Overlooking reality will not help us limit the climate impacts

From an Article by Bill McKibben, Shana Gallagher, and Joseline Garcia, Common Dreams, September 2, 2022

We’re on a slippery slope of complete democratic collapse—and corresponding planetary collapse due to inaction on climate change—if we don’t act fast.

Young people — as revealed in poll after poll and conversation after conversation — despair of our democracy. Older people share some of that despair; until it happened, it was impossible for many of us to imagine American citizens trying to stage a coup. And yet, despite months of inaction, legislative packages now passing through Congress give those of us in college a glimmer of hope for a Washington that works for change, one that we’ve rarely seen in our lifetimes.

We older people have a gift to provide: the memory of a far more responsive political system, one we must rebuild again. When we were young, 20 million people marched on the first Earth Day in 1970—and the next year the Clean Air Act was passed and the Environmental Protection Agency formed. This is how politics is supposed to work, and it can again. It should not take catastrophic wildfires, fatal floods, and increasingly dire reports from scientists about the gravity of the climate crisis for legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act to pass. But a truly responsive and representative democracy will not be reborn without both corporations and politicians acting with courage, and without voters demanding that their representatives proactively work to fix our broken system rather than just maintaining the dysfunctional status quo.

The climate crisis and its ever abundant reality demonstrate this point in devastating and depressing ways. Our politicians have known about the reality of man-made climate change since the 1950s—but fossil fuel corporations have been working hard to deny this reality and spread misinformation for almost as long. Crucially, that hard work has involved cumulatively billions of dollars in spending on our politicians to block the will to pass climate policy. The result? A federal government that has gone the past 50 years without passing any federal climate policy despite America’s unparalleled contribution to carbon emissions and corresponding responsibility for action.

Even older Americans who still believe strongly in the promise of democracy would agree that dysfunction in our political system has gotten worse in our lifetimes. The multi-headed monster attacking our democracy—exorbitantly expensive campaign cycles, insufficient regulation on political spending and lobbying, partisan gerrymandering, and voter suppression—has grown several powerful teeth since 2010 with the demise of Citizens United. This decision by the Supreme Court to equate money with speech and remove limits to PAC and Super PAC spending was a major blow to the will of the people winning out over corporate influence.

The consequences have been drastic: in 2008, the election cycle prior to Citizens United being overturned, the financial activity for all Senate candidates came in at $499,354,330, and $1,741,970,535 for all Presidential candidates. Twelve years later, in 2020, financial activity for all Senate candidates was a whopping $2,005,771,999, and $3,977,441,987 for all presidential candidates. These 400% and 230% increases respectively have corresponded in equally dramatic disillusionment and loss of faith in the system by American voters, especially by young voters. Federal lobbying numbers have followed a similarly unsettling but unsurprising trend.

Dysfunction in our democracy creates a dangerous feedback cycle: young people increasingly don’t believe in or care about democracy as a political system, leading to less and less engagement, which further allows the corporate special interests and lobbying forces hard at work in DC and state legislatures across the country to erode public trust. We’re on a slippery slope of complete democratic collapse—and corresponding planetary collapse due to inaction on climate change — if we don’t act fast.

And yet, at the final hour before the midterm election season is fully upon us, there are reasons to be hopeful. Congress very recently passed a bill that would include the most ambitious climate change legislation that America has considered in decades. Is it enough to reduce emissions to our pledged 50% by 2030 and keep global warming below the international goal of 2°C by 2050? Not quite. But is it an important step forward, and an indication that where there’s a will, our democracy does have a way of passing policies that will improve the lives of millions and help save the planet of billions? Yes.

If we are to pave the way to sufficient action on climate change, action on all the other issues we care about, and prevent another January 6th-like event and the collapse of American democracy, however, several more important steps forward must be taken, and soon:

1. First and foremost, entrenched interests benefit and celebrate when we don’t vote — especially us young people — and we should disappoint them every chance we get. Those of us with the means and motivation to vote in the midterms should do so, and encourage our friends and family to do the same.

2. Second, if there’s anti-democratic legislation under consideration in your state, make sure to do your part to vote out the irresponsible legislators who are endeavoring to subvert our democracy for their own corrupt political gains. Instead, vote for candidates who have democracy reform in their platforms, especially campaign finance and lobbying reform, and reward politicians who vote to get rid of gerrymandering and dark money. You can find a list of candidates who have pledged not to accept any corporate PAC or Super PAC money here.

3. Third, keep your eye on the horizon for federal democracy reform like the Freedom To Vote Act, which almost passed earlier this year, and which could still pass Congress if sufficient political will existed. Fourth, companies, universities, and all institutions with lobbying clout should be using that clout to support pro-democracy bills at the federal and state levels.

4. And finally, get involved with organizations like Un-PAC (for young people) and Third Act (for older folks) as we strive to create a truly representative and functional democracy!

Our democratic house is on fire (probably caused by a wildfire worsened by climate change!) and it is incumbent on all of us to help put it out. The system has been broken, but it worked better in recent history, and can work again. The fate of young Americans, and of the entire planet, depends on us refinding our path and salvaging the promise of the world’s greatest democracy.

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Climate Lunch and Learn Series

From West Virginia Rivers Coalition, June 1, 2020

West Virginians are seeing the effects of the changing climate and researchers across the state are studying what it means for West Virginia. WV Rivers is highlighting these scientists and their research through our virtual Climate and Water Lunch & Learn Series. During the live webinars, you’ll learn first-hand from the researchers on the front line of the climate crisis.

Join us for our next webinar on June 5, 11:00 am. Dr. Nicolas Zégre is the Director of the Mountain Hydrology Laboratory at West Virginia University. He’ll be sharing his research on water security and climate change from a West Virginia perspective. Register here.

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Federal Threat to Net Metering & States’ Rights

From Solar United Neighbors, June 1, 2020

Protect Your Solar Rights!

A message from our partners at Solar United Neighbors

A secretive group of special interests are trying to strip away solar rights. If they succeed, families and businesses won’t be fairly credited for the valuable solar energy they produce.

>> If you already have solar, it could cost you thousands of dollars.

>> If you don’t yet have solar, it could limit your ability to go solar in the future.

>> If you’re a solar installer, it could mean fewer jobs and less revenue.

This group has asked federal regulators to seize states’ ability to ensure you receive fair credit for the electricity you produce.

Join Solar United Neighbors & Vote Solar to take action to stop the threat to net metering and states’ rights. Please go here to take a quick action and speak out in support of solar!

https://www.savesolar.org/

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See also: WV Citizens for Clean Elections

Your Vote is Your Voice, June 1, 2020

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See also: West Virginia Environmental Council Newsletter

PRAY and ACT and VOTE

From an Article by Farron Cousins, Ring of Fire Program, September 23, 2018

Renowned climate scientist Michael Mann had an op-ed in The Guardian last week where he explained the growing threat of increasingly powerful storms and climate change-related weather events. But he lands the story on the simplest way that people in the United States can work towards a better future – just vote. There are obviously other steps that have to be taken from there, as Mann has explained, but it all starts with removing politicians who want to move the US backwards on energy and climate rather than forward. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.

Transcript:

Right now, we have American cities in the Carolinas that are currently underwater as a result of Hurricane Florence and the torrential rainfall and sea level rise that came along with that storm, and it’s not getting any better right now. It will eventually, hopefully, but right now, it’s about as bad as we’ve seen in a long time, but here’s the thing. These kinds of storms, like Florence, luckily it slowed down to a one before it made landfall, whereas it could have been making landfall as a four, a very powerful four, but it downgraded, but this is the new normal.

We saw it last year with Maria, with Harvey, with Irma, now with Florence. It’s not just the new normal. They’re actually getting worse. Normal’s gone, out the window, and that’s actually what renowned climate scientist Michael Mann told people in an op-ed for the Guardian last week, an op-ed you can find the link to it in the video description here.

I strongly recommend everybody take the time to read through that op-ed, and after you’ve read it, I want you to reread the final paragraph of it, because it is in that final paragraph that Michael Mann tells us the most powerful thing that anyone in the United States can do to help protect the environment and to help basically do what we can to fight climate change. If you don’t want to read it yourself, don’t worry. I’ll read it to you:

“We must transition away from fossil fuels toward renewable energy even more rapidly, and we must elect politicians who will support such efforts. In the US, there’s an opportunity to do so now in the upcoming midterm elections, where we must elect politicians who support enlightened policies on energy and climate, and vote out of office those who don’t.”

Now, there’s a lot of steps that need to be taken in order to reduce our emissions, help combat climate change effectively, get renewable energy going. All of those are things that need to be done. We have to fix factory farming, but nothing, none of that can even be done if we have a government controlled by people who routinely deny that science is real.

That’s the point that Michael Mann is trying to make there. Dr. Mann understands that. He knows that as long as we get these politicians who are funded by fossil fuel interests, who go to work on the Senate floor and throw a snowball and say, “If global warming’s a thing, how is there a snowball here? Huh? Think about that.”

As long as we have morons like that in the US Senate or the US House, we will never be able to get any kind of meaningful action on climate change ever, and even Obama. I mean, look, he did talk a great game on climate change. He did some great things on it. He also took a couple steps backwards on the issue. I mean, oil drilling, offshore drilling in the United States hit a record pace at the time under his administration, but at least we were also putting other things in place to help control emissions from power plants, trying to protect waters and streams.

Meanwhile, the current administration, regardless of what you think of Obama, the current administration run by Republicans is trying to reduce fuel emission standards for automobiles, basically bringing back the area, era, excuse me, of those gas-guzzling SUVs. They’re trying to make it to where power plants can put more mercury and other toxins into our air. They’re trying to actually allow more drilling on public and national lands and national parks. They sold off those areas, and then the woman who was in charge of selling them off went to work for one of the oil companies who bought them.

This has to stop. There is a very clear choice in this year’s elections. You have a party, may not be perfect on the issue of climate, but at least they understand that climate change is real, that human beings are making it worse, and that we need to do something about it. That happens to be the Democratic Party.

Then you have the other party who, a majority of their voters admit climate change is real, that humans are causing it, and that we should do something, but the party leaders, the elected officials from that party, keep telling us, “It’s not real. Science doesn’t know,” or, even worse, “I’m not a scientist, so let’s just not pay attention to it.”

Well, how about you listen to the scientists? Not just the elected officials, but the public. When we have somebody who knows as much about climate change as Michael Mann telling us that the biggest thing we can do is vote, that’s an idea that you need to keep in your back pocket at all times, because it’s not just about climate change, either. You want to do something about healthcare? Vote. You want to do something about teacher pay increases? Vote. You want to do something about anything in this country?

The first and most important step you can do is to make sure that you get out there and vote, because if you don’t, it’s not just you that’s not voting. Maybe your friend doesn’t vote. Maybe your neighbor doesn’t vote, either. Maybe the rest of your family’s not voting. Those numbers add up pretty quickly, and we saw back in 2016 what happens when nearly half of the country decides to stay home and vote. That’s what got us the government that we have today.

See also the video here: https://youtu.be/EjV6NYNa5j0