Not so far.
Kos readers are no doubt uniformly familiar with the spate of petitions to secede from the United States that popped up on the White House "We the People" forum following the reelection of the Marxist Black Guy. Several of them quickly topped the 25,000 signatures necessary to trigger an Obama administration response.
I've created a different petition, one aimed at forcing the administration to respond to the climate change crisis in a coherent way, beginning with producing a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the security threat presented by the phenomenon. I'm hoping to persuade 25,000 people to do the easiest thing they'll ever be asked to do about climate change, and sign the petition. Only 24,958 to go!
Enlisting 25,000 people in the effort won't guarantee that the administration will commission the NIE. What it will do is bring additional attention to the issue, which to this point the administration have, at least in part from fear of the political conflicts involved, failed to meaningfully address.
Polemical intent aside, climate change is the kind of issue that National Intelligence Estimates were created to deal with. From a purely parochial point of view, global warming will create stresses throughout the world that will affect our national security to an extent that nothing else short of nuclear war will do. If we don't understand how other countries and populations are likely to respond to those stresses, we can't prepare for those responses. The NIE could serve as the starting point for a desperately needed, comprehensive plan to cope with the issue and at the same time point the way to remedial opportunities.
The petition, if successful, will provide a rough gauge of how serious the Obama administration is about addressing climate change. It's my hope that people concerned about climate change will display at least as much energy as those who got it together to sign the secession petitions.
If you think the effort is worthwhile, please sign the petition and encourage others to do so as well. Because the petition expires at the end of the month, I'll be posting about it every few days; please forgive me for that in advance.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/...