Yes, there is a lot of important debate and grassroots orgnaizing going on with regards to health care insurance care reform.
But guess what?
It will be virtually meaningless without decisive action on a much, much larger front than domestic policy legislation.
Doctors: Global Warming Bad For Health
LONDON -- A weak response to climate change could be catastrophic for international health, leading doctors said in two British medical journals Wednesday.
Experts have previously warned that global warming could mean a spike in diseases including malaria and dengue fever, and that higher temperatures would result in food shortages, sanitation problems and extreme weather events like hurricanes and floods.
In an accompanying editorial, Lord Michael Jay of the medical charity Merlin and Michael Marmot of University College London wrote that "a successful outcome at Copenhagen is vital for our future as a species and for our civilization."
In addition to speaking up about the public option and other urgent economic and social needs, we need to keep our focus on the big picture. As in the biggest picture:
Will our species be able to survive the unprecedented experiment we are concocting with our biosphere?
The signs are not great at the moment.
Europe has clashed with the US Obama administration over climate change in a potentially damaging split that comes ahead of crucial political negotiations on a new global deal to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
(snip)
News of the split comes amid mounting concern that the Copenhagen talks will not make the necessary progress.
Lot of us have been doing plenty of work to help support the compromise that is the public option. We need to also be able to have our eyes a bit further down the road. In under a week, President Obama will be addressing the world about its warming climate and rapidly melting polar ice.
During the campaign, one of then-candidate Obama's best moments was when he spoke about McCain's knee-jerk campaign "suspension" in response to the economic crisis.
Presidents need to be able to do more than one thing at a time.
It was brilliant. (It's funny cuz it's true)
Well so do we.
Let us continue to carry the HCR ball across the goal line while we begin planning our next touchdown drive. (It's football season, so the metaphor is apt.)
A few actions
Join DK Greenroots if you haven't done so already.
Support some of these Facebook groups:
Greenpeace
Americans for Alternative Energy
The Sierra Club
(Add links to more in comments; I'm not overly FB-savvy these days)
Visit a few of these sites (also listed on my blogroll):
http://www.thegreenguide.com/
http://www.theoildrum.com/
http://www.nrdc.org/...
http://www.nrel.gov/
Subscribe to great env'al diarists like A Siegel and RLMiller
And remember, we don't get a second chance to do it right on climate change.
It is now or never.
h/t Spathiphyllum & Turkana for the impetus for this diary.