’s good to hear James Cameron joining Governor Schwarzenegger in opposition to Proposition 23 in the last few days before the election, when the Koch brothers and their collaborators from the extractive industry sector are pouring surreal quantities of money into the campaign to suspend AB 32, California’s excellent climate change law. We recognize these conscienceless billionaires in two of Cameron’s creations: they occupied the Titanic’s most luxurious staterooms, and they’re the principal shareholders of “Avatar’s” RDA Corporation. These latter-day robber barons ignore the crucial truth that global climate change is likely to trigger a “domino effect” of infrastructural collapse, which would surely be bad for business. The worst-case scenarios suggested by climatologists can be summed up in one word: Venus. A film based on that planet would challenge any directorial imagination: hot and empty. Nobody to buy oil. A defeat of Proposition 23 will benefit the Koch brothers and their allies, too.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Arnold Schwarzenegger Koch Industries Proposition 23
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Month 9, Day 28: He’s Riiiiiiiiiiiiight.
The Seattle Times ran an AP story on Governor Schwarzenegger’s remarks about the companies promoting Proposition 23 in California.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday blasted the out-of-state oil companies that are trying to undermine California’s global warming law, saying they are motivated purely by greed.
Companies such as Valero Energy Corp., Tesoro Corp. and Koch Industries are spending millions of dollars to manipulate the will of Californians and “buy votes,” the Republican governor told the Commonwealth Club.
Their motivation, he said, is “self-serving greed.”
The Governator may be an idiot in many ways, but he’s on the money here.
Governor Schwarzenegger is exactly correct in his description of the corporations which are pumping money into California’s electoral process. Valero Energy Corp., Tesoro Corp. and Koch Industries are motivated entirely by greed — and a particularly short-sighted greed at that. By focusing entirely on profit in the short term, these corporations are endangering the natural ecosystems which sustain human civilization. Catastrophic climate change is not an abstract threat to some unspecified future generation; it’s happening right now in Pakistan (whose government may well be the first political casualty of anthropogenic global heating), and it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets any better. An economy shattered by climate chaos won’t be able to support major extractive industries; in their support of California’s Proposition 23, Valero, Tesoro and Koch are undermining their own chances of continued existence in the longer term. Along with ours.
Warren Senders