The fight over EPA’s GHG authority “is going to be the most important fight for the environment on Planet Earth next year.”
While the president remains timid in defense of climate science and the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions (see “The failed presidency of Barack Obama, Part 2“), one of his former employees understands both the importance of the issue and the need for rhetoric to match the urgency.
I’m talking about climate hawk Van Jones. After the Stewart/Colbert rally, he spoke bluntly about where progressive are, how we got here, and what we need to do. Alternet has the story:
“Now, here’s our problem,” he says. “Most of the people who are in this room have given away, over the past two years, almost all of our power. The reason the country is in the shape that it’s in is not just because bad people created a hate machine; it’s that good people shut down the hope machine.”
… Perhaps no one in the progressive movement can ignite the passions of his listeners like Van Jones….
“The politics of hope and change in this country did not start in Iowa in 2008,” Jones tells the faithful. “The politics of hope and change started in 2003, when we didn’t have a superhero; we didn’t have a messiah, we didn’t have a lot of organization, we didn’t have a bunch of money. What we had was one-party rule here in D.C., and an unjust, unlawful war about to start — and each other. And with no superhero, and no messiah, you and me and people that we know took to the streets. And in six weeks, we organized more people against that war in Iraq than were organized against the Viet Nam war in six years. We did that. You did that.”
… “So, if there’s an inspiration deficit, or an inspiration gap in America, don’t look to him,” Jones says, “let’s look back to ourselves.”
In the coming session of Congress, Jones tells his audience, there are two major battles he sees as critical to both the progressive movement and the well-being of all Americans: the fight to maintain social programs and the struggle to save the Environmental Protection Agency from a promised assault by the Republicans who now rule the House.
“Both parties are likely to unite on the question of shoving an austerity program down the throats of the American people as a way to reduce the fiscal deficit,” Jones says. “Both parties are likely to say we’re gonna cut back on benefits for people who need help.”
… The second big battle, Jones says, is for nothing less than the fate of the planet — which is how he sees the assault on the EPA promised by the GOP.
At present, Jones says, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson has powers granted her under the Clean Air Act, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, “to start dealing with greenhouse gases, whether Congress likes it or not.” Having thwarted climate change legislation in the last session of Congress, Jones says, Republicans will next attempt to “change the rules to strip that authority away from her.”
Indeed, a number of Tea Party candidates ran on platforms that include defunding the EPA. “An attack on Lisa Jackson is an attack on the entire progressive movement,” Jones says, “and we’ve got to let them know that right away.”
“That fight is going to be the most important fight for the environment on Planet Earth next year,” Jones says. “If we allow the authority that she already has to be taken away, the planet may be greenhouse-gas attacked.”
Hear! Hear!
The piece has more of his remarks, which are well worth reading, but I’ll leave you with this:
You have good days, bad days — you’re up and down, you know? And in politics, when you do change, you have good years and bad years; you have ups, you have downs. But the one thing you know is, if you fall all the way back to despair, then no change is possible. But if you can just stick with the hope in the tough times, then all change is still possible. And that’s where we are.
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
Threshold Temp For Hurricanes
And Tropical Thunderstorms Is Rising
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Threshold_Temp_For_Hurricanes_And_Tropical_Thunderstorms_Is_Rising_999.html
Ocean acidification, a potentially disastrous consequence of global warming, is threatening the early life cycle of coral reefs near Florida and throughout the Caribbean, according to a new study published Monday.
“We’re affecting the chemistry of the oceans at an unprecedented rate,” she says. “It’s a rate that hasn’t been known to occur naturally for the last 60 million years.”
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/environment/2010-11-08-coral-reefs-ocean-acidification_N.htm
I’m inclined to think that James Hansen is right – Obama doesn’t ‘get it’.
It’s always good to hear from Van Jones.
The Republicans, as he pointed out, will be doing everything they can to hollow out EPA. Have CAP and Democratic leadership fully thought out countermeasures? I would assume that House Republicans’ threat to defund won’t succeed for statutory reasons, but they are no doubt up to all kinds of mischief through stealth legislation and court actions.
The extreme rain event unfolding now in Canada -
The result of so much rain is a general overwhelming of infrastructure that wasn’t built to withstand such volumes of water, Dexter said.
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Canada/20101109/nova-scotia-flooding-101109/
Defense and Offense
(I realize that Joe knows the difference, of course, and I also haven’t read the rest of Van’s comments, so I make the following comments with complete respect and good intentions to both of them, yet I’ll still offer the essential point, because it never hurts to keep it in mind … )
Consider this paragraph . . .
“In the coming session of Congress, Jones tells his audience, there are two major battles he sees as critical to both the progressive movement and the well-being of all Americans: the fight to maintain social programs and the struggle to save the Environmental Protection Agency from a promised assault by the Republicans who now rule the House.”
We’re on the Defense in both of these major battles. Thus, although they ARE HUGE, and defense is important, if these battles constitute more than 5 percent of our TOTAL efforts next year, and if we thus don’t accomplish a great deal more on Offense (how about if we actually score once or twice, people?), we’ll be going nearly nowhere, as time passes by. As time passes by.
I’m starting to become very concerned, really, that we only barely — barely — know how to play defense, and even that not very well, and that most of us can barely even conceive of what a good offense is all about. You know, Offense. That’s when your team has the ball, runs it, passes it, pushes through the defensive line, and makes a touchdown. That’s when the fans smile, the cheerleaders cheer, the cannon goes off, and the band plays. Offense!
We seem completely — COMPLETELY, without exception — in the mindset of looking at the opponents to see where their offense is coming, and then preparing to deal with it defensively. What did it take to get Arnold and George and Cameron and etc. on the airwaves in California? An assault by oil companies against a law that had already been passed! Geez. By now, we should be buying the flowers for the (figuratively speaking) funeral ceremony of the corporate entity once called ExxonMobil, and we should be sending the invitations out. I’m actually flabbergasted. Can the leaders of the movements actually let us know what they have in mind next, for Offense, or (if not soon) can they designate replacements for themselves, or (if not) do we need to start new organizations for the movement and stop attending the events of the older organizations? I mean, where’s the leadership?
Sorry to rant. This was not a rant against CP or Van or etc. It IS, however, a generic rant against how the present organizations of the movement seem to be doing things, and (not) communicating, based on the impression from here.
Sigh,
Jeff
The fact that it just getting worse will surely create more momentum in the coming weeks & month. I’m curious how this winter plays out. Projection see another northpole wind affecting the civilized northern hemisphere and scientist tell us that winters get harsher for us too. Last winter for the first time my area was covered with an ice crust for several weeks. Never experienced that and parts of UK run out of food supplies.
Soon there will be more frequent and more destructive events – even in the US. My guess is that Obama waits for something like this to start taking control and use all necessary forces to stop further climate destruction.
The fossil campaigners need to understand that they cannot win this and as longer they wait they risk the survival of the United States and every other civilization. Already the image will play out disastrous and many trials wait for polluters in the future – crimes against humanity are not forgettable. Or maybe the foreign funded agenda aims to bring the USA to fall.
Each day which passes when the USA does not enroll a Manhatten style climate change counter action program, is a lose – for everybody.
Is there anything individuals can do to help?
“THE GREATEST CRIME?
Publication of deliberately false climate change data literally ought — i.e., MUST — be treated, not as a peccadillo, but as a Crime Against Humanity.
My remark here is not an expression of an emotion, but of an intellectual and humanitarian reaction of a scientist to falsification of data that could be as bad in its effect as long-term global warming itself, by permitting the latter to thrive, and acquire an egregious and panhumanly disastrous momentum.
If this were World War III such people would be shot, and with far, far greater warrant than even those human catastrophes.
A scientist is a kind of Protective Angel for Humanity. Why? Simply because he lives and breathes for Truth.
——— * ———
As for the falsifiers of data, or criminal social parasites, let me switch from the second to the first of my scientific careers, long ago at M.I.T., where I was — a then VERY rare! — theorist in neuroscience, trying to make sense of the human brain as a whole and all the astonishing behavior and abilities it gives rise to.
A SIDE interest of mine, then and later, was the queer and baffling, and decidedly chilling, phenomenon of the psychopath, a.k.a. sociopath. The essential trait of such people is that have little or no conscience, and yet they can be at the same time profoundly convincing to the layman — i.e., virtually all of us.
The incidence of these curious and horrific people in the body of the whole of humanity is estimated to be of the order of 1/200. This is misleading, however, because the pathology is a matter of degree, or properly illustrated by an intensity-frequency curve.
To put it simply, a psychopath can and does lie without a blink, either external or internal. And often does so for profit or simply out of total indifference to the harm he works upon the innocent and the virtuous.
I have little doubt that the purveyors of purposefully, and dangerously, falsified Global Warming data ARE in many instances psychopaths, whose falsifications tend to put ALL of us at risk.
Even heads of great corporations can be, in various ways and degrees, psychopathic. (Psychopathy probably had some partly useful — personal OR social — function in the long-ago past of Homo sapiens. It is certainly common enough in our politicians nowadays!)
— Patrick Michael Gunkel (Princeton, NJ)
POSTSCRIPT: Two decades ago I was neutral, but skeptical, about global warming. Later I realized that we simply could not tolerate the risks it potentially posed. One does not play games, or take chances, when essentially the whole of civilization and humanity MAY be in peril.
None of us can escape from the need for such caution, and where even the very survival of our species over Eternity may just be confronted with the possibility of extinction through carelessness or ignorance, or a shallow and selfish morality, or ideology or skepticism, or a universal involvement in petty and personal disputes between men fighting in diapers. (Phenomena we have seen often enough in World Wars and in Wars Ancient, but no less pathetic and mindless.)
In short, All of the Future hangs by a single tenuous thread from each and ever Present.”
“I think there’s a general sense within the forest community that we’re seeing the beginning of the loss … of sugar maples,” said Rock, a professor of forestry and botany at the University of New Hampshire, who has studied New England’s woodlands for decades.
Decreased levels of sugar in springtime sap as determined by the number of gallons of sap needed to make a gallon of syrup. In the past it took between 32 and 35 gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup, while it now takes between 45 and 50 gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup.
http://blogs.cqrollcall.com/trailmix/2010/11/class-war-over-tax-cuts.html
Sorry wrong link for #8 -
http://climatesignals.org/2010/11/climate-change-muting-fall-color-of-sugar-maples/#comment-3226
Milan @ 7, Here’s on thing. Go here http://www.millionlettermarch.org/ and write a letter.
Following on Jeff Huggin’s point @ 6, what is the “present organizations of the movement”? Is there any or does there need to be overarching organization coordinating the efforts between 350.org and blueSky.org and millionLetterMarch and the Sierra Club and EDF and etc., etc.? Maybe we need the Karl Rove of Climate. What’s Arnold up to? He’ll be available soon won’t he?
For Colorado Bob,
I’ve read that the rain event over Northeast Taiwan, which occurred at the beginning of November 2010 totaled 45 inches, or 1.2 meters, as Typhoon Megi moved from south to north, remaining about a degree of longitude, some sixty miles, west of the island’s west coast tracking onto the Mainland province of Fujian. I wonder if 45 centimeters, still almost twice the Nova Scotia downpour, was meant. I’ve seen so many mistakes converting metric and English units (David Niven wanted a 10 foot deep swimming pool built in France which was ten meters deep when finished!) that I have to wonder. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-03/taiwan-death-toll-from-typhoon-megi-rises-as-china-tourists-declared-dead.html
Here’s one thing that each and every one of us can do, no matter where we live: We can (and must) ask ‘the climate question” of every elected official, every business leader, anyone and everyone. This was posted here several months ago, so it’s not a new idea.
By asking our leaders to commit themselves on climate change we put them on record. Many public forum type events are filmed, so we will develop a visible trail that can be used when needed. We should ask Republican and Democrats alike so we know where they stand.
Certainly officeholders and candidates for statewide and national offices are the prime targets. But we need to pin down mayors and local officials as they drive the local action, and many of them might run for higher office someday.
I hope someone reading this can help with the wording of perhaps 3 – 4 questions that we should all be asking. We should have them at the ready whenever we have the opportuniy.
Last week many of the candidates for Congress got a free ride on their position on climate change. We can’t let this happen again.
Cross-posted from Bart Verheggen’s blog:
“Bart,
Have you see this?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11718304
IMHO, the The International Energy Agency is really onto something here. Why continue to subsidence dirty and GHG intensive fuels when those funds could be used to develop and implement sustainable and clean energy sources? It makes no sense to use tax payers’ money to subsidize harmful FFs and to subsidize an industry that claims to believe in the “free market”.
Canada is guilty of generously subsidizing FFs, including the tar sands, so we are not blameless.
Doing so (ending subsidies) could be yet another wedge (Pacala and Socolow’s ideas , IMHO, remain the best and most pragmatic).
Energy industry analysts who I have talked to very much like Pacala and Socolow’s “wedge concept”– they think it is pragmatic and that it will be effective in reducing GHG emissions. BUT, to implement it properly government’s need to set binding targets….
If the “wedge concept” can be embraced and implemented I see a possible Nobel in Pacala and Socolow’s futures….or did Socolow already received the award for contributing to AR4?”
Autumn in Connecticut this year was dim. The sugar maples where less vivid- the various oaks have had a muted, faded luster- looking fatigued and dry. Other flora looked dry and wasted looking.
The summer was very hot (35 days 90 or above) and a severe drought- that also decimated my garden.
Is the future? A trained eye can readily see how the New England trees, shrubs and wetlands are changing. The landscape looked beaten up.
http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2010/11/epa-subpoenas-halliburton-for-fracking-documents.html
EPA Subpoenas Halliburton for Documents About “Fracking”
November 09, 2010
Jeff at 6/.
Very well said.
To accept that the main action on climate for the US and for the world is the defence of an EPA that reportedly believes that the best it can manage is a 5% GHG cut by 2020 off Bush’s illegitimate 2005 baseline, (which in fact is roughly 0% by 2020 off the legal 1990 baseline), would be little short of bizarre. This approach would be merely reactive to an agenda written by the enemy.
Such an outlook sows the seeds of far greater failure than Obama neatly getting himself disempowered on climate once again, and once again presenting this threadbare and shameful excuse for general US inaction to other nations. In particular, without the youth demographic being aroused to implacable protest at government inaction, society evidently lacks a future, and a ‘defensive’ strategy focussed on upholding EPA ‘powers’ cannot and will not achieve that arousal.
Leadership on offensive strategy is desperately lacking both among politicians and NGOs. From the latter, the nearest I hear is the 20-year-exhausted meme of emulating the example of Ghandi and/or King with a mass campaign of civil disobedience – but nobody seems interested enough to admit that our circumstances provide neither a speaker and strategist of their calibre, nor the essentially sympathetic press they knew, nor the controlling authorities’ knowledge of a looming need for mass recruitment to the armed forces necessitating concessions.
Looking at America as a foreigner, it appears that even its climate dissidents have yet to take the problem as seriously as it warrants. Consider: how many have been tried and sentenced for hijacking a coal train (by stealth) like their British counterparts have ? Or for besieging a coal power station en masse ? Or for invading the nation’s main airport en masse as the culmination of a successful campaign against its expansion ? (I should add that my own first arrest for the climate’s sake was in Berlin back in ‘94).
And as for the president, having pledged at Copenhagen that the US would achieve a mere 3.67% GHG cut by 2020 off 1990, subject to senate approval, he is now personally implicated in actions to prevent the bill for that cut ever being debated in the senate. Just like the youth vote (which he pissed away) the lack of a president committed to commensurate action on the climate threat means America will continue to fail to address the issue.
The first requirement is thus to warn Obama of a challenger for the candidacy in 2012 if he fails to review the policy of a brinkmanship of inaction with China by mid-2011.
The next requirement is to find a viable candidate who will lead on climate destabilization as both a moral issue and a national security issue while campaigning for high office.
The third requirement is for the full bandwidth of concerned organizations and individuals to coalesce into unprecedented primary and presidential election campaigns, with a strong focus on the youth vote, to put a staunchly pro-action leader into the White House.
Without that seminal change, the prospect of a timely binding global climate treaty are close to null, as are those of a stable and prosperous American nation.
So how about it ?
Regards,
Lewis
John Kearns @ 14 -
The list this year is in the dozens of places, most weren’t the result of tropical cyclones. An example is New Orleans, last Dec.. the wettest month ever recorded in there. It was done without a hurricane impacting the city. It rained 10 feet in Southern Twain Aug. 2009. There are 2 separate reports each from different valleys in Pakistan this summer, week long totals of 16 feet and 12 feet. The one that still impresses me this year is Veracruz. 8 inches in 90 mins. when Karl made landfall. That is an extreme rain event. There’s more of these things from just this fall listed here :
In a Warmer World, it will Rain ……
http://coloradobob1.newsvine.com/_news/2010/09/25/5179055-in-a-warmer-world-it-will-rain-
Have a look at the third image down -
A before and after picture of the floods from the Swat Valley Pakistan. Notice the snow pack on the mountains . It rained at extremely high altitudes during this event.
Hi Lewis C,
Thanks for your great comment (Comment 17). A few thoughts:
If by “how about it?” you are wondering whether you or I should form and lead a third party, I think (in my case anyhow) I’m not the right person. That’s the case, at least, if the new party should aspire to actually be successful.
But the points you raise in your comment are excellent ones, and I think you have much of the problem right.
That said, I think that the immediate aim should be getting the current Administration to change course and show the leadership that MUST be shown, along with all the other things that the climate movement needs to do that don’t need to involve, or rely on, the President. In other words, there’s no need (yet) to conclude that we need another party. Let’s give it six more months, or nine.
Yet there’s a very interesting point that you mention that many people don’t seem to think about, and I’m not sure President Obama keeps in mind as much as he should. If and as the President has committed (to the leaders of other countries) to passing something in the U.S., or to try as hard as possible to pass it, then he seems to have broken that commitment, because he certainly hasn’t gotten anything passed (on climate) and he has not even tried as hard as someone would need to try in order to say “I tried my very best”. You can’t say “I tried my best” if you didn’t even use the bully pulpit frequently on the matter, and if you didn’t even demand a vote, and if you didn’t even go through the process that would have forced the Republicans to filibuster, if that’s what they were going to do. A choice to be “politically savvy” and give up on the issue for now, in light of his assessment of his overall priorities and political situation, IF that’s what he did, does not amount to fulfilling a commitment to the leaders of other countries — OR to people concerned about the climate in his own party, like me — that he would “try his best” on the climate issue. Trying your best on Issue X means trying your BEST ON ISSUE X. Simple as that. It doesn’t mean compromising and giving up on Issue X just because Issue Y wasn’t going well, or Issue Z, or because the winds weren’t blowing in your favor that month. So, you make a good point, and it’s concerning.
In any case, those are my thoughts presently. In six months, we may have to start looking for someone new. I hope it doesn’t come down to that, but we should be prepared, if it does.
Cheers,
Jeff
Would it be possible for the EPA to think beyond simple restrictions and containment measures to control CO2?
I began rethinking thins on the premise that forests would be superior to the EPA planned ‘carbon’ capture scheme which they seem to be planning to impose on newly permitted power plants, and then, somewhat, on modernizing projects for old systems.
This translates somewhat vaguely to a requirement for forests. I suggest that there be a National Forest authority, that works in concert with a similar Canadian authority to establish standing forests using water from the Northern parts of the continent for irrigation. This would entail an aquaduct that could extend as far as the Mexican border, and maybe further. The water would be distributed through minimally productive land, much of which exists in federal lands.
Due consideration would have to be given to preserving ecosystems everywhere, but so should we consider the often cited threats to ecosystems from global warming. Thus, getting CO2 under control has to be a priority.
Establishing such a forest system would be an infrastructure project that would provide large scale employment opportunities, but as a permanent infrastructure that would be productive in itself, there would be a payback of the original investment needed to get it going.
I should realize that there are many who would have us ban coal outright, as California appears to have done. So I should realize that this is not an equivalent to what I am trying to accomplish, and I should make that clear.
My suggestion involves a 3000 mile long aquaduct with 10 mile branches to each side sufficient to irrigate 60,000 sq. miles of forests. This is 1.5e7 ha. Estimating 100 trees per ha gives us 1.5e9 trees and each being of dry forest mass weight in 25 years of 10 tons we are now at 1.5e10 tons total dry wood mass. About half of this is elemental carbon, so that is 8e9 tons of carbon, which is about 3e10 tons of CO2. 3e10 tons of CO2 captured over 25 years gives us 1.2e9 tons CO2 captured per year.
Using 2e9 tons CO2 from 2e9 mWhr coal fired power per year, we can conclude that 60% of CO2 from coal in power plants could be captured. That would appear to be more than enough to make the CCS planning by the EPA unnecessary.
To make a fair comparison with renewables, consider the cost of providing 60% of 2e9 mWhr of power from renewables. The forest plan here roughly outlined would make power from coal equivalent to renewables, in that amount.
The special advantage of this project would be its potential to appeal to all political forces. Is there such a thing as a government that could handle this?
Lewis C (at 17), you may be right. Running, or threatening to run, climate hawks as challengers in Democratic primaries might be one avenue we need to pursue. It would seem we need to pursue every legal/political avenue available (EPA, courts, regional regulations, primaries, lobbying, etc.), and then some. But it seems we also need something deeper, more unfamiliar and unprecedented in scope and ambition, a foundation that would give these other legal/political avenues real teeth: something like an extremely massive and well-organized grassroots public education campaign.
People need to understand what we are doing to the climate and why this is so dangerous: that we have been told we are “changing” the climate when it would be more accurate to say we are in the process of “blowing it up”, destroying the world as we know it, destroying young people’s food security, water security, national security and natural heritage, all in one fell swoop, and all needlessly. They need to understand that they have been lied to, lied to by the same people who are now threatening their children’s future, who would deny us a sane energy policy and drive us off a cliff, all so that they don’t have to be inconvenienced and can continue indulging in their extravagant profits for the time being.
I’m not sure what this campaign would look like. I picture grassroots meetings/workshops/presentations/booths/canvassers in every neighborhood, with a handful of folks in each community who are able and willing to communicate the climate problem/solution to others, and to find creative/persistent ways of doing so.
Jeff – thanks for your response to mine at #17.
I urge the warning period of 6 months for just the reasons you mention -
as the best outcome is that Obama changes course having realized that continuing the brinkmanship is politically untenable, and that commensurate action must be started forthwith.
On one point I wasn’t clear enough – what I suggest is a challenger for the Democratic candidacy for 2012 rather than attempting a new party, for the latter could not offer any practical prospect of success, beside lacking the intense media interest of a Dem challenger during its development.
The prospects for Obama in 2012 are already dire, given the ongoing economic malaise, his squandering of the youth vote, the GOP house and hamstrung senate, the fossil-owned MSM and, particularly, the predicted oil-price spike during the election year. Thus a viable candidate (in terms of track, persona, aspiration, etc) will have an excellect chance of winning the candidacy if concerned organizations unite to achieve that goal. And regarding the presidential election, it can at least be said that such a candidate could have a far better chance of success than Obama.
Thus I think we have six months to find the unity of purpose, and the best possible candidate for the primaries, while urging Obama to stop wasting time.
Regards,
Lewis
Perhaps Hillary is yet in line for 2012. She would make mince meat of the likes of the Queen of Pollution-for-Profits from the north. Men have bungled up the system to the point of Gaia-cide. The very least that Obama could do now is stand in front of the tank line, which looks to run over him no mater what, and point directions. Anyone think we could have an all female ticket?
Excellent article Joe thanks for putting it up. It seems Van Jones has a good grasp of the fight that’s “in process”. With some Democrats already floating the idea of stripping or taking away EPA authority before this term runs out (December) and the President not appearing strong (based on what he’s said already) on this issue (EPA authority may just be a negotiating pawn to him to use for other things based on what he’s said) – things are not lining up well at this point.
For those that are outside the US, the Republicans have taken over the House of Representatives (the main legislative body that writes laws etc.) starting January. The Senate, which is a partner in writing legislation, and was the death of the climate legislation this year, lost a good chunk of seats to the Republicans (so its in an even worse position).
Even if President Obama had an almost unfathomable change of heart (based on his actions of these last 2 years) on climate change legislation and seriously wanted climate change legislation to happen – he doesn’t get to dictate or direct what legislation gets written by the House and Senate unless they want to (this is unlike many other nations whose President or Prime Minister can direct legislation quite a bit). At this point there seems to be zero chance of any semi-serious climate change legislation occurring in the US at a national level through 2012, even if the President wanted some, which he doesn’t really seem to want anyways.
I believe the question now is whether the forces of greed, obfuscation and fossil fuels will be able to topple the last target at the national level in the US and totally defeat any national US action restricting greenhouse gas emissions for the foreseeable future by stripping the EPA of its authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions of large emitters. This is the climate change battle in the US in late 2010 through 2011 and probably 2012 and alot of money will be going to Republican and Democratic coffers to make this happen. We’re at Dunkirk in the US for climate action at the national level, will we see the EPA authority decimated or not?
As other commenters have pointed out, this is a rearguard action (defending as we loose ground and trying to stop the loss). I would move that we didn’t realize it, but we’ve been retreating almost continuously over these last 2 years (and of course the previous 8 years) at the US national legislative level and this retreat has been on both sides of the aisle (the House’s climate action of 2009 and a few odd democrats in the Senate notwithstanding).
24 Sasparilla,
So if we want CO2 to be controlled, maybe it is time to look for solutions that could make common cause with both ends of the political spectrum, as for example, the plan outlined in my #20 above.
9 Prokaryotes: Reference book: “The sociopath next door : the ruthless versus the rest of us” by Martha Stout.
New York : Broadway Books, 2005.
4% of all people are born sociopaths/sciopaths/psychopaths. There is no cure because it is caused by a part of the brain simply being missing. A written test, the MMPI [Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory] can identify sociopaths before they cause destruction.
Everybody should have to take the MMPI in high school. Psychopaths should be barred from CEO positions and high political offices. Most CEOs and politicians are probably psychopaths. Who is a psychopath should be public knowledge.
President Obama has to conviene a pannel of experts scientist and risk assessors and military :
a) to come to a definitive view on the current state of affairs
b) to start to formulate a plan of action to adress adaptation to the on going climate chaos we are now seeing and which is escalating. (Adoption does include mitigation.)
c) declare a state of extraordinary emergency to start to implement corrective action.
Everyone is saying we aren’t going to take the frist step forward. But I think its past such shenanigans. Each nation has just got to do what they think is necessary. We are expending too much effort trying to bring everyone along together. It’s time to just do it.
If the US does it, then a big part of the solution is there. It also means China will follow. It really does. And what are the consequences of America stepping up to the plate first as not. In the end naut compared to the chaos that is going to ensure with each 1/10 of a degree C warming.
I just cant understand after what has happened over the last decade and in particular the last couple of years that this isn’t being done. The events speak for themselves. The science is screaming the end of the world is nigh. And yet our leaders are flat footed. How can this be. We really are at point of no return in the next couple of years. The current outcome is dire, but if we don’t act now were toast.