I'm on a sort of slow roll, apparently.
A few days back, Magnifico put out a diary about the Chinese coal ship that ran into the Great Barrier Reef and began leaking fuel oil. And in that diary, oregonj had a comment:
"cheap" electricity is a fraudulent term (53+ / 0-)
This disaster is what so-called 'cheap' electricity looks like. It could just as well be a picture of:
1. Miners with black-lung disease
2. Loss of the polar ice cap
3. Coal ash damn break destroying a Tennessee town
4. Rivers in WV buried under the crushed mountaintops
And on and on....
Don't let anyone tell you that electricity from coal is cheap.
"Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist."
by oregonj on Sun Apr 04, 2010 at 10:32:54 PM PDT
And I read the comment, and I thought it was terrific...so a few minutes later I sat down to write a letter to the Boston Globe, basing it on oregonj's powerful framing.
Here it is:
While the Shen Neng disaster is tragic enough for its implications to the world's largest coral reef and its unique ecosystems, it is also a warning: we need to understand the huge hidden costs of so-called "cheap energy."
The Chinese coal ship could just as well be a picture of miners with black-lung disease, or a Tennessee village destroyed by a broken coal ash dam, for these tragedies are undeniable costs of the coal we burn. It could just as well be the loss of the polar ice cap, or the terribly devastating storms triggered by global climate change, for these are unacknowledged costs of our addiction to oil. Until our economic models include these factors in the price of our energy (along with the expensive wars we wage to protect our sources), we will be living obliviously and unsustainably. With catastrophic climate change looming on the horizon, it seems clear that our fossil-fueled paradise will soon be going the way of the dinosaurs.
WarrenS
And I just found out they've printed it in today's edition! Without, I may add, a single revision.
Coming on the heels of last month's letter printed in the NYT, I feel like my letter-a-day campaign is finally bearing fruit. I've had some LTE's printed in my local paper all along; who knows what the future will bring? Thus far I haven't cracked Time, Newsweek, the Washington Post or the LA Times, despite sending letters fairly often. Perhaps the WaPo isn't printing me because the letters I send them are, well, a little hard on their tender feelings, as in the case of the following two:
February 23:
It is beyond incredible that a mainstream newspaper like the Washington Post should continue to publish misinformation of the sort propagated by George Will. In his column of February 21st, Will distorted the words of climatologist Phil Jones, making it seem that Jones asserted that no human-caused warming is occurring. But Jones has stated in a BBC interview that he is "100% confident that the climate has warmed," and notes evidence that "most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity."
Jones made a scientifically accurate statement to the effect that statistical significance was vastly more difficult to achieve in short-term measurements; this has nothing to do with whether global warming exists, as witness Jones’ own statements to the BBC. Either George Will doesn’t know what "statistical significance" means, in which case he’s incompetent — or he knows and doesn’t care, in which case he’s a mendacious hack. In neither case does he deserve to be heard on the subject of climate change.
It is a sad commentary on the state of our media that George Will’s scientific illiteracy is considered important commentary on the most significant threat human beings have ever faced. Will should stick to issuing quote-studded pronunciamenti on politico-cultural trivia, a genre in which his glib faux-erudition can remain relatively harmless.
WarrenS
March 31:
Now that the British House of Commons has exonerated Dr. Phil Jones and the rest of his Climate Research Team from charges of scientific malpractice, may we expect more from the Washington Post than a solitary Associated Press article? By printing effluvia like "Climate Tantrums" (February 21) the Washington Post has become complicit in an egregious misrepresentation of science. I hope I may be forgiven the obvious pun: the deception is indeed Willful. George Will, the Post’s glibly erudite house denialist, should be required to apologize for his mendacious pedantry. A single mea culpa, however, is insufficient: like many a juvenile offender against the common good, the Post’s errant calumnist should spend a year in "community service," working as an unpaid assistant to one of the climatologists whose work he has so freely disparaged.
WarrenS
If any of you are inspired to write some letters yourselves, I strongly encourage you to cannibalize my work. Just cut and paste, reverse the order of the clauses, change a few tenses here and there, substitute a synonym or two...and you've got an original LTE!
Now...if you'll excuse me, I've got a letter to write. If you have suggestions for media outlets or politicians who should get one of my missives, please tell me in the comments.
And thanks again to oregonj, who provided me with a great piece of framing that I was able to use to good advantage.
We now return to your regularly scheduled programming...