Let's say it one more time: Climate Change is real, it is happening now, it is driven by Global Warming, and the root cause is human activity filling the atmosphere with greenhouse gases. The overwhelming majority of scientists working in this area agree - 97%. We can't stop it from having major effects; the point is limiting the damage as much as possible, and every day of delay makes the final reckoning worse. We HAVE the technology to get off carbon and make other changes - and the cost is so low, even the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has trouble spinning it as too expensive.
Which leads to the Big Problem. More below the Orange Omnilepticon.
But first, a video. (h/t to Crashing Vor for finding this.) http://youtu.be/...
The real Climate Change problem is simple: people. People with money, power, political ideology, etc. who oppose any action on Climate Change for a variety of reasons, none of them good. Protecting personal wealth based on the status quo, knee-jerk opposition to the President and the Democratic party, a world view that is based on blind faith delusions like 'free' markets or disbelief in the power of government for the public good - for these and other reasons they are actively denying Climate Change or our ability/responsibility to do anything about it. They have done their best to spread confusion and doubt, and resorted to blatant obstructionism. They've done their best to stir up opposition among the people.
And make no mistake. There are good people out there who have doubts about Climate Change. The kindest thing that can be said about them is that they are mistaken, confused, uninformed, or misled; we've never been up against a problem like this before so it's not surprising some are having trouble keeping up. They don't get the connection between Global Warming and Climate Change - don't we still have terrible winter storms? (Of course, there are also those who subscribe to the darker motives above.)
There is this to say about them though: they are in a minority, and they can be convinced once they see how Climate Change is already affecting them: rising food prices, drought, flooding, higher energy prices, worsening health problems, more freak weather events and so on.
A majority of Americans think Climate Change is a problem; the only question they have is how urgent it is, and how we can act to do something about it. The short answer is political change. We have to start by prying the hands of the Climate Change deniers off the levers of power, and making them pay a political price for their obstructionism. (And it IS obstructionism - we've gone past the point where opposition can be justified by any rational measure.)
On Monday, President Obama is expected to announce a major rule limiting the amount of carbon emissions from power plants. It is expected to generate fierce opposition from the usual suspects who will be screaming about "Jobs", "Costs", "Big Government" and so on. It's going to be a "BFD". Let's call it C-Day, a day on which an American President will take a dramatic step to reduce our use of carbon-based energy. It should not be confused with the military alphabet days, though if it invokes the spirit of D-Day, that would be appropriate. We have a long campaign facing us against a determined opposition, and the fate of the world is in our hands.
The New York Times today has an article laying out how the environmental movement is coming together to coordinate action, exert greater political effect, and build the grass roots support needed to address the human side of the problem. Until we change the political balance of power, the President's actions tomorrow can and will be reversed by elections that put Republicans in the White House or give them complete control of Congress or further strengthen their grip on the courts.
Michael Wines chooses to begin the article in a way that invokes Hippie-Punching clichés by citing the college students getting arrested at a protest over policies at Washington University in St. Louis. It sounds like the 60's all over again - but there's more to it than that.
The students were demanding the resignation of one of the board’s members: Gregory H. Boyce, the chairman of Peabody Energy Corporation, the nation’s largest coal company and one of the most ardent corporate opponents of efforts to address global warming. They also represented the face of a new activism that the nation’s largest environmental groups are encouraging to revive a climate-change movement that seemed stalled not so long ago.
Like their student confederates, the so-called big green groups are mounting their own climate-change campaign this spring, and it looks nothing like the failed efforts of the recent past.
What was a scattering of lawyers, lobbyists and policy analysts with the same goal but no agenda has become a united front, leaders of the groups say. Major organizations like the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council have strengthened their political operations and grass-roots networks, and they have raised and spent more money than ever before.
emphasis added
Why the change in strategy? It's recognition that the government in Washington no longer responds to the will of the people. Wines gets into the history, and the plans going forward.
“The national environmental groups said, ‘We need to do more in-your-face activism,’ ” said Gene Karpinski, the president of the League of Conservation Voters. “You can’t just lobby members of Congress with a poll that says people support you.”
Most striking, perhaps, the groups intend to make global warming an issue in some of this fall’s hardest-fought political campaigns — a calculation that conservatives who say climate change poses no threat have overplayed their hand.
An example of the retooled strategy will debut Monday, when the Obama administration will issue a draft regulation sharply limiting emissions of global-warming gases from existing coal-burning power plants. Anticipating furious opposition from congressional Republicans and coal-state Democrats, environmental groups plan to rally support for the regulation using a campaign created by the Climate Action Coalition — a coordinating body with its own staff and consultants, formed by 10 leading environmental groups and linked to 60 more.
The Chattering Classes haven't had much on their radar about Climate Change as a big issue for the 2014 elections, or 2016, but that may change after tomorrow, and it will certainly change if the environmental coalition's plans come together. They are targeting races where they think Climate Change can be made a local issue, and they are planning to make it a test of character for candidates.
As the Times notes:
Last August, the League of Conservation Voters tested the greens’ election strategy, running commercials in the home states of legislators who question a threat from global warming. Polls indicated that favorable ratings of the legislators dropped once voters knew of their views, said David Willett, the league’s chief spokesman.
“It’s not just people’s position on climate change, but what your denials say about you as a person,” Mr. Willett said. “It paints you as an extremist and puts you in a category of people that people think of as the fringe — birthers and that sort of thing.”
The 2014 election will show whether the same messages that resonate with environmental loyalists also strike a chord with other voters. This time, the big-green strategy is not to make climate change an electoral litmus test — few voters do that — but to make it a test of character.
emphasis added
The science is there, the economics are there, the popular will is potentially there - and the urgency to act is growing. Taking the moral high ground and making it into an issue of character is a logical AND emotionally 'right' move. There are no good reasons for delaying action on Climate Change; all the opposition has in their toolbox is fear, doubt, deception, and denial. (Which pretty much sums them up on just about every other issue too.)
It's time to move them aside and get on with the task facing us. Addressing Climate Change is a huge issue because it touches so many others - the increasing inequality of our world, the capture of our government by oligarchs and its dysfunction, the demands of a growing global population on a planet already under stress, the growing need for energy from whatever source… The list goes on.
Make no mistake. Climate Change IS a test of character - for nations as well as individuals. Time to Get Real.