Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:

Yesterday we presented examples of two different visions of our global climate crisis and the way to respond to it — one being denial, subterfuge, and self-interest, the other being fully facing the crisis and taking responsibility for it.

Then I visit the Washington Post online this morning and find this article, Federal Loans for Coal Plants Clash With Carbon Cuts.

Now here is denial writ large! Just as the world is finally beginning to deal seriously with the climate change crisis caused by global warming — which in turn is caused by our growing carbon emissions — we find Congress under assault by coal industry lobbyists to continue pouring our tax dollars into the dirtiest fossil fuel in the world, a decades-old loan program for rural electrification run through the Department of Agriculture.

Read this article carefully to see who is really benefitting from this. The Dallas suburbs? Something is wrong with this picture.

It also reveals the lethargy that builds into any system like this one — when drastic change is required, it is still easier to go on as we are.

Fortunately, this is something we CAN do something about — by putting pressure on members of Congress, by working in their home districts to stop this program of loaning money to the creation of more carbon emissions and therefore more global warming. Any supposed benefit that will come from this source of energy will quickly be overwhelmed by what climate change will do to all those areas beginning with this generation. If we think it simply cheaper and easier to go with coal, just think about how expensive and how hard life is going to be after a few more degrees of warming.

We need to get a whole lot more creative than this — one example might be to use this money instead to help rural communities and suburbs develop new locally produced and self-sustaining clean and renewable energy technologies, from solar to wind to geothermal and hydrological, depending on what is appropriate to the area.

Another would be to begin pricing coal according to its REAL costs by including so-called externalities — like the cost of environmental destruction in mining the coal (e.g., mountain-topping and surface mining) and the cost of the carbon emissions it produces (one way to do this is through a carbon tax, something we very much favor). If this were done while government loans and subsidies were removed from the industry, coal would get very expensive very quickly, making it far more economically attractive to move towards alternatives.

And then there’s the question of our lifestyles and our need to simply consume less energy. We can do this, too. All of us can.

As you will read in the WP article, some 3,000 lobbyists descended on Washington last week from the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association,to lobby to keep the loan program in place. That’s a lot of political fire power. And that’s why all the rest of us are needed, voters for the Earth, voters for a habitable planet, voters who care about the future of our kids and grandkids.

The terms of this political struggle are set pretty clearly here — these folks who want the government loan program to continue for coal-fired power plants in rural communities are out to oppose climate change legislation that would impact the coal industry.

The rest of us must be out to support legislation to save the planet. This would be a very good week to counter last week’s onslaught with calls to your legislators — from you, your churches, your community organizations — every voice is needed.

[tags] coal-fired power plants, National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, carbon emissions, carbon tax, dirty coal[/tags]