Month 3, Day 10: There Are No Truths Outside The Eden of Gates

Bill Gates is another billionaire who has been pretty forthright about the importance of climate issues. It feels really bizarre to be requesting the world’s richest man to intervene in American elections…but I’d rather have him doing it than, say, Cheney.

Dear Mr. Gates,

As an ordinary citizen who is deeply concerned about the future of our planet, I was deeply gratified to read that you recently described global climate change as the greatest threat humanity has ever faced. You are of course absolutely right; nothing in our species’ past experience has prepared us for coping with the challenges posed by anthropogenic global warming and its complex epiphenomena.

I am sure that through your philanthropic efforts you are already making more of a difference than I ever could. Still, however, I want to make a suggestion to you.

As you know, the Supreme Court recently ruled, in Citizens United vs. FEC, that corporate spending may be used freely to influence public opinion in the electoral process. I deplore that ruling, and I believe it to be profoundly at odds with the core meaning of our Constitution, which I understand as a document of governing principles directed to the enfranchisement of individuals.

But desperate times call for desperate remedies. Mr. Gates, if you really believe that climate change is a genuine existential threat to our species, I plead with you: spend freely to influence public opinion in the electoral process. Buy hundreds of hours of airtime on national television to educate the public about the dangers we face — and about the importance of electing politicians who will work toward genuine and robust action on climate change.

We need to reduce our atmospheric CO2 to 350 ppm or below. We need to address the problems of arctic methane release, and of oceanic acidification. And none of this will happen if more Republican climate denialists are elected to the U.S. Senate. A few more like James Inhofe, and all hope of meaningful action will be gone — while tipping point after tipping point goes by, unremarked by any save the climate scientists.

Please. Influence our political process. Right now it is influenced almost entirely by Big Coal and Big Oil — industries seriously implicated in our looming environmental disaster. We need you to do some influencing on our behalf, for our voices as ordinary citizens are drowned out by the megaphones of the world’s largest polluters.

Yours Sincerely,

Warren Senders