Hello Kossacks.
I created a petition on the White House petition site asking Obama to declare war on climate change.
I started the petition after hearing that the "Build a DeathStar President Obama" petition got 35,000 signatures and a written response from the presidents team.
I went and did a search for a climate change petition. AND THERE WASN'T ONE!!!.
I found that a little disheartening and so in the grips of a flu induced fever and fueled by outrage I started one.
"Declare War On Climate Climate Change"
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/...
I knew it was a little intense and a little hyperbolic but I got to thinking. Climate Change is a threat to our nation. It is a threat to our well being. It has cost lives. It has cost us billions of dollars and is on track to cost all of us, the entire world, trillions of dollars in the near future. It is still a threat and will grow into a greater threat unless we stop it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
It seems impossible to get our political class moving in any one direction in concord unless it's around war or bloodshed. That is why I used the imperfect term of "war". We all saw what happened with Iraq. We saw the mad rush to begin throwing lives, heavy weaponry, and national treasure into that gaping useless maw of the Iraq war. We went all in. Nearly every knuckle headed politician jumped on the band wagon. The evidence being little more than a few doctored and forged Niger Yellow Cake receipts and one big fat lie about mushroom clouds and it was on. The bloodshed. The displaced families. The loss of international credibility the collapse here at home.
There is no doubt climate change can be put on par with terrorism and has been. The U.S. National Research Council released a report in November linking climate change to National security threats.
"And it says the consequences of climate change -- including rising sea levels, more frequent and severe floods, droughts, forest fires, and insect infestations -- present security threats similar to and in many cases greater than those posed by terrorist attacks."
http://www.voanews.com/...
I think the "war" framing if it gets enough signatures (as of writing this there are 5,689 signatures, a far cry from the 25k it must have for a presidential response) puts the White House in an interesting position. How do we classify what is clearly a threat? Why are we not acting on it as quickly as we did other less definitive threats? How do we make that distinction and not lose credibility or appear that we are more interested in destruction then we are peace?
Certainly we have enough evidence to prove that climate change is an enemy of the people. Certainly climate change promises us the equivalence of a slow motion "mushroom cloud". Certainly it's as important to folks as the building of a DeathStar.
Or maybe it's not.
Please sign.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/...
Mark Ruffalo
