I've been plugging away at my daily letters on climate and environmental issues since I made my New Year's Resolution on January 1. And how many of us actually keep our resolutions?
I strongly suspect that this is the first one I've ever kept.
So...given that today's Earth Day and all, I thought I'd assemble a "Greatest Hits" compilation of some of my favorites from the past four months.
Each of these letters was posted on my blog, with my comments usually forming a short header. I reproduce them here as they originally appeared, with short introductions in boldface.
In a disproportionate number of cases, the letters are based on Dkos diaries. Among the writers who have been helpful in providing source material are A Siegel, RL Miller, FishOutOfWater, G2geek (whose comments are often diaries in themselves), and many others. Because I am unafraid of stealing other people's material, filing off the serial numbers, and passing it off as my own, these letters often make me seem far more informed than I actually am. I'm not particularly informed, at least next to the stellar diarists of DK Greenroots. I'm just stubborn and scared.
Here are twelve letters selected from the material I've written over the past four months. Some of my other letters can be found here, here, here and here.
I've had letters printed in my local paper many times, in the Boston Globe once, and in the New York Times once. I haven't cracked any of the major magazines yet, but the year is still young. I've gotten form letters back from President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton, Vice President Biden, John Kerry and the Department of the Interior. Ed Markey doesn't respond to my letters, but I write and call him anyway, because he's a good guy. No responses from any Republicans; no responses from Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi or any of the other Democrats to whom I've written.
I wrote a letter of support to Al Gore and received a nice email from his office:
Dear Warren:
Thank you for your kind words regarding Mr. Gore and his piece in the New York Times. Mr. Gore’s work on environmental issues is critically important to him, and he welcomes your comments and suggestions.
We’re always pleased to hear that others are taking the time to better inform themselves about the environmental challenges we are facing. The political climate in Washington is indeed disturbingly divided on an issue which should easily cross party lines. We must continue in this effort to educate ourselves and others not only for the future of our children, but for the future of our planet. Certainly, each one of us will benefit from a cleaner, more protected earth.
Again thank you so much for your warm comments - Mr. Gore deeply appreciates your sincerity and dedication to solving the climate crisis.
Sincerely,
Anna Katherine Owen
Office of The Honorable Al Gore and Mrs. Tipper Gore
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January 22 — just after Citizens United was announced. I wrote this to the Boston Phoenix, but a number of similar letters went to other media over the course of that week.
I was thinking about time-cycles and the tragic inability of contemporary culture to imagine scales of time significantly larger than our own, and the full dimensions of the SCOTUS ruling became apparent.
Shit.
The Supreme Court's recent ruling in "Citizens United" makes it increasingly likely that the few remaining vestiges of independent thought in our Legislative branch will come under corporate control. Nowhere in our public policy will this have more devastating impact than in the area of climate change. Why? Because corporations are legally required to focus on maximizing short-term profit (quarters and years), and legislators' attention spans work out at two and six years respectively, due to the nature of electoral cycles — while the slow catastrophe of planetary climaticide will unfold over the sweep of the coming century or so. No wonder it is always "not the right time" to address the climate crisis! It can never be the right time when a three-decade lag between climate action and climate effect is five times longer than the elected term of a U.S. Senator, fifteen times longer than that of a U.S. Representative, and a hundred and twenty times longer than the quarterly attention span of our New Corporate Overlords.
WarrenS
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January 31. Osama Bin Laden had just made some remarks about global warming which had attracted the attention of the Village Idiots.
There's been quite a bit of buzz about Osama Bin Laden's recent statements on global warming. The New York Times wrote something about it...so I took the opportunity to drop a little note in their mailbox.
It is a sad state of affairs when one of the world's most notorious criminals speaks more accurately about global climate change than many of our own elected representatives. Now it is absolutely certain that climate-change denialists will use Bin Laden's words to suggest that realistically confronting the largest existential threat humanity has ever faced is somehow un-American, a capitulation to Al-Qaeda. I remember how conservatives responded to Soviet criticism of the USA on civil rights issues in the fifties and sixties: by calling patriots like Martin Luther King "communists," suggesting their actions were "controlled by Moscow." The fact that Khrushchev was a murderous thug didn't stop him from correctly assessing American racial hypocrisy; the fact that Bin Laden is a murderous thug doesn't mean that his statements on global warming are invalid. It just means that American conservatives are easily swayed by irrelevant ad hominem arguments.
WarrenS
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February 3. The Research 2000 poll came out, with all its dramatic revelations about the Republican mindset.
The Amazing Dkos/R2000 poll of self-identified Republicans came out today, and gosh-a-roonie! It certainly revealed a lot. If you haven't read it, you owe yourself a few horrifying minutes. These are the people who control the Opposition Party in our government. They would be funny if this was a movie or a TV show, but because Republicans are making governance impossible, it's essential that we take notice of them.
So I wrote to the President, who seems like he's been getting a little mojo rising recently.
Dear President Obama,
By now you must have seen the results of the Research 2000/Daily Kos poll of self-identified Republicans. These statistics are horrifying and revealing. Sixty-three percent of Republicans believe you're a socialist (although I suspect that less than one percent know what the word means). Thirty-nine percent think you should be impeached (although it's unclear that you've committed an impeachable offense). A third think you're a racist; half think Sarah Palin is more qualified to be President than you are. A quarter of self-identified Republicans think their states should secede from the Union. And on and on. As you correctly noted in your Q & A session with the House Republicans, they cannot compromise with you, even a little, because their base is so insanely paranoid that it will erupt at the slightest hint of collaboration with their enemy.
The Republicans represented in the R2000 poll are clutching their remote controls, desperately pushing buttons in the hope that somehow, somehow, somehow you'll just go away. It's easy to blame Fox News for a big part of this. But I think Fox is a symptom, not a cause. The larger problem is the erosion of the national attention span, which means that our ability to think carefully about long-term issues is essentially non-existent.
Global climate change is both a long-term and an extremely urgent issue; never has the threat to humanity's continued survival been as serious as the routine reports of climatologists now reveal it to be. James Hansen's "Venus" scenario is easy to dismiss as a worst-case example — until we stop to consider that almost every day the "worst-case" predictions of climate scientists turn out to be unrealistically optimistic.
The Research 2000 poll did not specifically ask its Republican respondents whether they believed the Earth was only 6000 years old, but given the other answers to related questions, it seems a safe bet that a sizable majority are Young Earth Creationists. Many are probably anxious for the Rapture, which I suppose qualifies them as pro-global-warming. How can you talk rationally about climate change to a group of people who are unable to conceptualize long spans of time, or who are eager for the Earth's incineration?
While I applaud your adherence to an ideal of bi-partisanship, it is impossible to form agreements with an entire political demographic that is clearly delusionally paranoid. The delusional paranoids will think you're out to get them even if you adopt the entire Republican platform. Why bother? Please, Mr. President! The time is now for you to get the Democratic majority in the Senate to pass your policy agenda through reconciliation. Healthcare, Jobs, Financial reform — all of these are essential. But my deepest area of concern is the terrible threat of climate change, for if we don't get that one right, none of the rest will matter at all in the long run.
Yours Sincerely,
WarrenS
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February 11. It was snowing in DC, and "Climategate" was making the news in the RWEC.
I picked up a copy of "Metro-Boston," a local free-distribution subway & laundromat paper that's part of a nationally syndicated chain. And when I found the Letters page, the Stupid was Strong.
Three letters...check 'em out. The first two are baffling: I lean towards thinking the Palin letter is actually from a Democrat, while the "Sex Ed for Congress" is completely ambiguous. But the third. Ahhh, the third. Enjoy it.
So I thought I'd write a letter to the METRO. Maybe thousands of subway-goers will read it. If you're on a subway and you see my letter, please let me know. As usual, if nothing happens on this one after a couple of days, I'll send it along to some other papers.
Republican lawmakers are pointing to Washington's overwhelming snowfall as refutation of the science behind climate change. Oklahoma senator James Inhofe has built a crude igloo near the U.S. Capitol and labeled it "Al Gore's home," since any Republican discussion of climate issues must include mockery of the former VP. Climate denialism is a growth industry, heavily funded by the big oil and coal companies and playing on Americans' contempt for competence and unwillingness to endure inconvenience. Actually, climatologists have been saying for years that global warming will make local weather both more unpredictable and more extreme. To say a freak snowstorm "disproves the reality of global climate change" is as misguided as saying the swollen belly of a starving child "disproves the reality of world hunger."
WarrenS
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February 16. Prompted by a diary here at the GOS, I wrote a fax to James Inhofe's staffers.
A DailyKos diarist named "Historian" produced a wonderful piece a few days ago, called "Ninety-Seven". I admired it greatly, and wondered about incorporating parts of it into one of my letters. This is the first pass, and I decided to send an email/fax/letter directly to the Evil Moran himself, James Inhofe. Or, rather, to the people who answer his email, read his faxes, open his envelopes.
Because I figure my letter will never reach him, but it might actually get read by a human in his office. And who knows? Somebody might actually do some thinking. Stranger things have happened, albeit not very many.
Dear Staffers in Senator Inhofe's Office —
Let's say a hundred health inspectors went over a restaurant. And ninety-seven of them said, "This food is unsafe; it'll probably make you sick." Would you eat there?
Or let's say you were buying a house, and a hundred home inspectors looked at it — and three of them said, "It's probably okay," while the other ninety-seven said, "This building is definitely unsafe." Would you buy the house?
Or let's say you found a lump. And a hundred oncologists looked at it. And ninety-seven of them said, "It's cancer. Let's get started on treatment." Would you get started on treatment, or would you go with the three who said, "Maybe not?"
Or let's say you're the President, and a hundred C.I.A. counter-terrorism experts came to you...and ninety-seven of them said "Al-Qaeda is going to carry off a major operation," while three of them said "It might not happen." Would you put our national security system on high alert?
I'm asking you this question rather than Senator Inhofe himself, because I don't believe this letter will reach him...but there's a chance one of you will read it, and perhaps wonder:
Given that the answers to the first four questions are pretty obvious, why is it that when ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that humans are causing climate change, Senator Inhofe is so strongly in favor of doing nothing?
He wouldn't want to eat tainted food, or buy a house that was going to fall down around him, or ignore a cancer diagnosis...or put the nation at risk by ignoring a warning of a terrorist attack. Would he?
Then why is he putting our nation (and our planet) at risk now?
And, more to the point, why are you helping him do it?
Our grandchildren will not be kind to the memory of Senator Inhofe and those who assisted him.
Just ask yourself this question: What if the ninety-seven percent of climatologists are right?
Think about it. Please. For all our sakes.
Yours Sincerely,
WarrenS
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February 25. Scott Brown had recently become my newest senator, and snows were still falling all over Washington, D.C. Needless to say, I got no response.
Just finished reading this, both depressing and frustrating. Casting about desperately for something to write and someone to write it to, I decided to take my pissy mood out on our newly elected Senator. It will be interesting to see his response. I bet I don't get one.
I am going to send Kerry a copy of this, needless to say.
Dear Senator Brown,
I know that the Republican Party's official position is that there is no such thing as global warming, and that this has been irrefutably proven by the recent snowstorms in Washington, DC. Because I am a Massachusetts resident, you're my senator, and I need to give you some information; perhaps you may be able to use it someday.
The total surface area of Earth is almost 19,700,000 square miles. The total surface area of Washington DC is about 69 square miles. America's capitol is 1/285,507th of the world's surface. Not very much, is it? Let's put it another way. An adult human being has about 20 square feet of skin, or about 1,858,000 square millimeters. 1/285,507th of a human body is about 6.5 square millimeters; a piece of skin slightly more than 2.5 millimeters to a side — the size of a zit. A small zit, at that.
Let's look at the world outside Washington, DC. All over the globe, temperatures are rising. The worldwide average temperature has been steadily increasing for many years; perhaps you noticed that in Vancouver the winter Olympics had to import snow? You may not have noticed that glaciers everywhere in the world are receding faster than climatologists have predicted; likewise, you may not have known that huge reserves of frozen methane in the Siberian arctic are now entering the atmosphere as the long-frozen permafrost "cap" begins to melt. Silly me. Of course you haven't noticed these things: they're not in Washington, DC!
While the laws of physics don't care about the political posturing of U.S. Senators, they most definitely govern the behavior of greenhouse gases like CO2 (carbon dioxide) and CH4 (methane). And there is no disputing the fact that methane is even more effective at retaining the Sun's heat in the atmosphere than CO2, the main focus of international climate concern for the last two decades. Although it decays more quickly, CH4 has a global warming potential more than 60 times as powerful as CO2.
To put it bluntly: if we don't act decisively and aggressively to regulate CO2 emissions; if we don't invest significant amounts of money in research on ways to capture methane before it enters the atmosphere; if we don't recognize this as the gravest threat humanity has ever faced — our children and their children and their children in turn will live in an unimaginably different world. And they will curse us for our inaction.
Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that global warming is real, and that it's largely caused by human activity. Three percent aren't completely sure yet. Let me ask you, Senator: if you went to a hundred oncologists, and ninety-seven of them said you had cancer...would you take their diagnoses seriously?
As a Massachusetts resident, I expect you to act responsibly on the issue of climate change; I urge you to study the facts (which does not mean taking Sean Hannity's word for it) and recognize the gravity of this threat. James Inhofe may make good television, but he doesn't know what he's talking about.
Yours Sincerely,
WarrenS
cc: Sen. John Kerry
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March 10. I thought I'd take a different tack on the Citizens United problem.
Bill Gates is another billionaire who has been pretty forthright about the importance of climate issues. It feels really bizarre to be requesting the world's richest man to intervene in American elections...but I'd rather have him doing it than, say, Cheney.
Dear Mr. Gates,
As an ordinary citizen who is deeply concerned about the future of our planet, I was deeply gratified to read that you recently described global climate change as the greatest threat humanity has ever faced. You are of course absolutely right; nothing in our species' past experience has prepared us for coping with the challenges posed by anthropogenic global warming and its complex epiphenomena.
I am sure that through your philanthropic efforts you are already making more of a difference than I ever could. Still, however, I want to make a suggestion to you.
As you know, the Supreme Court recently ruled, in Citizens United vs. FEC, that corporate spending may be used freely to influence public opinion in the electoral process. I deplore that ruling, and I believe it to be profoundly at odds with the core meaning of our Constitution, which I understand as a document of governing principles directed to the enfranchisement of individuals.
But desperate times call for desperate remedies. Mr. Gates, if you really believe that climate change is a genuine existential threat to our species, I plead with you: spend freely to influence public opinion in the electoral process. Buy hundreds of hours of airtime on national television to educate the public about the dangers we face — and about the importance of electing politicians who will work toward genuine and robust action on climate change.
We need to reduce our atmospheric CO2 to 350 ppm or below. We need to address the problems of arctic methane release, and of oceanic acidification. And none of this will happen if more Republican climate denialists are elected to the U.S. Senate. A few more like James Inhofe, and all hope of meaningful action will be gone — while tipping point after tipping point goes by, unremarked by any save the climate scientists.
Please. Influence our political process. Right now it is influenced almost entirely by Big Coal and Big Oil — industries seriously implicated in our looming environmental disaster. We need you to do some influencing on our behalf, for our voices as ordinary citizens are drowned out by the megaphones of the world's largest polluters.
Yours Sincerely,
WarrenS
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March 17. Lindsey Graham was getting upset about HCR and reconciliation, and was threatening to take his ball and go home.
Read earlier today that Huckleberry Graham was getting his knickers in a twist because the Democrats were going to pass Health Care Reform through reconciliation. "If they do this," he whined, "why, it'll jus' make it impossible for anythin' to get done afterwards."
This is the Republican who's working with Kerry and Lieberman on a climate bill. Ick. It sure sounds to me like he's preparing to abandon the process.
"Now that those dreadful Democrats have gone and ruined bipartisanship, I just can't bring myself to associate with any of 'em!" (sobs, dabs temples with eau de cologne)
What a jackass. So I wrote him a letter.
Dear Senator Graham,
I'd written to you, Senator Kerry and Senator Lieberman recently on the issue of your work on climate change legislation. It is self-evident to any thinking person that global climate change is the most important existential threat that humanity will face in the coming century.
I was distressed to learn of your recent statements on ABC's "This Week" to the effect that if Health Care legislation is passed using the reconciliation process, it might "poison the well" as far as creating any sort of bipartisan initiative on another issue.
Really? This sounds to me like you're not as serious about climate legislation as your previous statements would indicate. If you agree that the future of this country and of the planet we all inhabit is at stake, then it is terribly immature to allow pique at being legislatively outmaneuvered to stop you from doing productive work elsewhere.
It is too important for all of us that the U.S. Senate gets meaningful climate legislation passed this year. There is no time to waste, and there is a lot more at stake than Senatorial ego.
Thank you for your attention.
Sincerely,
WarrenS
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March 20. Philosophically speaking...
I was thinking about yesterday's letter when I sat down to write, and then discovered that I had a philosophical point to make. I hope somebody reads this one.
Dear President Obama,
At the beginning of 2010, I made a resolution. Every day, I would write a letter to politicians, media outlets or important figures in our national discourse — focusing exclusively on climate change and related environmental issues. I'm proud to say I haven't missed a day so far. And Saturdays are my day for a letter to you.
Today I'm writing/faxing/emailing to applaud your recent announcement that the U.S. Government will aim to cut its own emissions of greenhouse gases twenty-eight percent by the beginning of the next decade. That's a great start.
But it's just a start, and if we only get to 28 percent, it's nowhere near enough. America needs to lead the world into a new energy equation, one where none of our energy needs are supplied by burning fossil fuels. A world without fossil fuels is as necessary to our long-term survival as a world without nuclear weapons.
We need to increase federal funding for all forms of energy research. I encourage research into so-called "clean coal" technology, but not because I think "clean coal" is technically feasible or economically sensible. I suspect that investigations of carbon capture and sequestration will yield other benefits that will positively impact our "footprint." I would like to see funding for wind, solar and geothermal energy research increased geometrically. These sources rely on the energy our earth is receiving and generating right now — unlike oil and coal, which are ways of storing solar energy our earth received a very long time ago.
Taking carbon out of the ground and putting it in the atmosphere is irrefutably bad for the planet. There is no good side to an increase in GHG emissions; the possibility of a global climate catastrophe is a statistically significant risk. This alone should be enough to force us to drastically revise our energy usage. And yet, there is another and more philosophical element to this equation.
Human beings are awed by ancient things, yet we easily forget that in burning oil and coal we are wasting one of the oldest resources we have: the stored sunlight that fell on our planet hundreds of millions of years ago. We would not think of chopping down a thousand-year-old sequoia to make toothpicks; we would not dismantle Stonehenge or the Great Pyramid and grind their stones into gravel, for to do so would be to disrespect their antiquity. This should be our attitude towards the consumption of fossil fuels.
To burn oil and coal is to spend our principal, to eat our seed corn. Solar, wind, hydroelectric and geothermal energy sources are the ecological equivalent of a "pay as you go" policy. Ultimately, the only way human beings can survive is to stop wasting our inheritance.
Twenty-eight percent by 2020? A good start. But just a start. We need our atmospheric CO2 to be at 350 ppm or below if our grandchildren are not to curse us for our prodigality and irresponsibility.
Yours sincerely,
WarrenS
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March 29. On the theme of biodiversity.
I read an article at the GOS which noted a new piece in Scientific American outlining a whole mess of different problems we'll be facing in years to come if we want to keep the planet habitable for humans and other life. The whole list is pretty depressing (what a surprise!). I selected one area on which to base a letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.
Dear Secretary Salazar,
In a newly published article in Scientific American, environmental scientist Jonathan Foley describes nine separate thresholds below which different environmental systems must remain if we are to maintain the health of our planet. Among these is the crucial area of biodiversity loss.
The scientific community notes that the current rate at which we are depleting the diversity of the Earth's flora and fauna is at least 100 times the historic average, and easily ten times what could be considered a safe measure.
Biodiversity is critical for the planet's long-term survivability, because it is through a wide spectrum of life-forms that ecological resilience is maintained. Monocultures are more prone to disease, predation and the devastating effects of ecological shifts. If a population depends primarily on a single food source, a crop failure can devastate an entire population inside a season — the lesson of the Irish potato famine.
It is crucial that the Department of the Interior make efforts to educate Americans about the importance of biodiversity in maintaining our country's natural resources for future generations. It is increasingly apparent that the rich web of life upon which we all depend is far more fragile than has been assumed. Our collective behavior needs to change if we are to survive as a culture and as a species.
It's equally important that the DOI be more proactive with regulatory initiatives to protect threatened species and habitats. There is no room left for giveaways to corporate special interest groups. While so-called "charismatic megafauna" may have their own constituencies, many of the life-forms facing extinction are obscure and seemingly insignificant. But ecological science has demonstrated time and time again how even the smallest creatures have crucial roles in the functioning of our environment.
Humanity's rapid expansion and exploitation of the Earth's resources has turned out to be a mixed blessing, providing luxurious lifestyles for some while triggering potentially catastrophic effects on our climate and biosphere. I urge the Department of the Interior to be even more proactive in educating Americans about the dangers we face — and to act vigorously to protect "the least among us."
Thank you,
WarrenS
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March 30. A note to Time Magazine, which had (as usual) included a comment from Inhofe in an article about climate.
Here's an article at Time Magazine about yet another relatively trivial error in the IPCC report. Naturally, in an effort for "balance," the author includes statements from James Inhofe.
The faux controversy over relatively minor errors and inept analogies in the IPCC report serves only to confuse members of the public who aren't paying attention. The overwhelming consensus of scientists is that global warming is real and that it's largely caused by human beings. When print and broadcast media routinely issue daily corrections over far more egregious misstatements of fact, the notion that a 3,000 page scientific report has mistakes in it should be unsurprising. Scientists are human, and they make mistakes; science itself, however, is a method of addressing error and misconception. Our media routinely treat scientific statements as somehow equivalent to statements of opinion, as witness Abend's readiness to include statements by James Inhofe in her article. The Oklahoma Senator knows nothing of science, basing his arguments on things he wishes were true (AGW is a fraud, the Rapture is imminent, etc.) rather than on verifiable facts. For those of us who can comprehend the warnings of the scientific community, Inhofe is absurd at best and malevolent at worst. He has no business in a serious discussion of the most important existential threat humanity has ever faced.
WarrenS
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April 19. Patriots' Day. Writing to Kerry and Dodd to expand on the idea that there is a connection between financial reform and climate reform.
Financial reform is very important, not only because Goldman Sachs and the rest of the shark pack have ripped the guts out of our economy, but because these mega-bankers care as much about the environment as they do about the people below them on the economic ladder. That is to say, not at all. Unsustainable environmental practices go hand in hand with unsustainable business practices, and it's time to make sure that shit is absolutely never going to happen again.
Dear Senators Kerry and Dodd,
This letter is about the connection between climate legislation and financial reform.
Any reasonably robust climate bill will be fought tooth and nail by business interests in this country, which is a sure indication that environmental legislation needs to be coupled with financial reform. Ultimately, our destruction of the environment is rooted in a systemic problem in our economic thinking. Our economy is largely built on an unsustainable practice: buying things and turning them into trash as quickly as possible. This happens on Wall Street when the big banks buy and sell incomprehensible credit derivatives to one another, and it happens on Main Street when our stores sell us cheap plastic-wrapped junk that breaks and winds up in a landfill a week later.
An economic model based on turning things into trash will ultimately destroy our nation, and us along with it. We tell our children to contribute to society, to leave things better than we found them — but unless we can end our reliance on consumption as a way of life, our fine words are nothing more than hypocritical prating. The next few decades will determine whether we live in a world that offers our children and their children a meaningful future or a landscape clogged beyond recognition with toxic trash. We can’t fix the climate unless we transform our economy — until we focus our power and attention on living in ways that give back more to the Earth than we take out.
During the debate on the financial reform bill, it is my hope that you will point out to your colleagues in the Senate (and to the nation) that what unsustainable financial practices have done to our economic health, unsustainable consumption habits are doing to our environment. Our nation, and the world, can afford this no longer.
Yours Sincerely,
WarrenS
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All of these letters were originally posted at Running Gamak. Drop in if you get the chance.
Long ago in another career, I was a publicist, providing music critics with material to plagiarize. Here's how that works: let's say you have a client — a singer-songwriter who's releasing an album. You want quotes from the press that can be included in a promotional package.
So you write a page-long description of your client with lots of pithy sentences. "Sounding like a young Janis Joplin, she belts out her original material with verve and passion, bla bla bla bla..." Send it out to hundreds of papers to promote your client's upcoming gig. Some small-time arts writer in a local paper will take your release, rearrange a few sentences, and print it under her/his byline. Now you have an actual "journalist" who has taken on responsibility for the Janis Joplin comparison! The next edition of your description will include a line like, "Critics have compared her to a young Janis Joplin, bla bla bla."
That makes it more likely someone from a bigger paper, a magazine, or a broadcast outlet will use the comparison. Repeat as necessary.
Which is a roundabout way of saying that all of my fine phrases are yours to use as you see fit. Go to my blog, look through letters, find some stuff that works for you, switch the order of the clauses, insert a few synonyms, and start sending stuff out under your name. My letters will be a hundred times as effective if a hundred more people start writing on these themes...and generating new material is my New Year's Resolution!
Here is the line-up of the Earth Day @ DKos blogathon! Two outstanding diaries have already been posted,
with more to come:
(All times Eastern!)
| solilokwee | posted | "Remembering Stewart Udall ~
Earth Day 2010" |
| A Siegel | posted | "A day like any other..." |
| Warren S | 10:00AM | "Four Months' Climate Letters: The greatest hits" |
| patrickz | Noon | "Earth Day Numbers, 2010" |
| mark louis | 5-7PM | "Alternative Energy Round-Up" |
| FishOutofWater | 7:00PM | DK GreenRoots |
| Ellinorianne | 9:00PM | DK GreenRoots |
| boatsie | 11:00PM | "Cochabama Wrap up!" |
RLMiller will also have a diary.
Be sure to drop by for some top-notch eco-writing and planet-friendly
discussion. Have a happy Earth Day!
