Bill McKibben - What If Your President's Just Not That Into You?

[hatrack]

EDIT

But when the political going got a little tough, Obama didn't. By all accounts he watched from the sidelines as the cap-and-trade law went down to defeat last summer. He famously allowed vast new leases for offshore oil drilling weeks before the BP explosion. In the last couple of weeks, the administration has ably defended the Clean Air Act against ham-handed Congressional assault. But they've also done two things really beyond the pale:

1) Opened 750 million tons of coal beneath federal land in Wyoming to mining. It makes one wonder if the president has really understood his climate science briefings: any hope of warding off global warming depends on keeping that carbon in the ground. Had this happened under Bush, it would have caused real outrage. When burned, that coal will give off as much co2 as opening 300 new coal-fired power plants and running them for a year.

2) Walked away from the global climate talks. His chief negotiator, Todd Stern, gave a little-noticed interview to Bloomberg News earlier this month. He said a global climate pact was both "not doable" and "unworkable." He added that "legally binding international obligations to cut emissions are not necessary," because individual nations could make their own pledges. This was pretty much the Bush administration formula, and it is amazing to hear it coming from Obama's officials. If they stick to it (and other countries follow their lead), there is no hope of dealing with global warming in time; it really will be the death knell of effective action.

And it underscores the reason that many of us are left wondering how to deal with the president. Climate change, above all issues, requires a transformative and not an incremental vision. We have fundamental change to make, and a very short window to make it in--Obama's typical (and often quite savvy) little-bit-at-a-time approach doesn't square with the physics and chemistry that govern this debate. It's that physics and chemistry that really trouble me. I understand political reality, and I'm glad I don't have Obama's job; it's tough. But I know that reality reality trumps political reality--I know that unless he shows some powerful leadership soon we're going to lose this fight. At which point the question of who's president will be less important.

Ed. - emphasis added.

EDIT/EDIT

http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2011-04-15/what-if-your-presidents-just-not-you

[frazzled]

1. What if your (Republican) governor is out actively raping your land?

I guess you didn't read today's big top-of-the-fold, front-page New York Times article. It should put things into perspective for you as to who the truly "bad" guys are.

G.O.P. Pushes to Deregulate Environment at State Level

Weeks after he was sworn in as governor of Maine, Paul LePage, a Tea Party favorite, announced a 63-point plan to cut environmental regulations, including opening three million acres of the North Woods for development and suspending a law meant to monitor toxic chemicals that could be found in children’s products.

Another Tea Party ally, Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, has proposed eliminating millions of dollars in annual outlays for land conservation as well as cutting to $17 million the $50 million allocated in last year’s budget for the restoration of the dwindling Everglades.

And in North Carolina, where Republicans won control of both houses of the Legislature for the first time in 140 years, leaders recently proposed a budget that would cut operating funds to the state’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources by 22 percent.

In the past month, the nation’s focus has been on the budget battle in Washington, where Republicans in Congress aligned with the Tea Party have fought hard for rollbacks to the Environmental Protection Agency, clean air and water regulations, renewable energy and other conservation programs.

But similar efforts to make historically large cuts to environmental programs are also in play at the state level as legislatures and governors take aim at conservation and regulations they see as too burdensome to business interests.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/16/science/earth/16enviro.html?_r=1&hp

The article gets worse from there. Read it. And give yourself something to really worry about. And understand how truly difficult climate change legislation is in this environment.