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To Obama and the EPA: The Threat Is Real, It's Time to Act
Over the next month, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is asking you and me, we the public, whether or not it should do something about the biggest threat to the global economy, world security, and human health. Not bank failures. Not terrorism. This is climate change.
For those of us who have been heeding years of warnings from experts about the likely effects of climate change—more Katrina-like hurricanes to come, ever fiercer wildfires in the West, more droughts like the ones we've seen recently in the Southeast, more outbreaks of diseases like malaria, and world food shortages and crop failures—and wondering when our leaders will finally, take a lead on reducing carbon emissions, it feels like it's about time. Maybe it's even the right time. If we consider the warnings of scientists, like NASA's James Hansen, who say we have just four years to take action before the problem becomes unsolvable and irrevocable, maybe it's the only time.
On Thursday in Seattle, the EPA holds one of only two public hearings in the country on greenhouse gas regulation. (The first was on Monday in Arlington, Virginia.) The hearings have gotten little press, and word has spread primarily through the internet. Still, 1,500 to 2,000 people or more are likely to hit the streets for a midday rally outside the Seattle hearing. People are coming from as far away as Nevada and California to attend, and climate organizers tell me that the EPA is overwhelmed by the number of people signed up to comment. It's unprecedented. The hearing starts at 9 a.m., and was scheduled to end at 8 p.m. But there were so many responses that the agency had to extend the evening. It may run as late as midnight.
The hearings are the end of a process that began in 2006 with Massachusetts v. EPA, a case in which 12 states, from New Mexico to Massachusetts, joined New York City, American Samoa, Baltimore, the District of Columbia, and a long list of health and environmental groups and sued to require the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that "the EPA's steadfast refusal to regulate greenhouse gas emissions presents a risk of harm ... that is both ‘actual' and ‘imminent.'" When I read the ruling, I am struck by how decisively the court lays out the risks of climate change, calling the dangers "well recognized" and pointing to a "strong consensus among qualified experts" and "severe and irreversible changes to natural ecosystems." Even in the right-leaning court, the majority says climate change means monumental danger.
The court ruling forces the EPA's hand—it has to act, unless Congress does first. New legislation to regulate greenhouse gases, introduced by Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), is moving rapidly through the House Energy and Commerce Committee. But already, Democrats from coal states are trying to weaken the bill and the timeline for emissions reductions.
Whether the regulation comes from Congress or the EPA, action needs to happen. It needs to be bold. It needs to hit scientific targets. It needs to happen now. That's what the ralliers will be saying this Thursday. They'll gather next to Elliot Bay, along a multibillion-dollar waterfront that may, according to scientists, be flooded by rising sea levels in years to come if our responses to climate change fall short.
Inside the hearing, the EPA will get an earful about why regulation is necessary—not only from environmentalists, but from Starbucks and Nike, local solar power and green building businesses, health advocates like Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Statewide Poverty Action Network, and churches, like the Evangelical Lutherans.
Interested?
The EPA will also take written comments through June 23, 2009. If you want to make your voice heard, the instructions are here: http://epa.gov/climatechange/endangerment/downloads/Instructions-comments.pdf
If you live in the Northwest, attend the rally. Find information here: http://cascade.sierraclub.org/node/2113
For more about the public hearing, which will be webcast on Thursday, visit this link: http://epa.gov/climatechange/endangerment.html
- Posted in
18 Comments so far
Show AllYes! please. Let us now discuss the undeclared Corporate/Government WAR ON NATURE. The profit at any price mentality that we admire so much. Without counting the cost we all pay for profiteers gains. You all have a good day, now you hear. Waste not/Climate change not. get it?
The biggest threat to world security and human health is your average American and the lifestyle that it represents. Take mass consumerism and project this out to the populations of China and India and you will have a planet that will sink under the weight of the human race. Compound that with the fact that half the world's population lives on $2 a day or less, is uneducated and continues to breed like there is no tomorrow and you can see the real threat to world security and human health.
Drive the speed limit. Don't buy that next shiny piece of plastic crap that you see at the store. These are two concrete things an American can do about global warming.
The author should shut her mouth and show some patience. It has only been 4 months since Obama has been in office. He and Congress are trying to repair the damage Bush brought on the environment in the last 8 years. I would also like to remind you that if it were not for these stupid Naderites in 2000, Al Gore would have been president for two terms and the climate crisis would have been resolved. 2000 should have taught us the invaluable lessons of being too much of a purist crybaby. Right now, solving these problems is not easy and there will need to be compromises and negotiations. Obama is doing all that he can. The public will have to learn to cooperate or keep their big mouths shut air tight !
GW Bush stole the election in 2000. He did not win.
He would have stolen it whether or not people had voted for Nader.
The problem of voting for the lesser of two evils is that you just might get what you vote for. The only way we have a hope overcoming the two party monopoly is to vote for third parties. The problem is not that some people voted for Nader. The problem is that too many people wasted their votes on Bush and Gore and did not vote for their first choice. And even if people voted their conscience and Nader did not win, it shows the rest of the voters how many people are fed up with corporate control of our government. Both Bush/Cheney and Gore/Liberman place the corporations first, America and the environment second.
Joe Hope? Is that you?
I couldn't find any posts of his for the last two months and I have more archives to search. What happened to him? I used to support him but as my support of Obama has lessened over these past 4 months, I'm feeling even more regretful that I voted for Obama and wished that I had listened to my wife and also vote Nader with her. :(
Terrance Mitchell
Redfield, South Dakota
Commondreamers,
Beyond the hysteria over the earth's changing climate are a number of factors to keep in mind. And, while I strongly support organic agriculture (we own an organic farm / ranch in Colorado), clean energy, the conservation of natural resources and the preservation of wilderness, please consider that if the use of fossil fuels are seriously curbed in the near term, there will be social chaos and collapse like never before witnessed. Are you prepared for what will come if the supermarket shelves are near empty?
Here's one such factor to consider ..... industrialized agriculture with all of it's herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers - which allows enormous populations of urbanites to ponder things like global warming and the latest Indie film and the newest micro-brewed beer and have job titles like "consultant" and "senior editor" - produces vast amounts of cheap food, processes it and transports it to the supermarket where you can purchase it.
Now, if your reasoning, but I only buy organic peas, consider that if organic agriculture produced the nation's / world's food supply, most of you would starve to death in short order. Organic agriculture is a low producing, high quality and labor intensive enterprise. And if your thinking about now ... it'll be someone else that starves .... that's just what they are thinking, too.
The earth is getting warmer, and likely, human activity is a cause. So be it. Remain sane, go green and adapt to the change the best you can.
By-the by, to all you dreamy-headed socialists out there who have never even raised a garden ... you'd best consider the history of collective-socialized agriculture. It has been an ecological / humanitarian disaster.
Some organic food doesn't leave you as hungry since your body is supposed to absorb more of the vitamins and minerals that are otherwise lost in conventionally processed versions. Organic is best done locally.
The tricky thing for those of us in the North Country USA, is getting that good local produce in the winter. Our only hope there is if global warming kicks in big time...just kidding. To me, it would seem possible with modern technology, to have a fast train setup to deliver truck containers full of produce to a limited number of drop-off points around the nation, and then be trucked short distances to local markets. This could greatly reduce fuel use and carbon pollution.
Maybe if you'd eat some organic food yourself and get some OMEGA 3s in your corn-fed brain, you wouldn't be trolling so idiotically like you've been doing today !
"Beyond the hysteria over the earth's changing climate are a number of factors to keep in mind. And, while I strongly support organic agriculture (we own an organic farm / ranch in Colorado), clean energy, the conservation of natural resources and the preservation of wilderness, please consider that if the use of fossil fuels are seriously curbed in the near term, there will be social chaos and collapse like never before witnessed. Are you prepared for what will come if the supermarket shelves are near empty?"
You sound like Ben Bernanke when he went to the senate and congress for his 700 billion bailout. "There will be no economy on Monday if you don't hand over the cash." Let me call your bluff. We need to get serious about eliminating our use of fossil fuels. We need to invest in solar, wind and nuclear. We need to invest in mass transit. We need to do all these things yesterday. Funny how the status quo arguments still have us sitting on our hands.
I'm prepared to cut the knees off of big oil, big coal and wall street. Let the chips fall where they may. It beats driving off a capitalist cliff.
Lefty May,
Thank you for your response. Yes! Stop sitting on your hands ... by all means. We aren't. We own and co-manage an organic farm / ranch in Colorado, we are active members of the Wilderness Society, in the summer, we lead lower-48 urbanites (mostly) on ecology hikes in SE Alaska, we support Hwange National Park and it's people in Zimbabwe and sponsor orphans through Hearts-For-Zambia in Zambia. Presently, we're trying to lease a parcel of our ranchland in Colorado to a California based wind power company.
Please define "status quo" for me.
Widhalm19 sez: "The earth is getting warmer, and likely, human activity is a cause. So be it."
Compelling remarks, Widhalm!
Those two sentences basically nullify your condescending posting. Obviously, you haven't taken stock of the devastating consequences that an increase in a few degrees of the temperature of Earth's atmosphere can have. If that should happen, you and many, if not most, of us will die. Just a matter of time.
Abendland,
Thank you for your response. To the contrary, sir, I have taken stock of the situation. My wife and I spend our summers working as field guides in SE Alaska. All of the glaciers here are in retreat. Global warming is here and it is real. Yet, drastic actions will most likely have drastic consequences. Are you prepared for that?
Abenland, do your research and learn how dependent post-Modern civilization is on fossil fuels for energy and food production. It will take time and patience to develop alternatives. Doom and gloom and hysteria does not help.
many things grow wild in the world, plant and animal, that are edible and nutritious, but not usually found on the average American grocery store's shelf, or the average American's dinner table...one can starve to death while surrounded by edibles, if one stubbornly holds to a given perspective...of course, if we oversee the death of the majority of the living material here, this won't really matter...
well so much for civility on this story and only 14 posts as rome quickly burns.the real
squibbling going on at cd today was else where. so much for priorities!
The same adherence to capital growth orthodoxy that dug us most deeply into climate change crises (at least the portion of the problem that the human race has any control over, and assuming that humans have much control over the kinds of appetites that created these crises) threatens to undo Obama's and any other waffling politician's or global political leader's most altruistic aims. Historically, ignoring the limits of growth has resulted in the collapse of many civilizations, nations and social orders. Now we are seeing how that law may impact the entire globe.
Unfortunately, what I detect is the capitalized elites' scramble to propose, invent rationale and illusive fantasy tools, and promote without basis, the ability of the infinite growth paradigm to surmount, through growth, the barriers to growth being demonstrated most graphically by the climate and extinction crises. They will only deal with climate change in ways that they think will pay. And most tellingly: ways that will pay them!
As a result, so far in the US what we have gotten out of one of the more recent proofs of the limits to growth is a bailout plan than takes money from the vast majority of lower wage earners to prop up the incomes of those few who are most committed to, and benefit most from, this scientifically unsubstantiated and dangerous denial of growth as a finite occurrence and possibility, at least within the finite boundaries of a Newtonian organism like the earth. And friendly planets or cities on the moon aren't really forthcoming within the next few decades (One thinks of the "off planet" solution in "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" by Phillip Dick). Oh yeah. By the way: Beam me up Scotty.
Interestingly enough, to play with that sci fi fantasy world a bit, it is highly unlikely that any significant space travel and exploration will occur unless the limits to growth on earth are more acknowledged, managed and worked with.
Until there is a very real and concrete acknowledgement that the limits of growth must dictate what and how capitalized systems are practiced, nothing useful will be done or implemented. Unfortunately Obama is trying, ineffectively, to satisfy both the capital elites and those who believe that he is interested in real change... as if those two groups have equal numbers and their votes are equal, one per person.
My unauthorized (and unedited) copy and paste of contents of a joint letter from Australian Climate Scientists, signed by
David Karoly
Professor, University of Melbourne and Lead Author, IPCC Fourth Assessment Report
Barry Brook
Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change, University of Adelaide
We are writing to you regarding the urgent issue of climate change. We are all closely involved in
producing and reviewing climate change science and are extremely concerned about the state of the
global climate system.
The warming of the atmosphere, driven by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases, is already
causing unacceptable damage and suffering around the world. Evidence is mounting that climate change
is occurring faster than previously predicted and we are perilously close to a number of tipping points
which, if passed, would amplify the effects of climate change and make it much more difficult to bring
further warming under control. We cannot emphasise enough just how serious the situation has become.
As you will be aware, the burning of coal is the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in
Australia, with more than 80% of Australia’s electricity coming from coal-fired power stations.
Emissions from Australian coal-fired power stations are a small but significant contribution to total
global emissions, which are directly causing sea level rise and resulting in impacts such as the flooding
of coastal communities. Given the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, immediate attention
needs to be given to changing the way that we use and produce energy. The British government,
recognizing the need for these changes, has just announced that no new coal-fired power stations will be
built in Britain unless they capture and bury at least 25 per cent of emitted greenhouse gases immediately
and 100 per cent by 2025.
Unfortunately, the development of carbon capture and storage technology is not sufficiently advanced
and is unlikely to be deployable within the timeframe necessary to cut emissions in order to avoid
unacceptable levels of greenhouse gas concentrations and associated warming.
It is our considered view that no new coal-fired power stations, except ones that have ZERO emissions,
should be allowed to be commissioned in Australia. Furthermore, we need an urgent program to replace
existing coal plants with zero-carbon energy sources and energy efficiency programs as soon as possible.
We understand that this will require a significant social and economic transition that will need to be
managed carefully to care for coal sector workers and coal-dependent communities and to meet
Australia's energy needs both through the transition and in the longer term. However, given the climate
change imperative, this transition needs to proceed with the utmost urgency.
The unfortunate reality is that genuine action on climate change will require that existing coal-fired
power stations cease to operate in the near future. We feel it is vital that you understand this and we are
happy to work with you and with governments to begin planning for this transition immediately.
-- Panic NOW !