Dear Citizens and Elected Officials:
A good conservationist from Western Maryland sent around two articles this morning, Sunday, January 27, 2019. One was a description of the hopes of the Governor of West Virginia, Jim Justice, to turn his state into a fracked gas storage and manufacturing hub, the state’s destiny, he declared; the other was the speech by a 16 year climate activist, Greta Thunberg, of Sweden, who has led school strikes and spoken at the UN, and now at Davos, which is a pretty remarkable thing in itself, already, isn’t it? I didn’t know this until I checked her bio at Wikipedia this morning, but she is also related, on her father’s side, to Svante Arrhenius, a Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry who was among the first to investigate the role of carbon dioxide in warming the earth. (Here at en.wikipedia.org/...)
Here is what Governor “Justice” had to say www.frackcheckwv.net/…
And here is the speech, which Ms. Thunberg gave at Davos:
And here is an edited print version of her speech from Common Dreams: www.commondreams.org
Given her age, and her moderate tone, which is at emotional odds with the red hot content, I think the printed version has even more power than the spoken word, although I also think that will probably change over time as she gets older — so here are the closing paragraphs of the brief speech:
No other current challenge can match the importance of establishing a wide, public awareness and understanding of our rapidly disappearing carbon budget, that should and must become our new global currency and the very heart of our future and present economics.
We are at a time in history where everyone with any insight of the climate crisis that threatens our civilization—and the entire biosphere—must speak out in clear language, no matter how uncomfortable and unprofitable that may be.
We must change almost everything in our current societies. The bigger your carbon footprint, the bigger your moral duty. The bigger your platform, the bigger your responsibility.
Adults keep saying: “We owe it to the young people to give them hope.” But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act.
I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is.
And here is how I translated this amazing effort of the young Swedish woman into the political context of Maryland, and my own encounter with the life of a famous American abolitionist, which I sent out to a modest list of activists earlier today:
“That's a very powerful speech, equal to any the great Abolitionist leaders in the US gave, or the later Civil Rights leaders. Henry Mayer's great biography of the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, the writing of which I think killed the author, it was that intense, was entitled All on Fire.
I wonder if he might have been a source of inspiration for Greta; here's a sample of Mayer's work - and Garrison's, from the first edition of his newspaper The Liberator, which appeared on Jan. 1, 1833 and which he published for 35 consecutive years:
"The Liberator, he promised, would make slaveholders and their apologists tremble. He would redeem the nation's patriotic creed by making ‘every statue leap from its pedestal' and rouse the apathetic with a trumpet call that would 'hasten the resurrection of the dead.' He would speak God's truth 'in its simplicity and power,' and he would speak severely. He would also speak from the heart, in his own voice and in the first person singular rather than the more distant and aloof editorial plural. 'I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice,' Garrison pledged. 'On this subject I do not wish to think or speak, or write, with moderation, No! No!! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm...but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present.' He drove the point home with staccato phrases: 'I am in earnest - I will not equivocate- I will not excuse - I will not retreat a single inch.' Then he reached into the upper case and added one more promise: ' - AND I WILL BE HEARD.'
On a personal note, when I vacationed in New England with my future wife towards the end of my environmental career in NJ, circa 2000, we visited Newburyport, Massachusetts, the birthplace of Garrison. I found his 18th century house, with a commemorative plaque, but the citizens I queried didn’t know where his statue was or indeed, know who he was; I found that too, eventually, trying Simmone’s patience, and it had, right there in chiseled letters at the base, those ringing final words, “AND I WILL BE HEARD.” He was. And so I wish Greta will be heard too, far and wide.
Maybe we can get her to interview the phlegmatic governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, in contrast to the one he had with Heather Mizeur, which seems like such a long time ago. I don’t know if that future one would end in such a mutual psychological “massage of moderates.”
Speaking of moderation, I recently asked Ike Leggett, the retired former Executive of Montgomery County, to send me a copy of the speech he gave introducing Governor Hogan upon his second Inauguration, just a few weeks ago, but haven't heard anything back. Got a Christmas card Email from Ike and Catherine though...
That also reminds me that when I sent out my appeal to 250 or so elected officials and policy leaders in Maryland, asking them to back the efforts to get that Standing Select Committee for a Green New Deal, here at www.dailykos.com/... I heard back from a well known Annapolis lobbyist, Eric Galley, in just about five minutes: please take me off your mailing list; he offered no further elaboration, despite the fact that he seemed to have liked some of my suggestions for tactics in working on the Forest Preservation Act during 2018.
Of course, I had crossed an unspoken Maryland line, and had to be put in my place, one which haunts our state, and has for along time, as if the ghost of MD Senator Millard Tydings feuding with FDR during the New Deal days lived on still in the cautious state house atmosphere there in Annapolis.
I think it is this fault line - how much urgency and how sweeping the proposals for change - that will have a large influence on the Democratic Party Presidential process. You can see how uptight the party gets with the example of AOC and the Green New Deal.
Our political system has been designed to do the opposite: to place powerful brakes upon political movements, especially populist ones demanding great changes. After all, in the Presidential election of 1860, one of the most fraught in American history, Maryland gave Lincoln just 2.5% of the popular vote, putting him fourth - casting them instead for John Breckinridge of the "Southern Union" Party, with 45.93%, John Bell of the "Constitutional Union" Party, with 45.14% and Stephen Douglas of the old Democratic Party, with just 6.45%.
Now "that's the state we're in." And my special tip of the hat to all those professional lobbyists in Annapolis. May a thousand speeches like Greta’s haunt you.
Best,
Bill of Rights
Frostburg, MD