environment Politics: assholes Deepwater Horizon EPA idiots
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 2: An Election Day Letter
The Guardian comments on the expected barrage of Republican idiots investigating things. If I were a believer, I’d be praying. If you’re a believer, please pray…but GOTV either way! I’ll probably be driving people to the polls tomorrow at some point…not sure how that’s going to work with a kid in tow, but wotthehell.
It is surreal to imagine Republican congressional inquiries into the Obama administration’s inept handling of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. How would these anti-environmental zealots keep the scope of their investigations from moving back to the Bush-era EPA’s carefully nurtured culture of incompetence and corruption? Given that the Tea Party Republicans are overwhelmingly ready to reject scientific evidence, it should be no surprise that they are anti-reality in other areas as well. While their handling of the Gulf catastrophe was hardly the Obama team’s finest hour, it’s incontrovertible that the Bush/Cheney administration laid the foundation for BP’s destructive and callous behavior. The spill in the Gulf may have poisoned multiple ecosystems beyond recovery, but the behavior of Republican politicians demonstrates that oil kills rationality, logic and accountability just as thoroughly as it wipes out fish, turtles and sea birds.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes climate zombies idiots
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 1: Evidence? We Don’t Need No Steenkin’ Evidence!
The L.A. Times runs an article by Neela Banerjee noting that the Republican climate zombies are in a position to screw everything up should they (as seems distressingly likely) gain power in this election.
GOTV! GOTV!
When Republican congresspeople dismiss the scientific consensus on the role of carbon dioxide in global climate change, they selfishly sacrifice the long-term health of the country and the planet for the sake of immediate political expediency. Their readiness to declare that climate science is not “settled” demonstrates a distrust of expertise that runs counter to their ideological slant — and they’ve been equally ready to dismiss expert information in other areas — as in the run-up to the Iraq war, where the Bush administration and their enablers in the Republican caucus systematically cherry-picked intelligence to support their predetermined policy objectives. That debacle cost us the lives of thousands of soldiers, countless Iraqi civilians, and our country’s credibility in the eyes of the world. It’s time for climate deniers to listen to the experts: the evidence for human causes of global warming is far, far stronger than that for Iraqi WMDs.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes idiots
by Warren
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Month 10, Day 30: Get Down To What Is Really Real.
The Miami Herald runs an AP article on the GOP aversion to reality. And it refers to them (Republicans) as “skeptics.”
Nuh-uh.
It is inaccurate to call most Republican candidates “skeptics” on the issue of climate change. A skeptic is motivated by a search for truth, which leads him or her to doubt any knowledge that has not been verified by personal experience or research. These candidates should be called “deniers” or “denialists.” Observe their unwillingness to do any research, their aversion to verifiable facts — the conclusion is inescapable: Republican opposition to the very concept of climate change is entirely ideological. Why do they reject the statements of scientific specialists? Precisely because scientists present actual hard evidence that climate change is real — evidence that can only be countered by unwavering refusals to listen and to understand. In other words, GOP candidates’ response to the facts on climate change is to stick their fingers in their ears and shout loudly. Republicans weren’t always anti-reality, but that was a long time ago.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes Citizens United corporate personhood
by Warren
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Month 10, Day 28: How I Long For The Days Of “Enlightened Self-Interest”
The Washington Post runs an AP story on the corporate groups that are destroying our democracy:
Rove, who was President George W. Bush’s top political adviser, and the two Mayflower lunch partners – former GOP Chairman Ed Gillespie and Steven Law, a veteran of Capitol Hill and the Chamber of Commerce – worried that the Republican Party alone would be no match for President Barack Obama’s superb fundraising.
“Clearly there was a tremendous amount of grass-roots energy building – a grass-roots prairie fire that was building in intensity,” Law, now the Crossroads president, said in an interview. “We felt that one of the things we could do was pour gasoline on that.”
ad_iconIf voters seemed angry, so was corporate America. Obama led Congress into passing health care and financial regulation overhauls and pushed for climate legislation, all of which angered the business community.
Assholes.
The fact that corporate America was “angry” about President Obama’s calls for climate legislation reveals a lot about Corporate America (which deserves full capitalizations now that the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision has affirmed its personhood). Specifically, Corporate America is mistrustful of expertise, incapable of long-term thought, lacks any conception of the common good, and is irrationally prone to anger.
A response to proposed climate-change legislation that was not distorted by these tendencies would look very different. For example, it would recognize the overwhelming scientific consensus on the reality of global warming, and acknowledge that the catastrophic consequences of unchecked climate chaos would be (to put it mildly) bad for business. If our corporate citizens were motivated by the common good rather than their quarterly profits, we ordinary human citizens would have no reason to fear them and their devastating impact on both the political and planetary atmospheres.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes Deepwater Horizon fishing Gulf of Mexico Lisa Murkowski offshore drilling Transocean
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Month 5, Day 19: Dunk ’em All!
Back to the Gulf. The Boston Herald printed an AP article on the effects of the spill on the fishing industry, so I used that as the hook for a short and vicious little rant. Will they print it? Ha.
Oil gushes from a hole in the ocean floor; British Petroleum won’t let scientists measure the flow, although estimates go up to 80,000 barrels a day (almost 3.5 million gallons). While the corporations involved in the disaster point fingers at one another, and Republican senators block legislation raising the liability cap, there’s a different sort of buck-passing going on outside the hearing rooms of Congress: Transocean, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig, just announced that it would give its shareholders a billion dollars in dividends (that’s twice the amount BP has spent thus far on this crisis). Meanwhile, tar balls wash ashore, the ocean is saturated with oil and toxic dispersants, and communities and industries that depend on the Gulf of Mexico are devastated. Will Big Oil and the politicians they’ve bought ever recognize that their responsibilities go beyond maximizing shareholder return on investment? Don’t bet on it.
Warren Senders
environment: assholes Ben Nelson British Petroleum corporate personhood Deepwater Horizon irresponsibility Tony Hayward
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Month 5, Day 11: Righteous Anger!
I heard BP CEO Tony Hayward’s little interview on CNN. So I wrote him a letter. I’m going to email it to BP’s press office, mail it to BP’s home office, and send another copy into outer space: Hayward is described as living “near Sevenoaks, Kent, United Kingdom.” So I’m going to address an envelope just that way and send it. It’s too bad that the very rich and powerful (see Cheney, Richard) cannot be located by the people whose lives they influence.
Dear Mr. Hayward —
I was distressed to listen to your brief interview on CNN in which you brushed aside questions about British Petroleum’s willingness to assume greater liability for the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Senator Ben Nelson, commenting on your appearance, said that he had no confidence that your corporation would waive the $75,000,000 limit of damage liability — that is to say, he had no confidence that British Petroleum would do the right thing.
Because, Mr Hayward, abdicating your corporate responsibility for a disaster you caused is the wrong thing to do. To be sure, such a selfish and irresponsible action will no doubt be viewed favorably by BP’s stockholders, whose losses will thereby be mitigated.
And that, sir, is why, more than politicians, corporations are feared and reviled by the great majority of the world’s population. Because a group of shareholders dispersed in multiple locations around the planet can influence corporate behavior in ways that will condemn entire communities and ecosystems to an oil-soaked oblivion. Because the profit imperative drives corporate behavior; because corporations don’t have to eat petroleum-poisoned fish; because corporations have no consciences; because while British Petroleum may pump oil from the Gulf of Mexico it does not mean that British Petroleum “feels” any responsibility for the damage it’s done — because corporations don’t feel anything.
And because you have elected to surrender your humanity to the profit motive and become the nominal leader of a corporation, it means that the image of an oil-soaked seabird gasping its last breath is not a grotesque and horrifying atrocity, but a Public Relations problem. The public must be distracted from the dead birds, from the poisoned fish, from the devastated ecosystems, from the crippled industries, from the blighted bays.
Let me tell you something, Mr Hayward. This time, the public won’t be distracted. British Petroleum created one of the greatest environmental catastrophes our planet has yet experienced. It is obvious in retrospect that your corporation was ill-prepared for any eventuality other than the optimal one; it is increasingly obvious that your corporation’s record of compliance with even the weakest safety and environmental regulations is abysmal. This is your disaster, and there are thousands of people throughout the world who will not rest until everyone knows that British Petroleum refused to pay to clean up the mess it created.
Perhaps I’m wrong, and your corporation will act decisively in the public interest. I hope so; demonstrating that BP takes its responsibilities seriously would give the citizens of the world an example of corporate good citizenship. But if I were a betting man, my money would be on “irresponsible, avaricious sociopathy.”
Are you going to prove me wrong?
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders