Yesterday, I slipped a glancing impeachment reference into my post on The Astonishing Lameness of Barack Obama, saying:
The fact that Team Obama never seriously even tried to make the argument [in favor of a strong climate bill] is, in my humble opinion, borderline impeachable.
I realize that to most readers, such a statement will seem wacky. And I realize how politically unrealistic and probably unwarranted such a suggestion is.
But, considering the catastrophic threat global warming poses to the planet, our economy, our way of life, and the lives of billions of people around the world, the failure to rally the country around the need to dramatically start cutting our climate pollution now is in my view a form of a high crime against humanity.
It is almost impossible to overstate the threat.
Consider these few facts:
-- The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, a known greenhouse gas, is currently around 390 ppm, about 40% higher than before the industrial revolution and higher than at any time in at least 2.1 million years, since well before the evolution of our species.
-- The average global temperature has increased roughly 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit over the last century. This increase should be thought of as merely a modest ante into the high stakes era of catastrophic climate change.
-- Polar and glacial ice are melting at astonishing rates from the Cascades to the Himalayas to Greenland. This has contributed to about an 8-inch increase in sea levels globally over the last 100 years. Over the next 100, sea levels could rise another 6.5 feet.
-- Oceans, which are absorbing about 1/3 of our carbon dioxide through a chemical process that produces carbonic acid, are acidifying faster than at any time in the last 65 million years, threatening the entire marine food chain.
-- An MIT study last year warned that by the end of this century, the planet could warm an additional 10 degrees Fahrenheit and the atmospheric concentration of CO2 could rise to a staggering 866 ppm based on current emission trends.
To give you a sense of what all this means, consider what the world looks like when New Hampshire’s climate resembles North Carolina’s or when Illinois’s climate looks like Texas’s or when Dallas looks like Death Valley or St. Louis looks like San Antonio.
Consider what the world looks like when Miami and New Orleans become modern-day Atlantises and have been permanently lost to the sea.
Consider what the American West from Kansas to California looks like when spring rains throughout the region decline between 20% and 40%, as they are projected to under higher emissions scenarios, and the region becomes basically uninhabitable.
Consider what Arkansas looks like when it more than doubles the number of days when temperatures exceed 90 degrees from 65-70 today to more than 135 days.
Consider what the future of agriculture looks like when temperatures throughout the midwest from Michigan to Minnesota to Iowa down to Louisiana and out to California increase on average between 10 and 11 degrees and when you can no longer grow corn in Iowa or potatoes in Idaho.
All of these scenarios and much more are consensus predictions offered in the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s report released last year called "Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States."
The report reads like the script to a Mad Max sequel. And, in case you’re wondering, it is not some wild-eyed manifesto published by a bunch of environmental extremists. It was an interagency report begun during the Bush administration and produced with input from 13 U.S. government departments and agencies, from the Defense Department to NASA and from the Department of Commerce to the Department of Agriculture.
And yet this report made barely a ripple and has been almost forgotten a year later, lost to the faint echoes of our distant memories.
Part of the problem in the climate fight is I don't think folks on our side completely grasp the severity of the issue and never fully engaged in the fight. I think something is getting lost in the translation.
The other side has no such problem. They organized massive call in days and disruptive town hall protests against House Reps who voted for the House bill last year.
Our side, in contrast, is divided between those who support and those who oppose cap and trade, those who support a carbon tax, those who think EPA regs will save the day, those who frankly don't really get this problem, etc.
That is the only way I can rationalize the enormous lack of outrage with which our side has reacted since the demise of the Senate bill, which may have been our last, best chance to deal with this threat.
Which brings me back to President Obama, who unlike his predecessor openly acknowledges the threat. Yet, for the life of me, I can't understand his passivity on this.
Yes, Senate Republicans (and some Democrats) are mostly to blame for not stepping up and engaging. But Team Obama never made it uncomfortable for Senators to remain disengaged.
This was a critical time for Obama to lay the wood. He should have been explaining these threats in clear terms to the country, should have made the dire consequences crystal clear.
After all, it was his own government who issued the report describing these devastating scenarios. What was the point of issuing that report if not to use it to convince Americans of the desperate need for action?
And yet, I never heard President Obama once describe these threats in clear terms. In fact, what I saw during the State of the Union speech this year, for one example, was President Obama offering an opening to the science denialists when he said, "I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change..."
This is not the tone to set, not when evidence is overwhelming, not when the threats are so severe.
And the lack of White House involvement over the last month as the Senate climate bill teetered on the brink will go down in history as a blunder of tragically epic proportions. I personally know several people directly involved in the Senate negotiations and the feeling is one of overwhelming frustration -- that when we needed him most, Team Obama never fully engaged.
For those of you who might ask, "Well, what would one speech or national barnstorming campaign have done?" To that I say go back to 2002 when President Bush was pressing the country to go to war in Iraq. Bush went around the country giving speech after speech and made it very uncomfortable for Congressional Dems to oppose the war. Bush gave that "Mushroom cloud" speech and sent Powell to the UN to spell out the totally made up threat.
They made the case. Team Obama never did. That is the difference between getting what you want and squandering a political opportunity.
And then to top it off, the White House, hiding behind an unnamed official, threw environmentalists under the bus and blamed them for the collapse of the Senate bill. That's just pouring salt on a very painful wound.
There have been four presidents since the threat of climate change has entered the public consciousness:
-- President Bush Sr acknowledged the threat and his administration began international negotiations to deal with it at a global level.
-- President Clinton acknowledged the threat but could never muster the political support (or courage) for aggressive action.
-- President Bush Jr acknowledged the threat on the campaign trail in 2000 and then backtracked on his campaign promise to regulate carbon emissions and spent his entire administration actively undermining action and propping up the big polluters.
-- President Obama came to office with the full knowledge of the growing threat and made taking action with a national cap and trade program a top priority. Then, after the House did its job by passing a strong bill, when the going got tough in the Senate, Obama went AWOL.
Now, the future of climate action is unclear and the future of the planet is at greater risk than ever before.
Of the four presidents in the climate change era, Bush Jr. was a climate criminal, guilty of aggravated assault on the science and the politics of climate action.
But, President Obama has disappointed nearly as much and, to follow the metaphor, is guilty of criminal negligence. Yes, his EPA is moving forward and that's something. But, by failing to make the public case and by failing to fully engage in the Senate climate bill fight, Obama may have squandered our last, best chance to get serious about this all-important fight to save our planet, our economy and our way of life.
In her classic historical survey March of Folly, Barbara Tuchman offers four examples of great powers making catastrophic decisions that cost them wealth, power, lives, and international prestige.
Tuchman summarizes the common thread between the examples as "an addiction to the counterproductive."
In not directly confronting our national addiction to the obscenely counterproductive crime of climate inaction, President Obama has failed not just our country, but our entire planet.