Year 3, Month 12, Day 8: You Never Give Me Your Money…

USA Today has an op-ed from Dan Becker & James Gerstenzang, titled: “Column: Obama’s chance to change (political) climate.” Not bad, actually:

9:00AM EST December 2. 2012 – Hurricane Sandy and the 2012 drought drove home the need for President Obama to lead the fight against global warming. Freed from the political constraints of the re-election campaign, he holds three tools. Wielding them successfully, he will make bold action against the world’s most pressing environmental problem a legacy of his second term.

The president can sharply curtail power plants’ emissions of carbon dioxide, the largest global warming pollutant, by using existing law to require that utilities start converting from coal to cleanly extracted natural gas and introduce more renewable energy. To cut demand for electricity, he can set standards that increase the efficiency of power-gobbling appliances.

But scientists warn that far more will be necessary. The deadly hurricane, devastating drought and 332 consecutive months of above-average global temperatures are just the sort of conditions they say will accompany global warming.

So, taking a page from the nation’s first environmental president, Theodore Roosevelt, Obama can use his third tool — the bully pulpit — to change the political climate on climate. He must mobilize public pressure on Congress to adopt far-reaching measures that he cannot enact on his own, including steps that begin to end our addiction to oil.

Meanwhile, the country’s talking heads are talking about something totally different. Details at 11. Sent December 2:

While our news media have gone all out to cover the looming showdown over the “fiscal cliff,” the fact is that we’re facing another deadline with far more serious implications. The “climate cliff,” unlike its economic namesake, is based on hard scientific data and analysis, not political expediency and partisan gamesmanship. The consequences of a failure in climate policy reach far beyond the next election cycle or two and into the next millennium. Unless we can get the rapidly metastasizing greenhouse effect under control, questions about a marginally higher tax rate on the wealthiest two percent of Americans will be quaintly irrelevant in the face of catastrophic weather extremes, devastated agriculture, and the geopolitical instabilities triggered by famine, drought, and rising sea levels.

President Obama needs to make climate change a central issue for all Americans. If there’s any issue that transcends the transient boundaries of ideology, this is it.

Warren Senders