Posted by: patriotdaily | September 13, 2010

Prop 23 Reinforces Race & Class Discrimination

California AB 32 is the Global Warming Solutions Act signed into law in 2006. AB 32 focuses on climate change and includes an environmental justice provision to address the killing and harming of poor and minority communities that is now the status quo. Prop 23 is a ballot measure to nix AB 32. Some newspaper editorials oppose Prop 23, but the most recent July polls show a slim majority of no votes. One statewide poll showed 67% favor AB 32, but when the question is focused on Prop 23, support softens by at least 14, or a slim majority (53%) (pdf file). A second statewide poll shows similar results on Prop 23: yes vote (36%), no (48%) and undecided (16%).

As voters gear up for the election, we must continue work to defeat this anti-climate change and anti-civil rights measure.

Proposition 23 is an initiative on California’s November general election ballot that would “suspend” AB 32. It would actually nix AB32 because the suspension would remain effective until state unemployment rates stabilize at or below 5.5% for four consecutive quarters. This has only happened three times since 1976. The attack on AB 32 is important far beyond California because this law could greatly influence how other states deal with climate-change, green-energy issues and environmental racism.

The fossil-fuel industry and its band of climate deniers/teabaggers oppose AB 32 for the obvious reason that the greedy industry wants to continue reaping profits unimpeded by climate change measures. The industry also fears that AB 32 can be a successful model for other states and a national comprehensive climate bill. There is another reason not often discussed: The environmental justice measures in AB 32 and the EPA finding put another damper on the fossil-fuel industry, and teabaggers advocating racism to yield profits.

For some in fossil fuel industry, greed trumps lives.

Thanks to the Fossil Fuel Privilege, everyone pays a Fossil Fuel Tax when we pay the external costs (e.g., health care, quality of life) as corporate welfare for the industry. But poor/minority communities pay far more for a “separate but equal” life in areas of the industrial dumping grounds where a number of contaminated sites and industries pollute air, water and land. Society wants the goods and services produced as long as the polluting industries are not in their back yards. These greater impacts are due to the Eco White Privilege that placed GHG emitting facilities in poor/minority neighborhoods.

This graphic shows the location of facilities based on racial demographics. The yellow represents areas where the percentage of people of color is less than 37%, orange indicates 37%-70% and red represents greater than 70%. The symbols on the map represent the cement kiln (reddish square), petroleum refinery (black triangle) and power plants (green circle). The yellow areas, which represent less than 37% of people of color, have very few facilities.

The fossil-fuel industry supports Prop 23 due to its own self-interests:

In the past, California has been a trendsetter in environmental policy, with other states closely following its lead. If AB 32 survives, oil companies are bound to see similar measures adopted elsewhere, cutting deeper into their market share.

It makes no difference to them that their profits come at the expense of killing and sickening poor and minority communities.

A study by the Ella Baker Center and the California Environmental Justice Alliance concluded that the two Texas oil companies (Valero and Tesoro) that are bankrolling Prop 23 have been “repeatedly citied for producing deadly chemicals at their refineries that are exposing millions of California families to harm.” The study also found that these two corporate oil Toxic Twins locate their facilities such that the “people who bear the biggest health burdens from these facilities are disproportionately people of color.” For those who live outside California, another study concluded that these Toxic Twins are the “#12 and #32 polluters in the nation.”

Climate-change impacts will worsen the state of poor and minority communities already harmed by environmental racism. Research in 2009 discussed the “climate gap,” or the “fact that people of color and the poor in the United States may suffer more from the economic and health consequences of climate change than other Americans.” Disparate impacts include more vulnerability to heat incidents, more exposure to air pollution and possible increased impacts due to “economic dislocations of ongoing climate change.”

Another study (pdf file), Minding the Climate Gap: What’s at Stake if California’s Climate Law isn’t Done Right and Right Away, shows that “people of color and the poor have the most to lose if efforts to confront climate change are delayed. However, they also have the most to gain if we implement climate policies that deliver immediate public health benefits for everyone.”

Fossil fuel industry wants to stop AB 32 momentum to prevent other states from following California’s lead.

The fossil-fuel industry wants to stop progressive energy policy in California as well as the nation. A Berkeley report (pdf file) argues that suspending AB 32 would delay/harm/affect both state and national movements to transition to a clean energy economy:

AB 32 has contributed significant momentum within California to transition to a clean energy economy and reinforces the state’s role as a national leader on clean air, clean energy, and energy efficiency. Suspending AB 32 would dampen this in-state progress and could also affect the implementation of a multi-state greenhouse gas reduction effort. Moreover, because California is recognized as a national policy leader, and because states learn from and emulate one another, suspension of AB 32 might raise doubts about climate policy efforts being pursued at the federal, regional, state, and local levels. These effects cannot be quantified but are likely to be significant.

Another report (pdf file) by the Clean Energy Network (CEN), a national organization of business, investors and researchers, agreed that Prop 23 could roll back energy and climate policies in other states and DC.

Past efforts to codify environmental justice failed, new approach is to incorporate environmental justice in AB 32 and EPA endangerment finding.

For years, our country has practiced institutionalized Eco White Privilege, otherwise known as environmental racism. A litany of studies prove the existence of disparate treatment of poor and minority communities. Our government acknowledges the racism. Yet, there is no law prohibiting it, which provides another layer of racism. For years, lawmakers have tried to pass legislation to expressly address environmental justice. Various lawmakers (e.g., Al Gore, John Lewis, Hilda Solis, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton) have introduced legislation for environmental justice or to codify Clinton’s executive order on environmental justice: Environmental Justice Act of 1992 and Environmental Justice Act of 1993 and Environmental Justice Act of 2005 and Environmental Justice Act of 2007 and Environmental Justice Renewal Act of 2008. Barack Obama introduced (co-sponsor Hillary Clinton) an environmental justice bill called the Healthy Communities Act of 2005 and again in 2007.

After the direct approach of legislation to codify environmental justice has failed, a new approach is to incorporate environmental justice into climate-change measures. One study concluded that measures to address climate change could “benefit poor and minority communities long burdened by industrial pollution if the state takes into account the needs of communities hurt most by climate change.”

President Obama is trying to reduce disparate impacts at the federal level with the Clean Air Act regulatory powers that the deniers and GOP want to eliminate in proposed climate change legislation. The EPA endangerment finding (pdf file) includes consideration of environmental justice by discussing the disproportionate impacts of climate change on certain segments of our population, including the poor and indigenous populations dependent on a few natural resources. The Technical Support Document (TSD) for the EPA endangerment finding provides “an overview of all the major scientific assessments available at the time.” The TSD recognizes that the potential impacts of climate change raise environmental justice issues (pdf file) particularly for those living in urban environments without air-conditioning and vulnerable groups, such as the poor.

AB 32 addresses environmental justice by including an environmental justice advisory committee (EJAC) to advise the Air Resources Board when implementing the law as part of the AB 32 law that Prop 23 wants to kill:

38591. (a) The state board, by July 1, 2007, shall convene an environmental justice advisory committee, of at least three members, to advise it in developing the scoping plan pursuant to Section 38561 and any other pertinent matter in implementing this division. The advisory committee shall be comprised of representatives from communities in the state with the most significant exposure to air pollution, including, but not limited to, communities with minority populations or low-income populations, or both.

AB 32 addresses environmental justice by reducing impacts for everyone and by the EJAC providing a voice at the table for the minority and poor communities. If it survives, then other states may adopt similar measures.

As Robert Bullard says: Cleaning up our air saves lives and money – Now is the time for “moving environmental justice to the forefront!”

You can help defeat Prop 23! by donating, telling your friends or joining Stop Dirty Energy.

There are five volunteer campaign offices where you can volunteer for No on 23.

Credo also has a citizen endorser campaign for its campaign of Hell no on 23.

You can sign a pledge to vote NO on Prop 23.

California NAACP Opposes Prop 23

Latino leaders reject Proposition 23:

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa told Texas oil companies to “go home” at a “No on 23″ rally this week. He joins numerous prominent California Latino leaders in denouncing the initiative.

…Finally, organizations like Green for All, the Latino Coalition for a Healthy California, and Communities United Against the Dirty Energy Prop have begun to successfully mobilize the Latino community to fight back against this harmful campaign.

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Posted in Climaticide

Posted by: patriotdaily | September 10, 2010

Eco White Privilege

Thanks to the Fossil Fuel Privilege, everyone pays a Fossil Fuel Tax when we pay the external costs (e.g., health care, quality of life) as corporate welfare for the fossil fuel industry. But poor/minority communities pay far more for a “separate but equal” life of living in areas of the industrial dumping grounds where a number of contaminated sites and industries pollute air, water and land. Society wants the goods and services produced as long as the polluting industries are NIMBY.

Multiple studies document that polluting industries are more likely to be located in minority neighborhoods. For years, our government has acknowledged the disparate treatment with the adverse impacts on health, education and quality of life. Yet, instead of a law to prohibit this racism, our government provides the remedy of an unenforced policy.

Living in the Industrial Dumping Grounds

Racism in the environmental context (pdf file) follows the pattern of racism throughout society. Prejudice is maintained by the intentional or unintentional use of power to isolate, separate, exploit, harm, abuse and disadvantage others based on race. Privilege is conferred on whites in order to sustain, perpetuate and institutionalize racism. Whether conscious or unconscious, this racism is enforced and maintained by the legal, political and environmental institutions to the extent that it is not even accorded a remedy that has the status of law, but merely unenforced policies.

Neighborhoods wake up to horrific odors emanating from industrial plants and the strong smells of raw sewage. Children consider playing outside during recess a punishment due to the odors. Daily life involves “adjusting” to the toxic fumes, dust, odors, noise and the ugliness of air and structures. Trucks barreling down the streets endanger children and pets, drown out conversations and damage foundations of homes. Neighborhoods become the breeding grounds for illness, disease, injuries and death.

One example is the New River, the most polluted waterway in North America and composed of 70% of waste material and raw sewage that host deadly diseases of turberulosis, typhoid, and polio. As shown in the photo, the river flows through communities where houses line the banks. Families suffer the stench of cooked sewage while children must play indoors. The water-quality standard
for the river is 260 because anything higher constitutes a threat to public health, but this river measures at 100,000-16 million.

Martin Luther King Jr. set the stage for environmental justice back in 1968 with a Memphis strike after two black sanitation workers were crushed to death when a mechanism on a trash truck was accidentally triggered. This job safety strike highlighted that the impact of wastes from all of society were imposed mostly in minority communities:

Only African-Americans worked in sanitation in the city; the exposure to injury and disease associated with the work fell exclusively on the African-American community despite the entire metropolitan area contributing to the wastes that had to be managed.

Environmental justice advocate Robert Bullard explains how racism is not limited to corporations but rather institutionalized in local and federal governments:

I started connecting the dots in terms of housing, residential patterns, patterns of land use, where highways go, where transportation routes go, and how economic-development decisions are made. It was very clear that people who were making decisions — county commissioners or industrial boards or city councils — were not the same people who were “hosting” these facilities in their communities.

Without a doubt, it was a form of apartheid where whites were making decisions and black people and brown people and people of color, including Native Americans on reservations, had no seat at the table.

Government Knowledge of the Environmental Racism

Our government has known for decades that poor and minority communities have been targeted with disproportionate impacts of a multitude of harmful environmental effects. In 1970, the “United States Public Health Services (USPHS) acknowledged that lead poisoning was disproportionately impacting African Americans and Hispanic children.” In 1971, the “Presidents’ Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) annual report acknowledge[d]” that “racial discrimination adversely affects urban poor and quality of their environment.” A 1983 GAO (Government Accountability Office) study of 4 landfill sites found that “Blacks comprised the majority of the population in three of the four communities studied” and thus bear the burden with the distribution of environmental risks.

In 1987, the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice published a national report (pdf file) on the racial and socio-economic characteristics of communities with hazardous waste sites. It concluded that “race was the single best predictor of where toxic waste facilities were located nation-wide” thus removing the possibility that it was merely chance that explained the pattern of locating hazardous waste facilities in minority communities. On this map, the “dark areas represent counties where the Black and/or Hispanic percentage of the population is greater than their respective national percentages and where five or more uncontrolled toxic waste sites are located.”

A 1990 report by Bush’s EPA confirmed the findings of the 1983 GAO report and the 1987 Racial Justice report that “members of minority populations have ‘disproportionately greater ‘observed and potential exposure’ to environmental pollutants,’ and this disproportionality could not be explained by income alone.”

In 1993, the Clinton administration agreed — for the first time— to investigate whether states were violating civil rights of African Americans by allowing industrial pollution in their neighborhoods. These investigations were based on the 1964 Civil Rights Act and confirmed findings by earlier reports.

In 2005, an Associated Press analysis of EPA research showed that “African Americans are 79 percent more likely than whites to live in neighborhoods where industrial pollution is suspected of posing the greatest health danger.” Here are the results from a few of the many reports undertaken over the years that illustrate the impacts on health, life expectancy, and education:

· In 1992, National Argonne Laboratory researchers discovered that 57 percent of whites, 65 percent of African Americans, and 80 percent of Latinos lived in the 437 counties that failed to meet at least one of the EPA ambient air quality standards.

· A 2000 study from the American Lung Association found children of color to be disproportionately represented in areas with high ozone levels. Additionally, 61.3 percent of Black children, 69.2 percent of Hispanic children and 67.7 percent of Asian-American children live in areas that exceed the 0.08 ppm ozone standard, while only 50.8 percent of white children live in such areas.

· Air pollution is related to rising asthma rates. Although African Americans represent 12.7% of the U.S. population, they account for 26% of asthma deaths.

· African American children are five times more likely to die from asthma than white children.

· The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that asthma accounts for more than 10 million lost school days, 1.2 million emergency room visits, 15 million outpatient visits, and over 500,000 hospitalizations each year. Asthma cost Americans over $14.5 billion in 2000.

The remedy for environmental racism is a policy, not a law

Environmental advocates have been in search of a law to fight environmental racism. In 1998, the EPA stated that when the Civil Rights Act was adopted, “no one fully appreciated” that pollution could also be a means for disparate treatment of some communities. Studies and reports have confirmed each other up the wazoo and still no law. Congress needs to amend Title VI to expressly provide a private right of action to challenge agency decisions that have a disparate impact on minority and low-income neighborhoods.

For years, environmental and civil rights groups advocated the use of the 1964 Civil Rights Act because it is one of the few laws that directly address discriminatory environmental impacts. In 2000, local residents filed a lawsuit to stop construction of a cement manufacturing facility and a judge invalidated the air permits because of its disparate impact on the minority neighborhoods.

A few days later, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a separate case that there is no private right of action to sue under Title VI to enforce disparate impact regulations. Thus, a private right of action under Title VI was limited to plaintiffs who could prove intentional discrimination by a recipient of federal funds. Similar to equal protection lawsuits, it is difficult to “prove improper intent solely on the basis of racial disparities in environmental impact.”

Without a private right of action, citizens must rely on the EPA to enforce its own regulations. Title VI also requires that agencies that distribute federal funds, like the EPA, issue regulations and establish a process for complaints of racial discrimination. In 1973, EPA established regulations that prohibit the recipient of federal funds from using “criteria or methods of administering its program which have the effect of subjecting individuals to discrimination because of their race, color, national origin, or sex.” Thus, a plaintiff can avoid the intentional discrimination burden and potentially revoke federal funds except for the little detail of enforcement. EPA adopted the regulations in 1973 but avoided enforcement of the regulations until 1994, when President Clinton issued Executive Order 12898 (EO) to establish environmental justice policy, instructing “all federal agencies to conduct their programs and policies in a manner that achieves environmental justice and promotes non-discrimination against minorities and those with low incomes.” However, how is this EO enforced? The EO does not create a private right of action or provide for judicial review of regulatory decisions.

So, the EPA finally created an Office of Civil Rights (OCR) to provide a place where a complaint could be filed, investigate allegations and potentially revoke federal funds to implement this policy. However, during 1993-1998, the complaints were processed slowly, and the EPA found that none violated Title VI. In 2009, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the OCR showed a “systemic refusal to address allegations of discrimination in the use of agency funds.” There was a “consistent pattern of delay by the EPA” to ignore complaints filed, failing to respond until after the frustrated citizens filed a lawsuit.

Efforts over the years to enact environmental justice laws to prohibit racism, provide a private right of action, or even to codify into federal law the EO policy have failed.

We have a series at Daily Kos called EcoJustice on Monday nights that essentially documents the continuing evidence of eco racism here and throughout the world. This Monday I will discuss one measure we can support to make things better.

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Posted in Climaticide | Tags: , , , ,

Posted by: patriotdaily | March 9, 2009

R.I.P. JohnnyRook

NOTE: JR died March 2nd. This very moving tribute was written by Meteor Blades, a frontpager at Daily Kos, and is reposted with his permission.

His real name was Steven Kimball. But here at Daily Kos and on his own blog, Climaticide Chronicles, he was known as JohnnyRook. After a two-and-a-half-year fight against acute myeloid leukemia, he died Monday at his home in Port Townsend, Washington. He was 53. (The photo shows him in the Canadian Rockies last September, with Mount Robson in the background.)

It’s no easy matter to write about the passing of someone you’ve come to know and feel is a kindred spirit, even if only via the Internet. It’s all the more difficult when that person was himself so good with words.

Steven’s first career was as a college instructor of language and history. He subsequently became a federal court interpreter of Spanish and, sometimes, Russian. He was fascinated by the world and had an amazing ability to make complicated topics knowable, which made him the best kind of teacher. A hiker and sea kayaker, he loved the outdoors.

It was just a few months after he was first diagnosed with cancer in the summer of 2006 that he became JohnnyRook online. All his Diaries were written during the time he was undergoing treatment after treatment, from chemotherapy to two stem-cell transplants, many of them requiring long hospital stays, a great strain on him and his wife, Becci, who became his 24/7 caregiver, dealing with all the physical and emotional difficulties such a job entails. Twice, in November 2007 and on February 5 this year, he told us “My doctor doesn’t think I’m going to die today.”

But mostly he told us about his fears and hopes – not for himself but for the earth and coming generations – about how he came to support Barack Obama because of global warming, and about the global warming deniers he detested. One of my favorites was EcoNoticiarios, his series highlighting articles from the Spanish-language press about environmental issues.  

His third Diary, in October 2007, took on the subject that became his signature, what he would come to call “climaticide.” Not just what it is, but what to do to stop it. In June 2008, he began his own blog, whose essays he regularly cross-posted here.

He was fiercely passionate about it, in great part because he felt too many people — especially politicians — weren’t listening. He often pondered aloud what it would take to make them pay attention. When Al Gore and the onetime Cassandra of global warming, James Hansen, separately noted that they thought maybe civil disobedience would be required to force a change in policy — particularly the use of coal for generating electricity — he found it persuasive.

It was in that third Diary – Who’s a Leader? National Day of Climate Action – that Steven showed just how passionate he was:

I think we need a movement, a real movement, one with passion and cojones. Last weekend I took my 17-year old son to see a movie about the trial of protesters at the 1968 Democratic National Convention called “Chicago 10″. I wanted him to see what a real protest march looks like, one where people are truly pissed and refuse to be ignored by their elected officials, even when they use police-state tactics against them. I think Al Gore understands this need for a real movement when he says: “I can’t understand why there aren’t rings of young people blocking bulldozers, and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants.” And it shouldn’t be just young people. Why aren’t we all doing this?

Last weekend, his son, now 19, was in Washington, D.C., as part of the Capitol Climate Action pressing for a shutdown of the coal-burning plant that provides Congress with heat and air-conditioning. It goes without saying that Steven was proud of him for that. When he still had some hope for recovery, Steven told a friend that “one of the things I’m most looking forward to about getting well, if only for a while, is the opportunity to chain myself to the gate of a coal-fired power plant or to some energy CEO’s desk.”

His final Diary here, showing once again what a selfless guy he was, came on February 8: Support President Obama by Joining Daily Kos Environmentalists. At his own blog, the final post appeared February 18: Alert: Wilkins Ice Shelf Collapses According to Spanish Scienitists. He said he would update when he received more information. He never got the chance.

A week before Steven died, A Siegel wrote an homage to him. The day before he died, Joe Romm, a former assistant secretary in the Department of Energy during the Clinton administration, wrote his own homage at Climate Progress. Others have had their say, too.

But Steven’s own words said it best:

I understand that such news can depress. At times it depresses me but, more than anything else, it has filled my life with meaning. I have a mission. Before I die, I want to have some sense that this beautiful planet that has provided the context for my life, will have some chance of enduring. I want to die with hope, believing that my teenage son and his children and your children and their children will live in a world that is reasonably hospitable to human beings.

I don’t know how that can happen if people will not face the reality of what is taking place in the world. So, I continue to sound the alarm, even though I know that most of what I write is discounted as alarmist or simply ignored as too uncomfortable to deal with.

Hope becomes reality through action. Obviously Steven taught his son well. Both father and son are examples for the rest of us.

Steven’s family has asked that anyone who wishes to make a remembrance in his name can contribute to 350 org at this link. It’s hard to imagine a more appropriate place. Goodbye, Steven. We miss you already.

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Posted in Climaticide

Posted by: JohnnyRook | February 18, 2009

Alert: Wilkins Ice Shelf Collapses According to Spanish Scienitists

This story is very tentative at this point, but I did want to point out to Climaticide Chronicles readers that Spanish researchers are reporting the breakup of 16,000 km2 of the Wilkins Ice Shelf. That would be most of the shelf.

Ina much anticipated event [in Spanish] a some 14,000 square kilometers–a surface area equal to the Basque Country (can’t we have a universal standard of comparison instead of each nation using some region that’s only meaningful to it’s citizens?), of the Wilkins Ice Sheet has disintegrated and broken up into smaller pieces, some of them glaciers 200 meters high.

The enormous icebergs into which the ice shelf has broken have begun, to flow out into the Antarctic Ocean, according to the researchers from Council for Advanced Research (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas– CSIC) whose oceanographic research vessel Hespérides finds itself in the area.

I will update as more information comes in.

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Posted in Antarctica, climate change, Climaticide, environment, global warming | Tags: , , , , ,

Posted by: JohnnyRook | February 16, 2009

James Hansen: “The Sword of Damocles”

Dr. James Hansen of NASA’s GISS released the following statement via email a few hours ago reiterating his call to world leaders for an end to new coal-fired power plants. He points out that recent research indicates we may be near irreversible climate tipping points.

Only in the last few years have scientists really come together to underline the extreme danger and urgency of the climate crisis. Public inaction is founded, as Hansen sees it, on the current economic crisis, ignorance due lack of scientific training and the confusion it feels because of the well-organized, expensive, widespread, industry-financed disinformation campaign. this is understandable. One cannot be so forgiving of our leaders.

The principle leadership belongs to the United States, but Dr. Hansen reminds the British PM that his influence is not inconsiderable and that we all have a tremendous responsibility to future generations.

What follows are Dr. Hansen’s full remarks:

Over a year ago I wrote to Prime Minister Brown asking him to place a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants in Britain. I have asked the same of Angela Merkel, Barak Obama, Kevin Rudd and other world leaders. The reason is this – coal is the single greatest threat to civilization and all life on our planet [emphasis--JR].

Our global climate is nearing tipping points. Changes are beginning to appear, and there is a potential for explosive changes with effects that would be irreversible – if we do not rapidly slow fossil fuel emissions over the next few decades.

Tipping points are fed by amplifying feedbacks. As Arctic sea ice melts, the darker
ocean absorbs more sunlight and speeds melting. As tundra melts, methane a strong greenhouse gas, is released, causing more warming. As species are pressured and exterminated by shifting climate zones, ecosystems can collapse, destroying more species.

The public, buffeted by day-to-day weather fluctuations and economic turmoil, has little
time or training to analyze decadal changes. How can they be expected to evaluate and filter outadvice emanating from special economic interests? How can they distinguish top-notch science and pseudoscience – the words sound the same? Leaders have no excuse – they are elected to lead and to protect the public and its best
interests. Leaders have at their disposal the best scientific organizations in the world, such as the United Kingdom’s Royal Society and the United States National Academy of Sciences. [emphasis--JR]

Only in the past few years did the science crystallize, revealing the urgency – our planet really is in peril. If we do not change course soon, we will hand our children a situation that is out of their control, as amplifying feedbacks drive the dynamics of the global system.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air has already risen to a dangerous level. The preindustrial carbon dioxide amount was 280 parts per million (ppm). Humans, by burning coal, oil and gas have increased carbon dioxide to 385 ppm, and it continues to grow by about 2 ppm per year.

Earth, with its four kilometer deep ocean, responds only slowly to changes of carbon
dioxide. So more climate change will occur, even if we make maximum effort to slow carbon dioxide growth. Arctic sea ice will disappear in the summer season within the next few decades. Mountain glaciers, providing fresh water for rivers that supply hundreds of millions of people, will disappear – practically all of the glaciers could be gone within 50 years, if carbon dioxide continues to increase at current rates. Coral reefs, harboring a quarter of ocean species, are threatened, if carbon dioxide continues to rise.

The greatest threats, hanging like the sword of Damocles over our children and
grandchildren, are those that are irreversible on any time scale that humans can imagine. If coastal ice shelves buttressing the West Antarctic ice sheet continue to disintegrate, the ice sheet could disgorge into the ocean, raising sea level by several meters in a century. Such rates of sea level change have occurred many times in Earth’s history in response to global warming rates no higher than that of the past thirty years. Almost half of the world’s great cities, and many historical sites, are located on coast lines.

The most threatening change, from my perspective, is extermination of species. Several
times in Earth’s long history rapid global warming of several degrees occurred, apparently spurred by amplifying feedbacks. In each case more than half of plant and animal species went extinct. New species came into being over tens and hundreds of thousands of years. But these are time scales and generations that we cannot imagine. If we drive our fellow species to extinction we will leave a far more desolate planet for our descendants than the world that we inherited from our elders. We will leave a world haunted by the memories of what was.

Clearly, if we burn all fossil fuels, we will destroy the planet we know. Carbon dioxide
would increase to 500 ppm or more. We would set the planet on a course to the ice-free state, with sea level 75 meters higher. Coastal disasters would occur continually. The only uncertainty is the time it would take for complete ice sheet disintegration.

The tragedy of the situation, if we do not wake up in time, is that the changes that must be made to stabilize the atmosphere and climate make sense for other reasons. The changes would produce a healthier atmosphere, improved agricultural productivity, clean water, and an ocean providing fish that are safe to eat.

Actions required to solve the problem are dictated by physical facts, especially fossil fuel reservoir sizes. About half of readily extracted oil has been burned already. Oil is used in vehicles, where it is impractical to capture the carbon dioxide. Oil and gas will drive carbon dioxide to at least 400 ppm. But if we cut off the largest source of carbon dioxide, coal, it will be practical to bring carbon dioxide back to 350 ppm and still lower through improved agricultural and forestry practices that increase carbon storage in trees and soil.

Coal is not only the largest fossil fuel reservoir of carbon dioxide, it is the dirtiest fuel.
Coal is polluting the world’s oceans and streams with mercury, arsenic and other dangerouschemicals. The dirtiest trick that governments play on their citizens is the pretense that they are working on “clean coal” or that they will build power plants that are “capture ready” in case technology is ever developed to capture all pollutants.
The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are
factories of death. When I testified against the proposed Kingsnorth power plant, I estimated that in its lifetime it would be responsible for extermination of about 400 species – its proportionate contribution to the number that would be committed to extinction if carbon dioxide rose another 100 ppm. [emphasis--JR] Of course, we cannot say which specific species should be blamed on Kingsnorth, but who are we to say that any species are worthless?

The German and Australian governments pretend to be green. When I show German
officials that fossil fuel reservoir sizes imply that the coal source must be cut off, they say they will tighten the “carbon cap”. But a cap only slows the use of a fuel, it does not leave it in the ground. When I point out that their new coal plants require that they convince Russia to leave its oil in the ground, they are silent. The Australian government was elected on a platform of solving the climate problem, but then, with the help of industry, they set emission targets so high as to guarantee untold disasters for the young and the unborn. These governments are not green. They are black – coal black.

On a per capita basis, the three countries most responsible for fossil fuel carbon dioxidein the air today are the United Kingdom, the United States, and Germany, in that order.Politicians in Britain have asked me: why am I speaking to them — the United States must lead? But coal interests have great power in the United States – the essential moratorium and phase-out of coal likely requires a growing public demand and a political will yet to be demonstrated.

The Prime Minister should not underestimate his potential to initiate a transformative change of direction. And he must not pretend to be ignorant of the consequences of continuing coal emission, or take refuge in a “carbon cap” or some “target” for future emission reductions. Young people are beginning to understand the situation. They want to know: will you join theirside? Remember that history, and your children, will judge you.

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Posted in Activism, climate change, climate science, Climaticide, coal, Dr. James Hansen, energy, environment, ethics, Obama administration | Tags: , , , , , , ,

Posted by: JohnnyRook | February 7, 2009

Australia Burning Up and Drowning at the Same Time

As projected by climate-models, extreme weather events continue to intensify all around the world. Particularly hard hit this week is Australia. Drought and fires continue in Southeastern Australia where record temperatures are being set, while in the North in Queensland, torrential flooding has left communities cut off from the outside world.

Fires are burning on the outskirts of the nation’s two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne. These, coastal(!) cities, in addition to suffering through ongoing droughts, are now recording record temperatures of 116 degrees Fahrenheit. The small town of Avalon 50 km to the SE of Melbourne had a record temperature of 118 degrees today. [personnel communication to author--JR]

Political Map of Australia

Bush fires are what everyone fears. Tens of thousand of firefighters from Australia are on standby to combat the large number of potentially deadly bush fires that could break out. As the European Space Agency explains:

The country’s predominantly flat, dry and warm landscape makes it prone to fires year round, but the risks increase during its hottest months – November through March. In addition, Australia’s native vegetation burns quickly and easily. Eucalyptus trees, for example, contain oil that makes them especially dangerous in a bushfire.

Scientific American’s report also highlighed the gravity of the situation.

“It’s just going to be probably … the worst day ever in the history of the state in terms of temperatures and winds,” Victoria state premier John Brumby told reporters on Friday.

“The state is just tinder dry, so people need to exercise real commonsense tomorrow, if you don’t need to go out don’t go out, it’s a seriously bad day,” he said.

Authorities fear the heatwave, which last week caused major blackouts and left thousands of residents without air conditioning, could again be fatal to the elderly.

There were 22 “sudden deaths” in Adelaide last Friday at the height of the heatwave and several in Melbourne.

“This is about protecting our nation’s frail and aged,” said Minister for Aging Justine Elliot, in warning nursing homes to prepare for the heatwave. Nursing homes in southeast Australia care for some 170,000 residents.

South Australia’s main morgue was now almost full with 71 bodies, a temporary morgue has been hired, and elective surgery delayed as hospitals try to cope with more than 600 heat-related cases, said local media.

Rail authorities in Sydney have ordered a slowdown of the network to try and avoid accidents if rail lines buckle, as they did in last week’s heatwave in Melbourne and Adelaide.

Climate Map of Australia

While the southeast burns, Queensland to the north is suffering torrential rains leading to widespread flooding as rivers overflow their banks. <a href=”“>Australian Broadcasting Network news has declared:

Emergency crews in Queensland are monitoring flooding in rivers across the state’s north, as heavy rain is forecast to continue overnight between Innisfail and Bowen.

The Bruce Highway is cut between Ayr and Townsville and the towns of Tully and Ingham are isolated.

Police have asked people to limit non-essential travel if possible in the region, saying road conditions and closures will change as creeks and water courses rise and fall quickly.

Weather bureau forecaster Brian Rolstone says hundreds of millimetres of rain could fall tonight.

Things are so bad that even climatologists are starting to do the unthinkable, mention “extreme weather” and “climate change” in the same sentence in public. We know that scientifically speaking (one gets sick of repeating this) that it is not possible to establish a link between any particular weather event and Climaticide, but anyone with half a brain knows that there is a statistical relationship between the intensity of extreme weather events and global warming. So, my view is that we ought to mention this statistical relationship as often as we can along with the fact, as Dr. Stone points out, that what is happening in Australia (and in China, and in the United States, etc.) fits perfectly with what the climate models predict.

Dr Roger Stone, from the University of Southern Queensland, says some models suggest the monsoonal rain could be heading south.

“Some of the models that look more closely at week-to-week patterns, especially from the United States are suggesting that some of this rain could drift further south, as far south as southern Queensland – not all of it of course – but some of the rain could drift further south on occasions,” he said.

He says the extremes being encountered in Australia this week fit climate change models, but it is too early to prove a direct link to changing weather patterns.

Dr Stone says the pattern of contrasts is not unusual for this time of year, but the intensity is. [emphasis--JR]

“It certainly fits the climate change models but I have to add the proviso that it’s very difficult – even with extreme conditions like this – to always attribute it to climate change, but it does fit the climate change models,” [emphasis--JR] he said.

NOTE: Unenergy posted a powerful, informative diary on this topic yesterday at Daily Kos that I would heartily encourage everyone to read:

wooden power poles self-igniting

Crossposted at Daily Kos

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Posted in Australia, climate change, Climaticide, environment, extreme weather | Tags: , , , , , , ,

Posted by: JohnnyRook | February 5, 2009

My doctor doesn’t think I’m going to die today–Updated

A couple of days ago at Daily Kos, a thoughtful, commeter, WarrenS asked a question in a comment on one of my diaries.

JohnnyRook,

How do you hold out hope when the news is this awful? Can you? I dread the time when I have to explain to my daughter just how badly the grownups screwed this up.

I didn’t answer the question at that time because I didn’t have the strength. Now, I’ve decided to try and answer it by reposting an updated version of a diary that I wrote in November of 2007.

My diaries, as those of you who are regular readers know, often contain depressing information about how temperatures and sea levels are rising, how sea ice and glaciers are melting and shrinking, how deserts are growing and heat waves becoming longer and hotter meaning that agriculture is becoming less and less possible in many places, how extreme weather is becoming more common and more intense, how oceans are becoming acidified, how species are going extinct, ecosystems are being rendered uninhabitable for the creatures that live in them, and how famine and diseases are spreading.

When I write about solutions I often focus on how people and governments are mostly oblivious to what is happening and to how little time we have left to act boldly and forcefully to effect the radical change that the scientists tell us is necessary. I agree absolutely with what what Steven Chu, the new Secretary of Energy told the LA Times in an interview a couple of days ago.

I don’t think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen.

I understand that such news can depress. At times it depresses me but, more than anything else, it has filled my life with meaning. I have a mission. Before I die, I want to have some sense that this beautiful planet that has provided the context for my life, will have some chance of enduring. I want to die with hope, believing that my teenage son and his children and your children and their children will live in a world that is reasonably hospitable to human beings.

I don’t know how that can happen if people will not face the reality of what is taking place in the world. So, I continue to sound the alarm, even though I know that most of what I write is discounted as alarmist or simply ignored as too uncomfortable to deal with.

What follows is a post that I published on Daily Kos on November 12, 2007. It was an early attempt to explain my motivation in writing about Climaticide. At the end of the original post you’ll find a NOTE with an Update

My doctor doesn’t think I’m going to die today [published November 12, 2007

A day or two ago he wasn't so sure.

Just about a year ago I was diagnosed with Mantle Cell Lymphoma (MCL), a very aggressive but relatively uncommon form of cancer (it affects only a few thousand people a year). This last year has been hard: months of chemotherapy followed by a very harsh, experimental form of radiation treatment and finally an autologous [using one's own cells that are harvested and then reintroduced] stem-cell transplant [PDF]. I’ve survived so far because I’ve had many great doctors and nurses and the support of my wife (herself a nurse practitioner), the wisest, smartest and kindest human being I have ever known. Even so, the average life expectancy for someone with my disease is only six years although that is up from three years a decade ago.

I’m in the hospital now because I have an acute intestinal infection. [See NOTE at end] One of the consequences of my stem-cell transplant is that, for at least a year, things that won’t even make you sick can kill me. A year from my transplant date I will get all my childhood immunizations again as all my acquired immunity was wiped out when my immune system was “reborn”.

So, you may be wondering, is this a diary about health care? No, this is a diary about global warming.

Before I came down with MCL I’d never been in a hospital except to visit ill family members and friends. I spent hours in the gym working out, went on long hikes in the mountains and desert, bicycled and kayaked and ate a mostly organic, vegetarian diet. To say that I was surprised to discover that I had cancer would be the grossest of understatements.

My initial response to learning that my life was likely to be shorter than I had expected was, not surprisingly, rather selfish. I thought about the time that I would lose with my family and friends, of the traveling that I would not get to do, of the books that I would not get to read.

But something else happened too: the world became more poignant to me. I’d always thought of myself as a caring, empathetic, compassionate person, but now I found suffering, cruelty, and abuse to be intolerable regardless of the form it took. Debeaked hens crammed into tiny cages and stacked in factory-farm warehouses, infants shaken to death by their parents because they wouldn’t stop crying, genocide in Darfur, my countrymen in Appalachia and on the Gulf Coast treated as if they lived in a Third World Country, Iraqis bombed by us and by Al Qaeda… It was all too much. I was feeling the world’s pain.

And I realized, pardon my presumption here, that I didn’t want to die with the world in such terrible shape, which, finally, brings me to global warming. Of all the insanities that bedevil human beings on this planet none is greater than global warming. Only all out nuclear war poses as grave a danger to the planet and human civilization. Ironically, the former, if we fail to check it, may lead to the latter–a two-for-one sale at the Armageddon store, if you like.

I’m not confident that we are going to survive this. I’m positive that we won’t survive unscathed because the harm has already begun and we still haven’t done anything to reduce CO2 emissions. And here’s the question that keeps haunting me: If we won’t stop genocide in Darfur or provide universal health coverage in the United States, two horrible but much simpler cruelties, why should any one think that we will deal adequately with global warming? We are already way behind and likely to fall farther behind because we have waited so long to begin and because the necessary sense of urgency is still not there. Witness the hearings in DC on S 2191, Joe Lieberman and John Warner’s trillion dollar giveaway to the nation’s biggest polluters. This is not a measure to stop global warming, it is simply “green” pork barrel politics. Business as usual in drag.

The changes required of us are enormous. A little biofuel and a few CFLs aren’t going to do it. We can no longer live as we have and we have only been able to live as we have because we have borrowed so much from the future. We are way over the limit on our Gaia Visa card and the penalties and fees are going to be enormous. We can’t declare bankruptcy either, because in this case bankruptcy equals death.

I love the earth. I have delighted in it for 53 years and I hope to live here for a while longer. My doctor has told me that I’m not going to die today and I’m glad. But if I have to die anytime soon it will be a lot easier if I can go knowing that we have truly accepted reality and are making the radical changes in how we live that are required. If we take the necessary measures to stop global warming and to live sustainably the world that our children and grandchildren will live in will be unrecognizably different from our own. And if we don’t take those necessary measures the world that our children and grandchildren will live in will also be unrecognizably different from our own.

NOTE: [Actually, as it turned out, things were much worse than that--after weeks in the hospital, my doctors finally discovered that I had acute myeloid leukemia (AML) an extremely aggressive form of leukemia that people often get as a result of the chemotherapy and radiation that they received as treatment for an earlier form of cancer, in my case, lymphoma. The doctors hadn't been able to figure out what was wrong with me because treatment related AML, if it shows up up at all, normally appears about 5 years after transplant; in my case it only took 5 months. Since the AML diagnosis, I have had a second transplant, this time an allogeneic one (using a donor's cell's) PDF), which failed, and experimental chemotherapy treatment that also failed. I am currently on palliative care (care which is designed to keep the leukemia at bay for as long as possible, but which offers no possibility of remission.) Obviously, this is not the outcome we had hoped for, and there are times when I am frightened, but most of all I feel even more urgently the need to write and get the word out about Climaticide. You see, I am running out of time, but so are all of you. It will be such a shame if you do not act, because you still have a chance. Please do not let it slip away, for all your sakes and for mine--JR.]

Crossposted at Daily Kos

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Posted in Activism, climate change, Climaticide, environment, ethics, global warming, health | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: patriotdaily | February 5, 2009

Avoiding Water Wars and Feces Waters

Our government is setting us up for a life of water wars between communities and between people and wildlife. We need to stop thinking that solutions to water shortages in a climate change world can be solved by resolutions used in the past in a pre-climate change world. Resolutions beneficial for isolated droughts, isolated dust storms, isolated flooding or isolated extreme storms will not prepare us for multiple extreme events of greater intensity, frequency and widening geographic scope. Instead, we need to discuss how to prep for living in a climate change world where our finite water supplies will become so stretched that water wars will be commonplace unless we take action now to develop a national water supply policy designed to minimize or avert climate change impacts on our water resources.

Climate change is here now. Western States are heating up at almost twice the rate of the rest of world. A recent federal government report found climate change is now affecting our water resources. Nationwide there has been higher precipitation and streamflow except for the West and Southwest, which suffer increased drought, reduced mountain snowfields and earlier spring snowmelt runoffs. In parts of our nation, water resources are presently over-allocated and scarce. At least 36 states will face water shortages in the next 5 years as supplies decrease due to drought, rising temperatures, population and inefficient management.

Other impacts on water resources include an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme storms. Sea levels will continue to rise (parts of California coastline already lost) and “exacerbate storm surge flooding and shoreline erosion.” Rainfall patterns are “already shifting” due to GHG, and continuing climate change will cause extreme rains to be stronger and more frequent than previously forecasted. A recent study concluded that “[f]or every 1.8 degree Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) rise in global temperature, heavy rain showers became more common, with most intense category jumping 60 percent.” Such extreme rains could make “floods fiercer” as the earth can not absorb the water.

Communities are also prepping for the now inevitable increased water scarcity caused by climate change by passing laws to try to keep water supplies in their area. For example, Bush will sign into law the proposed Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact which protects the Great Lakes area by banning water transfers to any area outside of the basin. The objective is to prevent water being sold to the Southwest or Asia as many may soon “covet their vast quantities of water for an increasingly thirsty world.” Water law is generally based on doctrines designed to keep water in the watershed so that the basin is replenished. However, water hunters will not adhere to laws. Rather than battening down the hatches, we need to develop a national water policy that creates more water supplies so that all have affordable water.

As water supplies decrease, there is less water to apportion amongst the various users of a supply, including wildlife. Courts are willing to turn off the pumps to people in order to force compliance with the law or to maintain sufficient instream flows to protect endangered or threatened species. In 2001, the federal government shut off water to Oregon farmers because a drought-induced shortage mandated higher levels of instream flows for endangered fish in compliance with the Endangered Species Act, thus reducing water available for people. The farmers fought a mini-war for their livelihoods:

Farmers and their families, furious and fearing for their livelihoods, formed a symbolic 10,000-person bucket brigade. Then they took saws and blowtorches to dam gates, clashing with U.S. marshals as water streamed into the canals that fed their withering fields, before the government stopped the flow again.

Aside from the ecological impact, such decisions also affect our food supply and individual livelihoods. Cheney stepped in to tinker with the science so that instream uses were canned in favor of diverting water to the farmers. The collateral consequences of this tinkering were 77,000 dead salmon, the federal government declared a “commercial fishery failure”, Congress provided disaster aid of $60 million to the fishermen and $15 million to farmers to not farm in order to reduce water usage.

Our government knows that “chronic water shortages, dramatic population growth, and aging water facilities” are not only “increasing the potential for conflict over water resources around the nation,” but that “water wars have spread to the Midwest, East, and South.” Interior Secretary Kempthorne admitted that climate change and drought are creating conflicts now “within states, among states, between states and the Federal government and among environmentalists and state and Federal agencies.”

One federal report finds that “increased water use efficiency” can “help mitigate” climate change impacts on water resources. Mitigate? Clearly, efficient water use and management practices can help, but are not the answer to our water crisis.

One California county is now serving up “drinking” water created from sewage that is treated by a number of processes and chemicals.

The county was forced to turn sewage into “drinking” water because there were no other available water supplies due to saltwater intrusion caused by overpumping the groundwater basin in the hunt for water. Saltwater intrusion will increase with climate change, degrading more water supplies. Additional considerations leading to drinking sewage water include the drought, rising cost of importing water, and the difficulty of finding water. As the hunt for water continues and climate change impacts decrease available supplies, more communities (Los Angeles, San Diego, DeKalb County, GA, Miami-Dade County) are now considering turning our sewage into water. Is this the best we can do?

Mobile National Aqueduct Capture, Storage & Water Creation Proposal

This proposal only addresses new water supplies from captured, developed and conserved waters and does not address allocation of existing water supplies. We need a national water policy that is developed with certain principles in mind. One, past remedies that worked in a pre-climate change world may not work in a climate-change world. Two, water is a public trust resource for each person and the right to affordable drinking water is a human right. Three, dividing the allocation of water supplies by region or economics will encourage conflicts and wars rather than unifying all toward our common goal of providing a necessity of life. Four, climate change should not be the excuse for killing wildlife by depriving them of water needed to survive. Five, climate change should not be the excuse for exempting compliance with environmental laws. And, six, the interrelationship of climate change impacts needs to be considered and reconciled rather than focusing on resolutions for one impact as a mutually exclusive event to the detriment of a coordinated policy. For example, allowing oil companies to destroy wetlands to provide energy ignores the beneficial functions of wetlands as buffers to storm surges.

My proposal is to construct a mobile national aqueduct with hubs in the Northeast, South, Texas, Midwest and California. The hubs would have a reservoir system to store and treat water. There would be a mobile capture system to collect floodwaters and stormwaters for conveyance to the reservoirs. When there is a strong storm event, such as extreme rainfall or hurricane, the system would capture the excess waters in towns and farms and convey by pipeline to the reservoirs. The mobility of the aqueduct and local capture systems would enable relocation around the country as weather patterns change or storm events are forecasted so that the system was in place before the storm.

The reservoirs would be filled with natural rainfall waters, captured storm waters, developed waters and conserved waters so that our existing water supply would be increased by new water sources. Conserved water is water that was developed as a new water supply that was not previously part of the water allocation system. For example, if a farmer is irrigating by an earthern ditch, much water is lost to seepage. However, if the farmer lines the ditch with concrete, then the seepage water is conserved and may be used to water crops, thus decreasing the amount of water that the farmer needs from the general allocation system, and freeing up some of that water to be allocated to another beneficial user.

Developed waters, such as the use of desalination plants, could be added to the national reservoir system. Technology has also provided us with mobile water creation facilities which capture water vapors and dew to develop additional water supplies. These water creation devices are being used in Iraq to supply water to our troops and in Israel. The mobility of the facilities enables placement throughout the US in areas conducive to the most efficient creation of water, and then this developed water can be stored in the hub reservoir system during times of low water production from natural events.

Water creation devices will not only provide potable water, but also may prevent some of the severe rainfalls or decrease the intensity. As our temperatures increase, the air becomes warmer, and warmer air holds more moisture. This moister air will mean more heavy rainfalls. If we create water from air, we may reduce the moisture content of the air, and perhaps reduce the predicted more severe rainfalls.

We also need legislative changes to stop harming our existing water supplies. To cite just a few examples, we have a finite natural water supply, yet Bush has changed the law to legalize the dumping of waste into streams, wetlands and waterways as waste dump sites as long as man-made streams are “created” to “replace” natural stream systems killed by the waste.

We also need legislation to provide defenses against climate change events. For example, we need to protect our wetlands that serve many functions, including a natural buffer from storm surges from hurricanes and tropical storms.

Waters stored at the national reservoir system would then be available for transfer by the national aqueduct to areas in need. If Texas or the Midwest was experiencing drought, then those states could buy water. Guidelines may be established so that water transfers must comply with reasonable water laws, such as the Constitutional requirement in California to avoid waste of water and that all water be used for beneficial purposes. Guidelines may also require that areas requesting transfers impose conservation requirements on water users.

There are several benefits from my proposal:

1. Creating Additional Water Supplies with Captured, Conserved and Developed Waters. Given that our existing water supplies are dwindling, we need to create new water supplies rather than fight over the little water available in our streams, rivers and lakes.

2. Avoidance of water wars. Communities are already prepping for hoarding water to a specific geographic area, but not all communities have that option. Moreover, it is not likely that the hoarded water supplies will be sufficient given climate change and population increases. We need to remember that the right to drinking water is a human right of a natural resource which is essential for life. Water wars in the past have often been motivated by allocation of supplies when there has been a shortage. The nature of the shortage around the corner will dwarf the past. Finally, we need to remember that in some jurisdictions, like California, a water right is a usufructuary interest or a right to the use of the water, not a right to the corpus or molecules of the water. The corpus of the water is owned by the state on behalf of all the people as a public trust resource existing for the benefit of all.

3. Saving lives and property. Each year, storm events kill and injure people, kill animals, and damage or destroy homes and businesses. A water recapture system may minimize or possibly eliminate some of these devastating impacts from storm events.

4. Economic benefits. The national aqueduct would be expensive but could be paid from the returns of reducing or knocking out current expenditures to address the economic damages from storm events. Each year, the federal government spends millions or more to pay for the reconstruction, recovery and damages from storm events. Why not use this money to create a system to prevent the need for recovery?

In addition, there are collateral economic consequences from extreme climate events. When we have a drought in Texas, the Midwest or California, this affects the agricultural industry, which means less food produced and price increases. If we have a national aqueduct, then when Texas has a drought, Texas could buy water transfers from one of the national water hubs thus preventing harmful human and economic impacts from the shortage.

This is a preliminary proposal, but we need to start thinking about doing the best we can to live in a climate change world, rather than just waiting and watching as things become worse.

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Posted in climate change, Climaticide | Tags: ,

Posted by: JohnnyRook | February 4, 2009

Senate Wants Us to Buy Cars Because They’re Stupid And Think We Are Too

The Senate voted yesterday 71-26 to give tax breaks to Americans who buy new cars. They don’t have to be PHEVs, EVs or even cars that just get better than average gas mileage. No, nearly any new car will do. The amendment to the already bloated, Senate version of the economic stimulus bill was proposed by Senator Barbara Mikulski D-Md. According to the amendment anyone purchasing a passenger car, minivan or light truck between November 12, 2008 (that’s right it’s a retroactive tax cut!) and December 31, 2009 would be entitled to an income tax rebate on their sales or excise tax as well as on the interest on their loan. Individual buyers earning up to $125,000 and couples making up to $250,000 would be able to take the sales tax on the first $49,500 of a car’s price off of their federal income taxes.

Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus D-Mt, who opposed the measure, estimated that it would add $11 billion to the Senate version of the stimulus bill raising it’s total price tax to almost 900 billion.

Can anyone conceive of a more stupid piece of legislation? Just as has happened with the finance and banking sectors, the American taxpayer has poured billions of dollars into the American automobile industry, while getting next to nothing in return. This legislation does nothing to change that. It does nothing to stop the idiotic way that the Detroit automotive manufacturers have operated. Rather it encourages them to continue business as usual, and Americans to buy the same old inefficient, polluting cars that threatens us with climate disaster. As those of us on the climate-left have been arguing and as Obama himself has said on many an occasion, this stimulus bill, is supposed to be a green stimulus bill. It is supposed to stimulate the economy while also beginning the fundamental process of converting it to one that is sustainable and green. The stimulus bill and the climate bill to come are supposed to work in tandem to save both our economic system and our climatological one.

Yet so far, there are few signs that that is what is going to happen. Like the Wall Street bailout, the Stimulus Bill is threatening to become just another way to take money from the pockets of the American taxpayer (actually the American taxpayer’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren) and transfer it to the corporate incompetents who created the messes, both financial and climatological, in which we find ourselves.

As Paul Krugman wrote a couple of days ago:

When I read recent remarks on financial policy by top Obama administration officials, I feel as if I’ve entered a time warp — as if it’s still 2005, Alan Greenspan is still the maestro, and bankers are still heroes of capitalism.

“We have a financial system that is run by private shareholders, managed by private institutions, and we’d like to do our best to preserve that system,” says Timothy Geithner, the Treasury secretary — as he prepares to put taxpayers on the hook for that system’s immense losses.

Meanwhile, a Washington Post report based on administration sources says that Geithner and Lawrence Summers, President Barack Obama’s top economic adviser, “think governments make poor bank managers” — as opposed, presumably, to the private-sector geniuses who managed to lose more than a trillion dollars in the space of a few years.

And this prejudice in favor of private control, even when the government is putting up all the money, seems to be warping the administration’s response to the financial crisis.

…

You might think, then, that if banks currently can’t or won’t raise enough capital from private investors, the government should do what a private investor would: Provide capital in return for partial ownership.

But bank stocks are worth so little these days — Citigroup and Bank of America have a combined market value of only $52 billion — that the ownership wouldn’t be partial: Pumping in enough taxpayer money to make the banks sound would, in effect, turn them into publicly owned enterprises.

My response to this prospect is: So? If taxpayers are footing the bill for rescuing the banks, why shouldn’t they get ownership, at least until private buyers can be found? But the Obama administration appears to be tying itself in knots to avoid this outcome.

…

There’s more at stake here than fairness, although that matters, too. Saving the economy is going to be very expensive: That $800 billion stimulus plan is probably just a down payment, and rescuing the financial system, even if it’s done right, is going to cost hundreds of billions more. We can’t afford to squander money giving huge windfalls to banks and their executives, merely to preserve the illusion of private ownership.

As regards the automobile industry, Micheal Moore has argued, correctly, that the best thing the government could do is to nationalize it.

These auto execs don’t deserve a dime. Fire all of them, and take over the industry for the good of the workers, the country and the planet.

…I care about what happens with the Big Three because they are more responsible than almost anyone for the destruction of our fragile atmosphere and the daily melting of our polar ice caps [actually, it's coal, Michael, but we can talk about that later. You're right, though, that that the Big Three CEOs are major villains in the Climaticide story].

Congress must save the industrial infrastructure that these companies control and the jobs they create. And it must save the world from the internal-combustion engine. This great, vast manufacturing network can redeem itself by building mass transit and electric/hybrid cars and the kind of transportation we need for the 21st century. [trains, why, in hell, isn't Detroit building high-speed, electric trains?--JR] [emphasis--JR]

The point that both Krugman and Moore are making is that we are shelling out huge sums on these bailout and stimulus plans, sums that, if they are wasted (is there any doubt that to a great extent they already have been?), will have done nothing to fundamentally change the economic system that has brought us to the verge of financial collapse and civilization-killing Climaticide.

When we finally do decide to become serious about changing that economic system and stopping global warming (things that cannot be done in isolation) we may not have the resources to do what is necessary because we will have already frittered that money away on precipitous, poorly monitored schemes for saving incompetent and morally bankrupt CEOs, tax cuts that do nothing to promote modern, green infrastructure and and asinine measures such as that proposed by Senator Mikulski, which prop-up our current, failed system and pander to the ignorant voters who have yet to understand that what is at stake here is not just their jobs, but where they will be able to live, how likely they will be to die of heat stroke, exotic diseases and famine, and whether they will go to war over ever scarcer basic necessities such as food and water.

Crossposted at Daily Kos

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Posted in Climaticide, global warming, Obama administration, Politics, Public Policy | Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: JohnnyRook | February 4, 2009

Climate Denial Crock of the Week 2/03/09

Here is the latest video in greenman3610′s (Peter Sinclair’s) great series Climate Denial Crock of the Week.

You can see all of Sinclair’s video’s here.

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Posted in Activism, climate change, climate science, Climaticide, environment, global warming | Tags: , , , , , , ,

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