what if your president's just not that into you?

[niyad]

What if Your President's Just Not That Into You?
by Bill McKibben
. . . . . .

The first thing: those of us in the environmental movement aren't high school sophomores feeling jilted by their first crush. Most of us liked Obama a lot: I was among the first green leaders to join upon 'Environmentalists for Obama,' back when he seemed a longshot. It wasn't because I thought he would solve every problem; it's because I thought he'd make climate change one of the top two priorities of his presidency. And he thought so too: on the day in June of 2008 when he finally clinched the nomination he said that people would someday look back and say "this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."

. . . .

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.

. . . . .

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/04/15-11

[polichick]

1. Yep - as in other areas, he talks one game and plays another...

The Exelon/Obama connection:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-23/nuclear-illinois-helped-shape-obama-view-on-energy-in-dealings-with-exelon.html

[frazzled]

2. What if your Republican governor is 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/16envir...

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.

[TheKentuckian]

3. Whining about how "tough" it is doesn't change the fact that we have failed in our stewardship

of our world and are trading excuses on why we are screwing future generations.

Everything doesn't have the benefit of an eternal time scale. The loss of life, habitat, and the ever mounting expense of correction doesn't care about excuses for insane policies. We will be cursed in the darkness by future humans and deservedly so.

[frazzled]

4. And whining about stewardship doesn't change the fact ...

that--while ignoring completely the current radical political climate-- you choose to attack someone who, although he has failed to accomplish many of his goals, is still light years ahead of the previous (Republican) administration in addressing environmental issues. An evaluation of its record from this past October here:

http://greenanswers.com/blog/199381/taking-look-obamas-environmental-track-record

I'm not saying the two issues mentioned aren't significant. But if you expended half the energy directing your venom towards Congress and to the very real assaults happening right now across the nation with Republican governors, you'd accomplish a lot more.

[TheKentuckian]

8. Congress was the first target but regressive incumbents were protected by the administration

and the DNC.

The President had the chance to call them out and support efforts to elect better Democrats but sided with the "inside game" which bought him a lot of well earned crap.

He chose a side and now some folks want to use Congress as an excuse, the same Congress that he stood behind or defended as honest brokers with the best interests of the nation in mind.

Obama strengthens his enemies and gives them comfort while punching hippies to market himself to the folks that have applauded as they have taken the nation down the tubes.

Obama is a part of the problem like the rest of the lot.

The current political environment excuse is not going to save us, prevent mass extinctions, allow for plentiful food, or ensure clean air and water. Nor is crying about TeaPubliKlans when our fuckers also are tripping over their feet to expand deep water drilling, opening up more mining, and slow tracking alternatives, especially by keeping hemp illegal for no sane reason whatsoever.

Yeah, I'm going to "whine" about stewardship (something I don't see how it ever qualifies as whining to sane people with enough foresight to see the end of their noses) because physics trumps politics. No amount of resolutions is going to repeal gravity.

Nothing in politics is going to change my need for air, water, food, and land to exist on.

[Sheepshank]

10. +1

it's actually so simple to figure it out. I wonder why there are so many with extreme myopic, linear vision of how politics works?

[sudopod]

15. "Accept your beating or die" is no argument for accepting a beating. nt

[ReturnoftheDjedi]

5. What if you're just not worth the effort?

[treestar]

7. Yep, high maintenance.

One who is never satisfied soon tires out his or her would be friends.

[Forkboy]

12. I heard people say that about Nader voters.

Some of those same people now blame Nader voters for everything but the bubonic plague. They want to have it both ways. On one hand, these people aren't worth the effort, and on the other hand they're the cause of all the evil in the world (which should suggest to any sane human that perhaps they were worth the effort). I just wish people could make up their minds who is relevant and who isn't, and then stay consistent on it. Few do, especially here on DU, where I've seen people make both these argument within the same thread. :crazy:

[treestar]

6. Bad analogy. It's not a personal relationship.

It's not a one on one relationship.

[Arkana]

9. What if you're that crazy ex-girlfriend

who sits outside his house in her car, texts him a hundred times a day to tell him that everything he does is wrong and makes threats of bodily harm if he so much as talks to another woman?

[dsc]

11. gee that isn't a sexist post

no not at all.

[zigzag69]

13. Obama never struck me as the environmentalist type.

I don't know why the green people assumed so. Just because he said so during the campaign? All politicians lie and promise the world. I guess 'CHANGE' meant everything to everybody.

[Jakes Progress]

14. When the going got tough, he sat and watched.