Month 7, Day 21: A Pound For A Brown on The Bus

Continuing to write to Senators this week.

Dear Senator Brown,

The CBO scores are in, and it’s been confirmed that the Kerry-Lieberman climate bill will reduce the deficit by nineteen billion dollars.

Which means that “deficit hawk” arguments against the bill are irrelevant.

Meanwhile, July 2010 is on track to be the hottest July ever recorded in the world. Scientists at Perdue University just concluded a study which predicts a significant increase in so-called “killer heat waves” in the American Southwest. The lobster population in Southern New England has diminished so much because of climate change that a five-year moratorium on lobster fishing may be necessary. Lake Superior is twenty degrees warmer than usual for this time of year. Arctic glaciers are breaking apart, and mountain glaciers that provide water for billions of people around the world are vanishing rapidly.

It was in the early 1960s that scientists began predicting problems brought about by global warming. We have had fifty years’ worth of warnings, and we’ve chosen not to act. Senator, if we don’t act now, the problems we’re going to see a few years from now will make many of our current crises seem trivially insignificant. Since the deficit argument has been rendered moot by the CBO scoring, you have only a few possible reasons to vote against a climate bill:

1. You’re afraid of what Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and James Inhofe will say;
2. You think scientists are just making it up because they like scaring people;
3. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the big oil companies will pay you well to help scuttle climate/energy legislation;
4. You really don’t understand the problem — after all, didn’t it snow heavily last winter?

Whereas there is one overwhelmingly good reason to vote for climate legislation: our future and the future of our children and our world depend on it.

Please, Senator Brown. Do the right thing. Vote for a strong climate bill.

Yours Sincerely,

Warren Senders