environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility EPA idiots Republicans
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 3: Hey! I’m-a-talkin’ to YOU!
The July 17 Poughkeepsie Journal runs an interview with their area’s Regional EPA director, prefacing it with some pointed words of criticism:
Nevertheless, it is on that second subject, global warming, that the federal Environmental Protection Agency has been far too tepid in its response. Both the agency and federal elected officials still have to find common ground — and viable solutions.
Judith Enck, the EPA regional administrator, defended the agency’s decision not to press forward more forcibly without congressional support, despite various court rulings that would seem to give the EPA more latitude here.
I think I’m going to start writing to the multinationals directly. Yeah, that’ll work. The Poughkeepsie Journal has a 250-word limit, and I didn’t feel like cutting this one down from 195, so it’s a little longer than the default 150. Sent July 17:
It is irrefutable that the EPA should push harder to limit carbon emissions and give more attention to educating the public on the extremely dangerous future that awaits us if global climate change is not controlled. Sadly, it’s also irrefutable that the current political climate is a dreadful one for progress on environmental issues. With an ideologically constricted Republican party chock-full of anti-science zealots who appear to believe that they can create their own reality if they don’t like this one, meaningful legislative initiatives on what is arguably the most pressing issue of our time are entirely out of the question. Yes, the EPA should do its job more zealously, with special attention to aspects of the environment which transcend national boundaries and affect all the world’s people. But the other side of the equation is that the corporate forces controlling our politics must realize that if their customer base were to experience what biologists delicately call an “evolutionary bottleneck,” it would hurt their future profit margins more than a worldwide shift to renewable energy. Let the world’s multinationals figure this out, and we’ll see Republicans publicly embracing wind turbines and solar panels.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Australia carbon tax Julia Gillard
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Year 2, Month 7, Day 28: Julia!
Well, I’m writing this on July 12, after an episode of considerable stupidity a little earlier today. I entered my usual group of search terms into google and found a link to an article debunking the climategate idiocy. I leapt to the assumption that for some reason these were in the news again…so I spent about half an hour generating a letter on scientific integrity versus the right-wing noise machine. A good letter it was, too.
Then I looked at the byline on the article and had a (facepalm) moment; it was about 17 months old. How did it wind up at the top of my google results? Damned if I know. So I put that letter away and generated another piece of boilerplate on Australia’s carbon tax. This one went to the Boston Herald which ran a generic AP feed on the Australian proposal. I’m linking to it from a drive to completeness; I cannot imagine why anyone would need to read it.
The BH is a Murdoch paper. Maybe by the time this post shows up online Rupert will be in prison?
Anyway, sent on July 12 to the Boston Herald:
The Australian carbon tax is an idea whose time has come. Despite the doubts of her constituents and the hostility of the country’s big coal companies, Prime Minister Gillard is showing genuine leadership and a long-term vision that American politicians would do well to emulate. She recognizes that carbon dioxide emissions pose a long-term threat to the world’s stability. If actions today can help reduce the terrifying consequences of a runaway greenhouse effect, all of us will benefit. Conversely, apathy and inaction today will bring a perfect storm upon our descendants. Fifty years ago, we had the excuse of ignorance; now, we can no longer plead that we were unaware of the dangers of a “business as usual” approach to greenhouse gas emissions, for the evidence is overwhelming and incontrovertible. Our politicians’ unwillingness and inability to do the right thing will resound to their, and our, eternal shame.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Australia carbon tax Julia Gillard
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Year 2, Month 7, Day 27: There’s Something About Julia
More on Australia’s carbon tax plans, from the July 10 NYT:
SYDNEY — Prime Minister Julia Gillard of Australia announced a plan on Sunday that would tax the carbon dioxide emissions of the country’s 500 worst polluters and create the second-biggest emissions trading program in the world, after the European Union’s.
The plan is projected to cut 159 million tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by 2020, the government said. In 2010, Australia produced 577 million tons of carbon emissions, according to the Department of Climate Change.
This is basically yesterday’s letter, rearranged and reconfigured. It’s fun to use the word “nobility” in the same paragraph with a reference to American politicians. It’s kind of like using the word “genteel” while discussing a Farrelly brothers film. Sent July 11:
Washington wants us to believe that unraveling the safety net for our most defenseless citizens in the name of deficit reduction is somehow an act of political courage, since those same citizens (unsurprisingly) don’t like the idea. But conservatives’ hypocritical posturings have always been supported by the wealthiest and most powerful forces in our economy — and with billions of dollars behind them, their casual dismissal of the needs of millions of citizens has nothing of nobility in it. By contrast, Australia’s Julia Gillard has dared to show something few of our politicians can even contemplate: visionary concern for her nation’s future. By imposing a tax on carbon pollution, she’s confronted both the powerful coal industry and the inchoate fears of her fellow citizens. Why? Because Prime Minister Gillard recognizes that the greenhouse effect and its destructive consequences will be far more expensive than any amount of deficit spending.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Australia Big Coal Julia Gillard
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Year 2, Month 7, Day 26: Up With Down Under!
Australia’s PM is doing something wonderful, reports the Boston Globe in its issue of July 10:
SYDNEY—Australia will force its 500 worst polluters to pay 23 Australian dollars ($25) for every ton of carbon dioxide they emit, with the government promising to compensate households hit with higher power bills under a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions unveiled Sunday.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard sought to reassure wary Australians that the deeply unpopular carbon tax will only cause a minority of households to pay more and insisted it is critical to helping the country lower its massive carbon emissions. Australia is one of the world’s worst greenhouse gas polluters, due to its heavy reliance on coal for electricity.
“We generate more carbon pollution per head than any other country in the developed world,” Gillard told reporters in Canberra as she released details of the tax, which will go into effect on July 1, 2012. “We’ve got a lot of work to do to hold our place in the race that the world is running.”
She’s right. Australia is right. And America is full of blinkered idiots, as usual.
Sent July 10:
Faced with an intractable choice between business as usual and an environmentally responsible policy on carbon emissions, Australia’s Julia Gillard showed something this country hasn’t seen in quite a while: genuine leadership. Promoting unpopular policies on deficit reduction is not the mark of political courage many of our politicians claim; there is no nobility in advocating policies that are heavily favored by deep-pocketed multinational corporations and the monied elites who reap the benefits of their success. Any world leader who ignores the worldwide scientific consensus on climate change (approaching unanimity as rapidly as the Arctic is shedding ice mass) is betting the lives of countless millions of people on a very long shot indeed. In taking on the enormous power of Australia’s coal industry, Prime Minister Gillard is doing something our politicians cannot: the right thing, both for her nation and the world.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists idiots scientific consensus
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Year 2, Month 7, Day 24: Ditto, Ditto, Ditto…
A guy named Ken Midkiff writes a good piece on our likely future in the July 8 issue of the Columbia Tribune (MO):
There are, to be sure, a few skeptics and deniers — mostly those who rely on faux news for “information.” There was never any doubt that that more greenhouse gases in the upper atmosphere would cause the planet to become warmer. But the skeptics and deniers have determined it is futile to argue that the planetary temperature is not rising — every measurement demonstrates that it is. The arguments now are about human responsibility and which areas will be affected and how.
As to the first argument, the global-warming skeptics and deniers are quite literally willing to gamble on everyone’s life. If human activities are responsible for raising the level of greenhouse gases and no contrary action is taken, the gamble fails. That is not a risk that should be taken.
At what level of certainty is a seat belt to be fastened? Even if we are just contributing to (not totally causing) global warming, we need to find non-polluting ways of doing things.
I didn’t even bother reading the comments; I just sent the following:
Ken Midkiff’s realistic assessment of the country’s next few decades is sure to demonstrate one of contemporary life’s few certainties: any published article dealing straightforwardly with the facts of climate change will attract vituperation from people who consider Rush Limbaugh a trustworthy source of information. As the scientific evidence piles up higher and higher, the climate denialists are going into overdrive. Their feverish reiterations of “hoax” and their derisive references to “algore” (Rush’s nickname for one of the few politicians to fully grasp the magnitude of the crisis) show their desperation. A sane society would properly relegate these hyperparanoid conspiracy theorists to the margins. Alas, in contemporary American culture, outright rejection of science is a virtual prerequisite for success in either politics or the media — which means that we can no longer expect our laws and opinions to bear any relationship to reality. It would be hilarious if our lives weren’t at stake.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: disaster capitalism economics floods Montana oil spills Yellowstone Park
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Year 2, Month 7, Day 23: Shaken, Not Stirred
In the July 7 L.A. Times, the brilliant and prescient Naomi Klein turns her eye to the interlocked disasters currently unfolding in the American West, in this case Montana — with floods and oil spills competing for the attention of the rescue and cleanup crews.
“We’re a disaster area,” Alexis Bonogofsky told me, “and it’s going to take a long time to get over it.”
Bonogofsky and her partner, Mike Scott, are all over the news this week, telling the world about how Montana’s Exxon Mobil pipeline spill has fouled their goat ranch and is threatening the health of their animals.
But my conversation with Bonogofsky was four full days before the pipeline began pouring oil into the Yellowstone River. And no, it’s not that she’s psychic; she was talking about this year’s historic flooding.
“It’s unbelievable,” she said. “It’s like nothing I’ve experienced in my lifetime. It destroyed houses; people died; crops didn’t get in the fields…. We barely were able to get our hay crop in.”
Everyone agrees that the two disasters — the flooding of the Yellowstone River and the oil spill in the riverbed — are connected. According to Exxon officials, the high and fast-moving river has four times its usual flow this year, which has hampered cleanup and prevented their workers from reaching the exact source of the spill. Also thanks to the flooding, the oiled water has breached the riverbanks, inundating farmland, endangering animals, killing crops and contaminating surface water. And the rush of water appears to be carrying the oil toward North Dakota.
This letter was subsequently published by the LA Times with some editing. Yay, me.
Naomi Klein’s discussion of climate change’s repercussions in Montana leaves unaddressed the concept of “disaster capitalism,” her crucial contribution to contemporary economic analysis. As climate change’s catastrophic effects become more widespread, our already-crumbling infrastructure will no longer be up to the challenge of an adequate response; the inevitable result will be more human misery — which will in turn trigger ever-more-egregious corporate encroachments on both the lives of individuals and their communities. We can confidently expect more lenient enforcement of existing emissions and pollution law in the wake of climatic crises, along with legislative weakening of troublesome and unprofitable regulations. And let’s not forget more tax breaks to help multinational corporations (many of which facilitated global warming in the first place) reap further benefits from the havoc they’ve helped bring about. “Disaster capitalism” was bad enough already. With climate change added to the mix, it’s a poisonous recipe for humanity.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: China coal corporate irresponsibility denialists sulfur pollution
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Year 2, Month 7, Day 22: Ad Hoc Geoengineering
The Daily Mail (UK) runs an article on the Chinese sulfur emissions question:
China’s rapid industrial expansion may have halted global warming for much of the last decade, climate scientists claimed.
They said sulphur pollution from China’s coal-fired power stations helped to keep world temperatures stable despite soaring greenhouse gas emissions.
Burning coal releases carbon dioxide which traps heat from the Sun, raising temperatures. But it also emits particles of sulphur that help block the Sun’s rays and cool the Earth.
One of the attractions of the alternate-universes cosmology is the notion that somewhere there is a planet Earth where the humans haven’t fucked things up so completely.
Sent July 6:
The analysis suggesting that Chinese sulfur emissions have helped slow global heating trends is yet another confirmation of a simple fact: the science of climate change is complicated. Of course, that should be no surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention, but the idea that there are multiple inter-relating factors seems to be hard for climate-change deniers to grasp. Given that ending the West’s dependence on fossil fuels will have enormously beneficial economic and environmental impacts, the reluctance of the denialists in our politics and media to move forward on this crucial issue can only be attributed to their fear of change, whether positive or negative. It certainly couldn’t be because they’re financially beholden to multinational energy corporations that will lose a few percentage points of profit; even the most avaricious of politicians surely wouldn’t put short-term profit over the survival of our species or our civilization. Or would they?
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republican obstructionism
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Year 2, Month 7, Day 21: Yecchh.
US News and World Report’s Jessica Rettig notes on July 5 that when it comes to the planet’s climate, the American political climate is, um, not so good:
Still shunned as fringe ideologues, or worse, by Democrats and much of the formal scientific community, skeptics of global warming were nonetheless celebratory as they gathered in Washington last week for the conservative Heartland Institute’s annual climate change conference. And for good reason. Climate change legislation has been on the back burner since 2009 and an increasing number of Republican lawmakers now call themselves skeptics as well. Indeed, the tide of the debate—at least politically—has turned in their favor.
Political experts say that with the economy at the forefront of the nation’s focus, concerns over global warming won’t carry much weight in the 2012 election. At most, climate change will be just another place for candidates, especially those in the GOP, to distinguish themselves from their opponents, if they dare. “[Climate change is] part of an undercurrent. The race is going to be about the economy and the fiscal crisis. So to the degree that one or several of the candidates can work the story line that some of these concerns are having an impact on the economy, that will be a marginal help,” says pollster Scott Rasmussen. “But it’s not a central issue by any stretch of the imagination.”
Sociopaths is what they are. Sent July 5:
The politicizing of science has never been as egregious as it is today, with essentially the entire GOP rejecting expert evidence based on nothing more than a set of ideological preconceptions. Do the facts show a clear pattern of steadily increasing global temperatures? Impugn the scientists. Do the physical principles underpinning the greenhouse effect run counter to conservative shibboleths? Glorify ignorance. Is the worldwide scientific consensus on climate change essentially universal? A few oil-funded contrarians can give the impression that “the science isn’t settled.” Eventually, of course, the laws of physics and chemistry will decide, and unless we stop treating climate science as a political football, the verdict will not come down in humanity’s favor. The Republican party has long had a history of ignoring inconvenient facts, but when it comes to climate change, they have gleefully replaced a reality-based science policy with the ugliest sort of petulant, destructive, nihilism.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Berlin Conference corporate irresponsibility denialists United Nations
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Year 2, Month 7, Day 19: Meet The Old Boss, Same As The New Boss
A bland set of paragraphs in the Belfast Telegraph announcing the opening of the Berlin climate talks, on July 3:
Representatives from 35 countries have met in Germany to discuss how to overcome disputes over reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The informal two-day gathering in Berlin is designed to lay the groundwork for an international climate conference in Durban, South Africa, in November.
I used it as the hook for an anti-corporatist screed. Sent July 3:
One wonders what it will take to get the world to stop treating the extreme dangers of runaway climate change as the occasion for political posturing. For example, as the American presidential election approaches, one entire political party has commited itself to an anti-science, anti-reality posture on what is arguably the biggest threat humanity has ever faced. Similar political equations are found throughout the developed world. Perhaps we need to face another horrifying fact that has emerged over the past several decades: many of the world’s governments are essentially owned lock, stock and barrel by multinationals which aren’t going to relinquish any profit whatsoever. Persuading the world’s governments of the urgency of the climate crisis will mean little unless and until the planet’s largest corporations come to their senses and recognize that putting their customers (us) through what biologists euphemistically call an “evolutionary bottleneck” is an awfully stupid business plan.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: algae denialists idiots James Inhofe
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Year 2, Month 7, Day 19: A Thick Protective Coating
More hilarity on Jim Inhofe’s swimming adventure, this time from the Joplin, MO Globe. They used the same AP feed, so there’s nothing more to add but my letter, sent July 2:
The report on Grand Lake’s algal blooms omitted an important fact: according to an April 4 paper published in the journal Science, the conditions that give rise to the proliferation of the toxic scum are consequences of climate change. BGA loves unstable weather, record high heat, and excess atmospheric CO2 — all of which are results of global warming. This, of course, renders James Inhofe’s ill-fated swim more than a little ironic. The Senate’s top climate-change denier — a man who revels in his “enemy of the environment” status — finally experiences the impact of the greenhouse effect personally. But it will probably take more than exposure to poisonous algae to change Mr. Inhofe’s mind. He’s protected by another sort of green scum: the oil industry money financing his public campaigns against sensible action to deal with the looming climate crisis.
Warren Senders