The Enthusiasm Gap in the White House

[Joanne98]

I got to see the now-famous enthusiasm gap up close and personal last week, and it wasn't a pretty sight.

The backstory: I help run a global warming campaign called 350.org. In mid-summer, we decided to organize an effort to ask world leaders to put solar panels on the roofs of their residences. It was to be part of the lead-up to a gigantic Global Work Party on October 10th (10-10-10), and a way to give prime ministers and politburos something easy to do in the hope of getting the fight against global warming slowly back on track. One of those crucial leaders is, of course, Barack Obama, who stood by with his arms folded this summer while the Senate punted on climate-change legislation. We thought this might be a good way for him to signal that he was still committed to change, even though he hadn't managed to pass new laws.

And so we tracked down the solar panels that once had graced the White House roof, way back in the 1970s under Jimmy Carter. After Ronald Reagan took them down, they'd spent the last few decades on the cafeteria roof at Unity College in rural Maine. That college's president, Mitch Thomashow, immediately offered us a panel to take back to the White House. Better still, he encouraged three of his students to accompany the panel, not to mention allowing the college's sustainability coordinators to help manage the trip.

And so, on the day after Labor Day, we set off in a biodiesel college van. Solar road trip! Guitars, iPods, excellent snack food, and for company, the rock star of solar panels, all 6 x 3-feet and 140 pounds of her. We pulled into Boston that first night for a rally at Old South Church, where a raucous crowd lined up for the chance to sign the front of the panel, which quickly turned into a giant glass petition. The same thing the next night in New York, and then DC, with an evening at one of the city's oldest churches headlined by the Reverend Lennox Yearwood, head of the Hip-Hop Caucus.

It couldn't have been more fun. Wherever we could, we'd fire up the panel, pour a gallon of water in the top, point it toward the sun, and eight or nine minutes later you'd have steaming hot water coming out the bottom. Thirty-one years old and it worked like a charm -- a vexing reminder that we've known how to do this stuff for decades. We just haven't done it.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/Bill-McKibben-The-Enthusi-by-Tom-Engelhardt-100916-694.html

[Lost4words]

1. Warning, this post may anger our corporate overlords!

wouldn't want to do that,.....

[molly77]

2. Blessings to you

There is a lot of money to be made in utilities. That and only that is the reason for the US to lag behind other countries.

[Lost4words]

3. You know it, and they have stifled innovation and progress in favor

of maintaining their massive profits to the detriment of all.
:hi:

[FredStembottom]

4. Oh dear... here comes the usual DU fight!

I already have all the names in my head that will be appearing below. With all kinds of replies going off diagonally. I know what will be yelled - every word of it.... and I'm tired.

This administration divides us. At every opportunity.

Let's not kill each other like they seem to want. If Bill McKibbon can avoid it, so can we.

Let's hold our noses and re-elect all kinds of Democrats - merely to stave off the truly dangerous crazy of the other party.

Then, day after after the election, meet me here with your copy of The Progressives Guide to Raising Hell by Jamie Court.

We then get really, incredibly serious. We unite IN SPITE of the professional dividers in the Democratic party!

No more waiting. No more self-beatings.

We move.

[grasswire]

7. thank you for the motivational post

and double thanks (again) for the intersection of the spectacular Hiroshige and Lapham (my hero).

[FredStembottom]

9. Excellent!

I consider LL to be my hero as well.

[Uncle Joe]

5. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Joanne.

[yurbud]

6. This was the crux of it for me, and sums up how most of us feel about the Obama administration

Real people with no direct financial stake recommend the obviously correct policy choice, and the DLCers pat them on the head and tel them to go away--and then go collect the corporate bucks for dousing the public enthusiasm for real change.

One after another, respectfully but firmly, they asked a series of tough questions, and refused to be filibustered by yet another stream of administration-enhancing data. Here's what they wanted to know: if the administration was serious about spreading the word on renewable energy, why wouldn't it do the obvious thing and put solar panels on the White House? When the administrators proudly proffered a clipping from some interior page of the Washington Post about their "greening the government initiative," Amanda calmly pointed out that none of her neighbors read the Post, and that, by contrast, the solar panels had made it onto David Letterman.

To their queries, the bureaucrats refused to provide any answer. At all. One kept smiling in an odd way and saying, "If reporters call and ask us, we will provide our rationale," but whatever it was, they wouldn't provide it to us.

It was all a little odd, to say the least. They refused to accept the Carter panel as a historic relic, or even to pose for a picture with the students and the petition they'd brought with them. Asked to do something easy and symbolic to rekindle a little of the joy that had turned out so many of us as volunteers for Obama in 2008, they point blank said no. In a less than overwhelming gesture, they did, however, pass out Xeroxed copies of a 2009 memorandum from Vice President Biden about federal energy policy.

I can tell you exactly what it felt like, because those three students were brave and walked out graciously, heads high, and kept their tears back until we got to the sidewalk. And then they didn't keep them back, because it's a tough thing to learn for the first time how politics can work.

[ShamelessHussy]

10. a damn shame, but hats off to those organizers, WOW...

a brilliant idea, and superb execution... this is exactly the right tact to take, and exactly the right way to handle it, MLK, Ghandi-esque.

we need to demonstrate how even the most obvious things to do, will not be tolerated by our corporate masters... that will cut through all the confusion, and nonsense perpetrated by their spokespeople in and out of gov. on our airwaves.

and we use social media to spread the word.

thanks for sharing :toast:

[yurbud]

11. see the documentary WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR for a variation on that theme

It is equally crushing.

[Demeter]

8. Sigh (no message)