About the climate change in Congress, and what we need to do
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Posted on November 10, 2006
Filed Under Global warming/Climate change, Deep ecology, Greenhouse gas emissions, Ecological hope, Fossil fuel dependency, Environmental disasters, Earth spirituality, Ecology of war and peace
Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:
[WARNING: This is a very long post-election post. Felt the need to do this.]
When the new Congress is sworn in next January, we will have our best hope in recent memory to open a national conversation on what needs to be done to address the threatening reality of global warming and the resulting climate change. The world has been obsessed with studies and reports lately, one more dire than the next. They are important, and they need to continue. But they can no longer be allowed to take the place of action.
One recent example is the report just released by a group of German scientists in which they say the world must begin planning now for the relocation of millions of sea-level residents as their communities begin to be inundated by rising seas. This includes entire island nations, like Tuvalu, which has become practically an icon of our dark future.
So should we study this some more before making plans? The problem with climate change is that you can’t predict exactly what will happen and when, but if you wait until the bad thing happens, it is way, way too late.
So what are our signs of hope in this new political context?
Not least — Representative Richard Pombo will soon be gone. Dubbed by some as the ‘eco-nightmare,’ Pombo has been chairing the House Resources Committee, a cynical assignment if ever there was one. From that position, he has worked diligently to try to destroy national parks, overturn the Endangered Species Act, allow drilling everywhere, and more. Then he got caught with his hand in Jack Abramoff’s pocket. Oops!
He will be replaced by clean energy expert, Jerry McNerney. Congratulations to the people of the California 11th district who worked so hard for this. You have done the Earth a great favor.
Meanwhile, over in the Senate, the new chair of the Committee on Environment and Public Works is Sen. Barbara Boxer, among the greenest national politicans in the country. She vigorously opposed drilling in the Alaska wilderness and has been a big booster of California’s efforts to cut carbon emissions. The conversation in that committee is going to change and I, for one, look forward to some substantive hearings and debates in the committee.
Also in the Senate, less than two weeks before the elections, two Senators wrote a letter to the CEO of Exxon Mobil, Rex Tillerson, demanding that the company stop funding climate science deniers in a campaign to sow confusion among the public. They are John Rockefeller (D-WV) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME). Room to work here for those of you in WV and ME.
It is unlikely that any truly substantive legislation will become law while Bush is president, though we could perhaps see increases in government support for alternative green technologies (especially solar and wind) and at least a cut in the subsidies to the oil industry. But Bush is adamant that he will not support any but voluntary incentives to cut carbon emissions for corporations. However, groundwork could be laid in this debate to make global warming a top election campaign issue in 2008.
What is at stake? I just want to list a few exampless to make the stakes clear:
Exxon Mobil has been funding a campaign to counter the science on climate change, as noted above. Meanwhile, in October the company reported quarterly profits of $10.49 billion! This represents “the second largest quarterly profit ever posted by a publicly traded American company. The largest on record was also reported by ExxonMobil — $10.71 billion in the fourth quarter of 2005.”
Meanwhile, President Bush has just named the recently retired CEO of Exxon Mobil, Lee Raymond, now chair of the National Petroleum Council, to head a study that will look into the clean energy needs of the US. Yup, makes ya’ wanna’ laugh ’til you cry…
And then there’s this, an article cited previously on this blog — budgets to address global warming are falling rather than rising. We are devoting fewer funds to this crisis than before Bush became president. This needs to change and we may finally have a Congress willing to do so.
Finally, there is the element of global conflict. The war in Iraq has always been about oil, always. The plan for permanent bases, already being constructed, is about securing US access to one of the world’s largest oil reserves. The US is forcing the Iraq government to open its oil industry, to ‘go public,’ allowing US oil companies to buy in.
After years of denial, Bush has finally admitted as much, but with the scare that if we don’t control the oil, terrorists will, and then hold the market hostage. Some would argue that this is a good reason to wean ourselves as quickly as possible from our oil dependency. But for Bush, it is another prescription for endless war.
So, much at stake. There’s work to do. Between now and January it is important for all of us to let this new Congress know how we feel, what we want, and what we expect them to do to begin reversing the accelerating destruction of our biosphere.
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