environment Politics: assholes Citizens United corporate irresponsibilty corporate personhood idiots
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 28: Gooooooood Morning!
Why am I not surprised? USA Today:
As prospects for a major global accord on climate change look dim, ensuring that negotiations continue may be the most a United Nations climate summit will achieve next week.
Beginning Monday in Durban, South Africa, the 12-day U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change picks up where last year’s meeting in Cancun left off.
What eluded negotiators then, and still does today, is a grand bargain in which 194 nations commit to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions that most scientists contend are contributing to a warmer climate.
“Almost everyone agrees that some kind of big deal is unlikely,” says international negotiations expert David Victor of the University of California-San Diego. Economically, he says, “these are dark times and we have made that choice already in past meetings.”
Sheesh. Sent November 24:
In theory, our democratic government is supposed to be ever-active on behalf of the people. But in practice, it looks like America’s political system defines “people” rather more narrowly. Perhaps in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision affirming the “personhood” of corporations, our representatives mistakenly concluded that since corporations are now “people”, ordinary citizens aren’t.
How else to interpret America’s inability to take significant action on the profound threat of climate change? When the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases are “unlikely” to come to any kind of meaningful accord at the upcoming Durban conference, there is only one interpretation: “corporate persons” believe themselves invulnerable to the runaway greenhouse effect scientists say is is now all but inevitable.
Maybe so. If climate change brings an “evolutionary bottleneck” for humanity, Earth may indeed eventually be ruled by mindless, consumption-driven corporate intelligences. Cockroaches, after all, are the ultimate survivors.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists idiots IPCC Rajendra Pachauri
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 24: Who’s That Knocking At My Door?
More on the IPCC report, this time from America’s McNewspaper:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, obtained in draft form by USA TODAY, stresses that expanding cities and populations worldwide, also raise the odds of severe impacts from weather disasters.
“Unprecedented extreme weather and climate events” look likely in coming decades as a result of a changing climate, says the draft report. The final version was released early today by IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri at a meeting hosted by report sponsors, the World Meteorological Organization and United Nations Environment Programme, in Kampala, Uganda.
Nothin’ to see here, folks. Move along. Move along.
Sent November 20:
Climate-change denialists are sounding increasingly desperate these days, as the volume of evidence and analysis mounts ever higher. Coming hard on the heels of a recently-issued study from the International Energy Agency (which gives us about five years to change our fossil-fuelish ways or risk irreversible damage to the Earth’s climate) is the IPCC report, which offers a sobering preview of what that irreversible damage is likely to look like.
Enthusiastic fans of Armageddon will enjoy the IPCC’s predictions, which include droughts, wildfires, unpredictable storms of unprecedented severity, massive disruption of agriculture and infrastructure, and political instability, often in areas of the world that are nuclear-armed and dangerous.
It’s too bad the greenhouse effect doesn’t come with a scary-sounding name that politicians could invoke to mobilize our nation to action, for all that excess atmospheric CO2 is sure to do far more damage than any terrorist group ever could.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: idiots IPCC Republicans Richard Muller scientific consensus
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 23: Defund or Defend?
More on the IPCC report, this time from the Washington Post:
Climate change will make drought and flooding events like those that have battered the United States and other countries in 2011 more frequent, forcing nations to rethink the way they cope with disasters, according to a new report the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued Friday.
The report — the culmination of a two-year process involving 100 scientists and policy experts — suggests that researchers are far more confident about the prospect of more intense heat waves and heavy downpours than they are about how global warming is affecting hurricanes and tornadoes. But the new analysis also speaks to a broader trend: The world is facing a new reality of more extreme weather, and policymakers and business alike are beginning to adjust.
It’s late at night in a hotel room in Madison, Wisconsin. I’ve got a big day tomorrow — four hours of classroom teaching and a concert, so I figured I’d get the letter out of the way before I went to sleep. Sent November 18:
As the case of Dr. Richard Muller case demonstrates, a responsible scientist changes his or her mind when confronted with factual evidence. The past few weeks have seen a plethora of studies demonstrating over and over again that the reality of human-caused climate change is no longer deniable. The newly released report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change offers an ominous look at a post-greenhouse-effect future in which extreme weather is the norm, with concomitant effects on agriculture, infrastructure and geopolitics that range from inconvenient to outright terrifying.
Scientific ethics compelled Dr. Muller to revise his opinion once he confirmed the validity of worldwide temperature measurements. Confronted with the same data, conservative politicians would resolve the problem differently — by defunding the IPCC and any other scientific organizations with the temerity to report facts as they are. In Republican politics, electoral exigencies trump the truth, every time.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialism idiots Republican obstructionism
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 20: New York, New York — It’s A Helluva Town. The Bronx Is Up And The Battery Down.
The New York Times reports on a new study on climate change’s effects on New York State:
While the long-term outlook for grape-growers in the Finger Lakes region is favorable, it is less than optimal for skiers and other winter sports enthusiasts in the Adirondacks. Fir and spruce trees are expected to die out in the Catskills, and New York City’s backup drinking water supply may well be contaminated as a result of seawater making its way farther up the Hudson River.
These possibilities — modeled deep into this century — are detailed in a new assessment of the impact that climate change will have in New York State. The 600-page report, published on Wednesday, was commissioned by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, a public-benefit corporation, and is a result of three years of work by scientists at state academic institutions, including Columbia and Cornell Universities and the City University of New York.
The Wall Street Journal ran an article on this report also; the comments section of their piece has started to attract the usual denialist stupidity. I almost sent this letter there but finally thought better of it. Sent November 16:
Who could have anticipated that contempt for education and expertise would eventually have negative repercussions? Exploiting the American public’s historically low tolerance for intellectuals has certainly paid off for conservative politicians.
As we approach the 2012 elections there has never been a political organization so firmly dedicated to the notion that reality can be altered by ideology as today’s GOP; the thought of their primary voters offering even the slightest lip service to scientific opinion is utterly risible.
Well, it would be risible, if its consequences weren’t likely to be so tragic. As experts again sound the warning that runaway climate change will wreak unimaginable havoc on our nation’s crumbling infrastructure and vulnerable food supply system, perhaps it’s time to wonder if anti-intellectualism is really the best strategy for America’s long-term happiness and prosperity. What will it take for Republican politicians to once again pay attention to scientists? A submerged Manhattan?
Warren Senders
environment Politics: fee and dividend idiots Pete Stark Republican obstructionism Richard Muller
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 19: Not With A Whim, But A Banker
The Concord Monitor (NH) discusses both Richard Muller’s apostasy and the sensible approach espoused by a few brave Democratic Reps:
A few weeks ago, after conducting a multi-year study funded in fair measure by the ultra-conservative billionaire Koch brothers, University of California professor Richard Muller, one of the more credible skeptics of global warming, announced his findings. The great majority of scientists who claimed that the world’s climate was warming at a fair clip, Muller said, are right.
Muller’s findings produced a gamut of responses. In climate skeptic circles, he had committed apostasy. In the broader scientific community the reaction was essentially, “What took you so long? Didn’t you notice that the glaciers are disappearing, permafrost melting, sea level rising and polar bears drowning?”
Last month, nine Democrats in the U.S. House decided to swim upstream through the sewage that is Washington politics to introduce the Save Our Climate Act, a bill that would impose, at its onset, a $10 per ton tax on carbon dioxide emissions. Their goal is to reduce emissions by 80 percent below 1990 levels.
Pete Stark (the only “out” atheist in Congress, just so you know) is a good guy; he’s the originator of this doomed legislative initiative. I’m so tired I can’t even think straight…but my letter appears to make a species of sense, combining a wee dram of S.O.C.A. advocacy with a big glass of Republicans Are Idiots. Sent November 15:
Now that Dr. Richard Muller’s career as a “climate skeptic” has foundered on the facts, one wonders how the GOP can continue to ignore those stubbornly inconvenient truths that have the rest of us losing sleep at night. But they will, they surely will.
Climate change is one of the least ambiguous problems America faces, for the laws of physics and chemistry are utterly oblivious to the exigencies of electoral politics. If we wish to pass a habitable world to our descendants, we need to stop burning carbon and putting it into the atmosphere. Period. And as a spate of recent reports have indicated, our window of opportunity is rapidly closing.
Congressional Republicans should support Rep. Stark’s Save Our Climate Act, which is environmentally sound and fiscally sensible. But they won’t, because their entire ideology is based on the idea that a profitable lie beats a costly truth every time.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Ban ki-Moon Climate Vulnerable Forum United Nations
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 18: It’s Cheap, Considering The Alternative
USA Today runs an AP article on Ban Ki-Moon’s statement to the Climate Vulnerable Forum:
DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) – U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged world leaders Monday to finalize the financing for a multibillion-dollar fund to fight the effects of climate change.
Delegates at a U.N.-sponsored climate change conference that starts Nov. 28 in Durban, South Africa, are to consider ways to raise $100 billion a year for the Green Climate Fund created last December to help countries cope with global warming.
Ban told the opening session of a climate meeting in Bangladesh’s capital that the world should make a concerted effort to finance the fund.
Read more about the CVF here. Naturally the only comments on the USA Today website at the time of writing were from wingnuts prating that we should defund the UN, or something. Sheesh.
Sent November 14:
The nations of the Climate Vulnerable Forum are among the world’s least significant contributors to the greenhouse effect — a sad irony, given the fact of their susceptibility to the rising ocean levels and extreme weather events brought in global warming’s wake. It is a further demonstration of the inherent inequity of a globalized consumer economy that the lands and lives of the planet’s poorest citizens are now at profound risk from the activity of the richest.
But while the CVF’s members may be cash-poor, they’re second to none in their moral authority. Countries like Kiribati, Bangladesh and the Maldives are working hard to reduce their own CO2 emissions despite the fact that it is the wealthiest members of the global community who’ve made such a mess of things.
America’s politicians and their corporate masters ignore the simple and obvious principle we all learned as children: clean up after yourself.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: greenhouse gases idiots NOAA Republicans
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 17: If We Stop Giving Money To The Oil Companies…
The NOAA has more exciting news for connoisseurs of impending doom:
Greenhouse gases are building at a steep rate in the atmosphere, the nation’s top climate agency reported, renewing concern that global warming may be accelerating.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Annual Greenhouse Gas Index, which indexes the key gases known to trap heat in the Earth’s atmosphere, rose 1.5% from 2009 to 2010, the agency reported.
The reported rise comes on top of an analysis by the Energy Department last week saying that global emissions of carbon dioxide, a key, long-lived greenhouse gas, had jumped by the biggest increment on record in 2010. The figures showed a 6% increase from the year before, a steeper rise than worst-case scenarios that had been laid out by climate experts four years before.
This started out as a revision of the letter I sent to the Boston Globe a few days ago. It’s always fun to mock Rick Perry a bit, so that wound up as the lede. Sent November 13:
It was just a few days ago that Rick Perry finally — oops! — remembered his intention to defund the Department of Energy — coincidentally, the agency responsible for one of the most alarming recent reports on climate change. Can anyone doubt that every single Republican presidential candidate would enthusiastically endorse a similar response to the NOAA, whose Annual Greenhouse Gas Index is reporting equally bad news?
The NOAA report is terrifying to anyone willing to read the numbers. The consequences of such drastic increases in GHG emissions include devastating storms, droughts, out-of-season precipitation and other forms of extreme weather — all leading inevitably to disrupted agriculture and infrastructure on the regional level. Climate change’s geopolitical effects include resource wars and increased political instability, according to both military and CIA analyses.
In the GOP’s world, bad news disappears when you stop paying for it. If only it were that easy.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Keystone XL NIMBY NOMP Tar Sands
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 16: Who Put The NOMP In The Bomp Bomp Bomp?
The Nebraska Journal-Star talks about the pipeline postponement:
Break out the champagne! The State Department decision to study routes to avoid Nebraska’s beautiful and ecologically sensitive Sandhills is a victory against long odds.
It’s hard to imagine a decision that could and would be hailed by everyone from conservative Gov. Dave Heineman to liberal Jane Kleeb of Bold Nebraska to environmentalist Ken Winston of the Sierra Club, but that’s the case in this rare confluence of concerns and priorities.
Now there’s a reasonable chance that the Keystone XL pipeline project will never rip a slow-to-heal gash across the Sandhills.
The statement from the State Department emphasized that the concern expressed by Nebraskans had been a key factor in the decision to delay the project.
{snip}
This is a one-time opportunity. Cynics wonder whether it would have been granted at all if it had not provided a convenient excuse for the Obama administration to delay a final decision until after the elections next year.
As readers of this page know, the Journal Star editorial board called more than a year ago for the pipeline route to be moved to avoid the Sandhills. We think the pipeline needs to be built, just not through the Sandhills.
I wanted to expand on the “Not On My Planet” theme, and this editorial was a perfect hook. Sent November 12:
NIMBY — “Not In My Backyard.” When your editorial writers say, “We think the pipeline needs to be built, just not through the Sandhills,” it’s a classic example of this way of thinking.
It’s often reasonable to relocate obvious hazards and inconveniences so they don’t endanger lives or disrupt communities, but the Keystone XL pipeline is not such a case. The likely impact of leaks and spillage on sensitive aquifers is only one of many reasons to block the project; while relocation may reduce the chance of water contamination, this doesn’t do a thing about the destruction of huge amounts of Canadian boreal forest, or the devastating CO2 emissions that are an inevitable consequence of burning the dirty crude of the tar sands. And it won’t do a thing about weaning our nation from its addiction to oil.
NIMBY is an inadequate response to the Keystone XL. We need to say NOMP — “Not On My Planet!”
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Keystone XL Tar Sands
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 15: This Hurts You More Than It Hurts Me. Or Something.
The San Francisco Chronicle reprints an article from the Houston Chronicle on the Good Decision Rationalized Stupidly:
The Obama administration said Thursday that it will consider alternative routes for the Keystone XL oil pipeline to avoid ecologically sensitive areas of America’s heartland – a move that delays a final decision on the controversial project until after the 2012 election.
The move solves a political dilemma for President Obama, who risked alienating key voting blocs no matter what decision he made on the pipeline that would carry Canadian oil sands crude from Alberta to Port Arthur, Texas. The project pitted environmentalists against some labor unions and the oil industry, and Obama would have been delivering a verdict before an election that could turn on who can do the most to turn around the nation’s ailing economy.
Sheesh. Sent November 10:
Eternally cautious, the Obama administration continues to hedge on the feasibility of the Keystone XL pipeline. While the postponement of a final decision on tar sands development until 2013 was cheered by environmentalists, the White House’s public rationale ducks the issue of climate change entirely, focusing on possible damage to water supplies.
Here’s the thing: the pipeline’s a terrible idea on multiple levels. The inevitable leaks will contaminate one of the nation’s most important aquifers with carcinogens; extracting tar sands oil is going to devastate huge expanses of forest, leaving a moonscape behind and eliminating a critical carbon sink — and putting all that CO2 into the atmosphere will kick global warming into overdrive, pushing the Earth down the path to an ever-bleaker future.
Usually, “not in my back yard” denotes a local or regional concern. When it comes to the Keystone XL, we need to say “Not In My Planet.”
Warren Senders
environment Politics: public health Republican obstructionism
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 12: Now Watch This Drive!
More on the health impact study, this time from the LA Times:
Six climate change-related events taking place between 2000 and 2009 cost the U.S. about $14 billion in health costs, researchers reported Monday in the journal Health Affairs.
Most of those costs — 95% — were attributable to the value of lost lives, they wrote. About $740 million originated in “760,000 encounters with the health care system.”
The coauthors, affiliated with the Natural Resources Defense Council, UC Berkeley’s Boalt Law School in Berkeley and UC San Francisco wrote that their article was “a first attempt to synthesize health data from the literature on events related to climate change and to develop a uniform method of quantifying their health costs.”
The events they studied are the types of climate-related disasters that are expected to occur more often in the future as the Earth’s climate warms, they said.
There. You’ve covered your ass, now.
Sent November 8:
The Health Affairs study on the costs of climate change is particularly important when considered alongside the Department of Energy report released last week which noted a “monster” increase in greenhouse gas emissions for 2010, suggesting that the extreme weather we’ve witnessed so far has been merely a preview of coming attractions. For all their bluster about reducing the deficit, conservative politicians don’t seem to remember the old aphorism, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” When we consider fourteen billion dollars of health costs connected to global climate change, it should be obvious: America needs to prepare for a future in which these environmental disasters are both more frequent and more severe. We must act now to reduce those bills before they come due. A failure to do so is sensible only in a political environment where empty posturing trumps factuality one hundred percent of the time.
Warren Senders