Recently, world leaders announced some deeply disturbing news: they gave up on reaching a binding climate deal at the upcoming Copenhagen conference. [1]
A major impediment was the refusal of President Obama and Congress to enact tough cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
Right now, the most ambitious target that Obama has endorsed is a 3.5% reduction in emissions by 2020. [2]
That's pathetic, compared to the 25-40% reduction that we need to have a 50:50 chance of avoiding disastrous runaway global heating, according to the International Panel on Climate Change. [3]
The United States ought to lead by example. We can do it with strong emission reductions.
With all due respect to Don Draper sometimes the best way to sell a message isn't a clever campaign but the truth. A recently exposed whopper conjured up by climate change deniers highlights exactly what is behind the fight against climate change solutions: lies. The site Fight Clean Energy Smears has been tracking the attempts by a very small minority of deniers out there who are using, quite simply, lies to protect their interest in the status quo
This past week, the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee held three days of hearings on global warming (Day 1,
Day 2, Day 3), with a wide range of panels. While much of the testimony was simply an advancement of lines of debate that have been heard for over a decade, there were some relatively new developments, particularly in two panels on Wednesday , one dealing with adaptive strategies and thinking, the other dealing with the national security implications of global warming. Arguably the most compelling and knowledgeable testimony and followup comments on the national security panel came from Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn (Ret) (written testimony here), who has twice served on the Military Advisory Boards for the reports on global warming from the Center for Naval Analysis.
In his testimony, Admiral McGinn stated:
We are just beginning to emerge from one of the most serious global financial crises of our lifetimes. This understandably focuses our attention on near term fiscal issues. However, after several years of examining climate change and the United States' energy use, it is clear to our Military Advisory Board that our economic, energy, climate change and national security challenges are inextricably linked. And it is also clear that our past pattern of energy use is responsible, in a significant way, for our economic situation today. For these reasons, we must take a long range, comprehensive view to develop effective national policies and make real and positive changes to the ways in which we power America. A business as usual approach, continued over reliance on fossil fuels, or small, incremental steps, simply will not create the kind of future security and prosperity that the American people and our great Nation deserve. The time to act, and act boldly, is now.
I interviewed Admiral McGinn on Friday, in order to get a better understanding of how the military has come to see global warming as a major national security concern, and what we all can learn from their perspective. The complete interview transcript is on the flip.
In the middle of heated policy debates, projections of cost to industry and government fly thick and fast. If costs to citizens are mentioned, it's usually in their capacity as taxpayers, as though they weren't otherwise part of the economy. A couple examples from the global warming policy arena put this into sharp relief in a way that emphasizes the urgency of providing affordable health coverage to every American.
First, there's David Roberts' explanation (... with puppies!) of how the Congressional Budget Office undercounts the benefits of lower energy costs from efficiency. Their method counts the promotion of energy efficiency as a cost to the taxpayer, but not a savings to the ratepayer, as though you can make an absolute separation between people who pay taxes and people who pay utility bills.
That may make sense from the CBO's perspective, but not from the perspective of electricity-using members of the public trying to figure out whether new energy legislation benefits them.
In recent weeks--starting with Washington, DC kick-off just prior to 9/11--a coalition of progressive Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and others known as Operation Free has been holding public events to spread the word about protecting America from the security threat of global warming. Participants include VoteVets, VetPac, Veterans for Common Sense, The Truman National Security Project, The American Values Network, Veterans & Military Families for Progress, and Veterans for Green Jobs. An August story at Grist.org reported:
"As a former U.S. Army captain and a veteran of Iraq, I understand firsthand how our dependence on foreign oil is a threat to national security," said Jon Powers, chief operating officer at the Truman National Security Project, a sponsor of Operation Free. "We're looking to Washington to take this threat seriously and come up with policy that reduces the threat to national security."
This week, as noted by Think Progress, the vets with Operation Free were attacked as traitors (what else?) by a Pennsylvania legislator:
Upon hearing about the group's visit to Pennsylvania, State Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R) blasted the veterans as "traitors" and compared them to Benedict Arnold:
"As a veteran, I believe that any veteran lending their name, to promote the leftist propaganda of global warming and climate change, in an effort to control more of the wealth created in our economy, through cap and tax type policies, all in the name of national security, is a traitor to the oath he or she took to defend the Constitution of our great nation!" Mr. Metcalfe's email reads. "Remember Benedict Arnold before giving credibility to a veteran who uses their service as a means to promote a leftist agenda. Drill Baby Drill!!!"
Rep. Metcalfe, who served in the U.S. Army from 1980-84, today defended the remarks, saying that "if the type of policies that an individual promotes undermines the Constitution and the law of the land in our country, then they are not patriots."
So global warming is "leftist propaganda," not only despite the complete consensus of the peer reviewed literature, but despite several years of recognition as a national security threat by high-ranking defense analysts. This is a classic example of Conservative Bullshit Epistemology, which I wrote about last weekend ("Bullshit Epistemology And Conservative Narcissism Run Wild"). In fact, it combines several different bullshit arguments all in one, which is what makes it such a perfect exemplar of how Conservative Bullshit Epistemology works.
On this international day of global warming action, it's quite clear that the US remains the biggest impediment to effective action to avoid catastrophic global warming. There are many reasons for this, not least is the failure of progressives to mount an effective counter-campaign against the massive flood conservative disinformation. If we want to fix the problem of America's Neanderthal self-destructive politics of global warming, then we need to look at this failure and how to correct it. One key to this is the blindingly obvious argument that global warming constitutes an overwhelming threat to our national security--which is the main thrust of this diary. However, that's just one basic point among several that should have been driven into the heads of every single American voter--no, every single American resident--as a basic pre-requisite for having a responsible debate about how to deal with global warming. Here is a sample of such points (more in the extended entry):
350.org co-founder Bill McKibben and Australian scientist Tim Flannery talked with Democracy Now! previewing an International Climate Action Day today (info here)--on the flip. The impacts of climate change in Australia have gone far past the point where denial is still possible.
Meanwhile, the Boston GlobeGreen Blog notes that 350.org took out the following full-page ad in MIT's newspaper yesterday, putting three question to President Obama as he addressed MIT on clean energy the day before the worldwide day of climate action taking place today (more in the extended entry):
It's true, Rush Limbaugh is a racist idiot and vicious propagandist. One of his recent exercises in inhumanity included telling New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin that he should "just go kill [himself]", as noted at Media Matters, after Revkin said that "probably the single most concrete and substantive thing an American, young American, could do to lower our carbon footprint is not turning off the light or driving a Prius, it's having fewer kids, having fewer children."
There is a wealth of material indicating that wingnut heads spontaneously explode when someone suggests that white Americans shouldn't have as many babies as possible in service to the noble goal of crowding out the lazy brown hordes coming to take our jobs. It's creepy, but not breaking news. When Revkin suggested, as a thought experiment, directing carbon credits towards discouraging people in America (and elsewhere, but we'll get to that) having children, Limbaugh's cranial pressure differential reached critical levels.
In the ensuing October 20th rant, the same one where he suggested Revkin off himself, we get to the meat of Limbaugh's damage:
We don't even have to talk about getting married. We don't even have to talk about being a couple. I mean men have no say now, really, in whether a child is born or not, legally I mean. So would a man have any way of benefiting from the carbon credit?
If men don't have control over something, and especially if they can't benefit from it, Limbaugh is opposed. If you needed an object lesson today on why feminism remains relevant, well, there you are.
However, the fact-on-the-ground that many men do insist on control and the greater share of direct benefits from everything within their purview, gets at the underlying problem with Revkin's thought experiment. Just because Rush Limbaugh doesn't like you, it doesn't make you right in all particulars.
If anything, the population-climate question is more pressing in the United States than in developing countries, given the high per-capita carbon dioxide emissions here and the rate of population growth. If giving women a way to limit family size is such a cheap win for emissions, why isn't it in the mix?
Well, here's why. Because if you were really serious about reducing the birth rate, you'd be campaigning first and foremost for women's rights. If you aren't campaigning first and foremost for women's rights, then your push for greater contraception access will never get you where you think you want to go. Also, it can come off badly.
Today is blog Action Day. In the organizers' own words:
Blog Action Day is an annual event that unites the world's bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day on their own blogs with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. Blog Action Day 2009 will be the largest-ever social change event on the web. One day. One issue. Thousands of voices.
Although The Opportunity Agenda does not directly work on climate change, the problem is so pervasive that it impacts the issues we do work on. Climate change is not an abstract phenomenon when it comes the lives of everyday people in America. There is mounting evidence that greenhouse gases are increasing the potency of hurricanes, whose impact disproportionately affects those most vulnerable in our society. And as the climate does change, it will be the poorest among us that suffer in increased fuel costs. Finally, the polluting elements that cause climate change are also most common in low-income communities of color. As a result, the health of residents in these areas is worse than those in more affluent neighborhoods.
For these reasons, climate change isn't an issue simply to be addressed by environmental groups. Social activists, too, must see the connections and address this universal concern—a step in realizing the promise of opportunity for all.
Thanks to Edger at Docudharma for posting about this. James Balog discusses TED, the Extreme Ice Survey, and why perception is the enemy in the fight to survive global warming. The following embedded video was "[r]ecorded at TEDGlobal 2009, July 2009 in Oxford, England."
Seeing is believing. This is why it was so important to pass meaningful climate legislation instead of the cap-and-trade scam, which appears to be stalled anyway. If we as a nation - indeed, if we as a species - are going to survive the coming catastrophes, we MUST do something NOW. Baby steps and fake reforms will kill us all, guaranteed.
Major utility corporations, like Exelon, California's Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (PG&E) and New Mexico's PNM have announced that they are leaving the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because of the organization's controversial stance toward climate change and opposition to a clean energy bill. The Chamber represents business interests, and according to a New York Times editorial, "no organization has done more to undermine [climate change] legislation."
Sometimes it's hard to explain how the far-right and corporate lobbyists operate or how they view reality. It's much easier to understand their actions if you accept that first, they know the facts, but just choose, on the basis of business reasons, to completely ignore them and second, that they understand if they present, backed up with millions of dollars, absolute crap as fact, somewhere someone will believe them.
Time-lapse proof of extreme ice loss: James Balog on TED.com
"Ninety five percent of the glaciers in the world are retreating or shrinking... there is no scientific dispute about that"
Photographer James Balog shares new image sequences from the Extreme Ice Survey, a network of time-lapse cameras recording glaciers receding at an alarming rate, some of the most vivid evidence yet of climate change. (Recorded at TEDGlobal 2009, July 2009 in Oxford, England. Duration: 19:22)
Three things to note: (1) These are percentages, not total goods. The domestic economy is much larger than the military sector. (2) Just look at how recently the military increase really started to spike upwards. (3) The figure in the bottom table are half due to Bush, half to Obama.
As I looked at that graph, and those figures, I began to think, "What if that were spending on green technology instead? After all, global warming is probably the biggest long-term threat there is to our national security. What if we were spending all that money on that in the midst of this economic crisis?"
The people who run the finance industry are extremely smart. Says so on the label. That's how they were able to convince the government to make good on their gambling debts, though if they were a little smarter, they might have remembered that the house always wins.
They've created speculative bubbles in recent decades (and more than one had to be bailed out) over commodities like silver, unsecured loans, real estate, dotcom firms whose business plans hinged on sock puppet sales, real estate ... well, you get the picture. On to the next big thing.
That thing might well be carbon markets. Turns out, the companies that hold most of the current derivative risk will be able to make ridiculous, unsupervised bets sell dizzyingly complex derivatives against carbon offsets, too. Though no worries, the price of failure would only be the absence of a price signal that will push atmospheric carbon levels down, hastening catastrophic global climate disruption. No big:
... Well, Waxman-Markey had some good language regulating carbon and other energy derivatives.
... However, in the 300 pages of amendments added to Waxman-Markey just after 3.a.m on the night the bill passed, a few new sentences materialized that placed a big asterisk on those safeguards. The final text now says that the sections of the bill regulating carbon derivatives will be overridden by any derivatives legislation that the House passes later in the year. ...
On July 11, Nick Berning, from Friends of the Earth, wrote a diary here, "Progressive Block Needed on Clean Energy Legislation in Senate". In it, he argued for the need to create a progressive block of Senators who demand a set of bottom-line objectives be met by any energy/climate legislation:
Because of the dire threat climate destabilization poses to our economy and quality of life, as well as global security and stability, we simply must do better than the House bill that puts a hard-to-change, ill-advised system in place. At a minimum, any bill the Senate passes should:
1. Maintain the EPA's existing authority to use the Clean Air Act to regulate coal-fired power plants, which the House-passed bill undermines. (Coal is the #1 source of global warming pollution in the world.)
2. Bring about a true transition to clean energy. One current Senate proposal (the bill that passed the Senate Energy Committee) would produce no more clean energy than business-as-usual scenarios. That's a disaster that must be fixed.
3. Prevent gaming by Wall Street. There's a reason Wall Street has 130 lobbyists working full time on climate change. Within years, the carbon trading system created by the House bill could become the biggest derivatives market in the world, subject to "subprime carbon" and speculation. This needs to be remedied.
4. Lay the groundwork for an international solution to global warming. A key phase of international negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is slated to culminate in December in Copenhagen. The emissions reduction targets in the House-passed bill are so weak (and are further undermined by offset loopholes), and the bill's funding for international solutions is so meager, that the bill is incompatible with a fair, effective global agreement. Developing countries are rightly rejecting these proposals, which is why the G8 failed to agree on emissions reductions targets in Italy this week.
While I agree whole-heartedly with what Nick wrote, in writing an article for Random Lengths News, two other strategies emerged as compatible with and reinforcing this approach. The first is already well under way, the campaign for a global day of action on October 24 by 350.org. The second is only the germ of an idea, based on some comments, and some of the work done on working with local officials raising awareness and starting to shape policies below state level. I'll discuss both these strategies a little more fully on the flip.
Senator Barbara Boxer, who chairs the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee, announced this week that her committee won't mark up energy and climate legislation until after the August recess. That's a good thing. It means progressive groups and activists have more time to coordinate their efforts to support the emergence of a progressive bloc of senators on these issues.
... Our analysis suggested that a 42% cut in 2020 was sufficiently ambitious to put us on the path to an 80% cut in 2050. We argued that we should plan for a 42% cut, but should enact a lower but still ambitious cut of 34% before a global emissions reduction deal is achieved. We argued that only when other countries are fully committed to tackling climate change should we move to the higher level of ambition; this is the same approach adopted by the EU. We set out a range of measures to meet the 34% cut that would facilitate the transition to the 42% cut at the appropriate time. ...
It goes on and on like that. Here are the real silly bits:
... sufficiently ambitious ... still ambitious ... only when other countries are fully committed ... should we move to the higher level of ambition ... facilitate the transition[ ]at the appropriate time ...
Is this a self-esteem building exercise? A 'keep up with the Joneses' plan? Are we easing an 8 year old into a new school?
It'd be more straightforward, and much more in line with the pressing necessities of the time, to say that we need to zero out our emissions and set about figuring out the fastest possible way to do so.
"We've just had the biggest floods and coldest winters we've ever had. They're saying to us [that climate change is] going to be a big problem because it's going to be warmer than it usually is; my farmers are going to say that's a good thing since they'll be able to grow more corn."
He said this in spite of the fact that the projected warming would be disastrous for corn pollination, and hence, yield. Worse, he says so in spite of the fact that global warming is going to engender a lot of local flooding in many of the world's farming regions.
Scratch that. Global warming is, right now, already increasing flooding in many areas, as it is projected to do in Peterson's Minnesota, as well as the districts and states of many other staunch opponents of getting this country on the path to carbon neutrality. A taste ...
New Orleans may sink into the sea by 2100. Much of Florida may also be underwater by then. Drought will likely become the norm out West, meaning California could no longer provide the food we depend upon. Las Vegas may become downright inhabitable.
No, I'm not fabricating any of this. These will be the consequences of inaction if we continue to delay implementing the solutions we need to solve the coming climate crisis. But for some reason, may of our supposedly wise lawmakers in Capitol Hill are either willfully ignorant of the facts or downright lying about our future.
This past week, the 
