Somehow, the potential collapse of our civilization as well as global ecosystems isn’t a good enough argument for Republican Teabaggers, beholden to their dirty energy corporate masters, to take action in the global warming arena. For a few paltry thousand of dollars per Representative and Senator, but millions upon millions in slick advertising, dirty energy interests have delayed and obstructed meaningful national efforts to clean up our act before it’s too late. All too often, Republican Teabaggers use the “economic destruction” talking point to convince the public that we just. can’t. take. action.
Just how “destructive” would action actually be? Far less expensive than doing nothing, to be honest. Action won’t be free. But inaction will be many times more destructive to our economy. And after spending much, much more money, societies would likely unravel and global ecosystems would likely collapse. That’s how absolutely stupid Republican Teabagger efforts to delay action on global warming is: it will cost us more and we could end up with broken societies and a planet that’s harder to live on. Or, we could take some action now and our societies will stay strong and our planet will remain mostly inhabitable. Beyond being able to live and do so in a civilized society, taking action would actually make economies stronger, something that should easily resonate in today’s world.
A common theme in Republican Teabagger talking-points is that the coastal elites can’t manage budgets, but those in the heartland can and always do. This won’t cause any Teabaggers any lost sleep, but for those of us in the real world:
Ultra-Conservative Texas has a bigger budget gap than California. How big is their budget gap? A ridiculous 25% of current spending: $25 Billion! How did “fiscal conservatives” mismanage their budget so badly? Maybe it’s Texas Governor Ricky Perry’s absurd obsession with secession from the U.S. Maybe it’s tax cut after tax cut after tax cut that the Texas Cons passed in recent years. Naaaah, that can’t be it. According to Republican Teabagger Economic Orthodoxy, tax cuts always result it balanced budgets, more jobs and economic prosperity for everybody. Texas can’t look to the federal government for relief like they did in past years because Teabagger Orthodoxy has taken hold of national economics since then.
In short, Texas is about to feel the full impacts of just how extreme that Orthodoxy has been. Unfortunately, a lot of Texans who don’t adhere to that orthodoxy are going to be affected by it.
With newly-elected Republican Teabagger Governors in Wisconsin and Ohio, the Midwest might have voted itself decades’ worth of future economic heartache. The new governors want to make good on their campaign promises to stop high-speed rail projects.
A Milwaukee-Madison link was to be completely paid for, but Gov.-elect Scott Walker, in typical Republican fashion, wants the money wasted on roads instead. The grant money can’t be spent on roads, however. The intent of high-speed rail stimulus was to build … high-speed rail. I know, it’s a big shock.
Connecting Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati? It’s one of the “dumbest ideas” Gov.-elect John Kasich has ever heard of. Apparently, keeping Ohioans firmly in the 1950s as the rest of the world runs in the 2010′s isn’t one of those “dumbest ideas”.
I understand that upper-Midwesterners have had a rough go of it for decades now. Corporations have chosen $1/week jobs in undeveloped nations instead of paying Americans living wages for a couple of generations. The solution, however, wasn’t electing more of the ideological zealots that got them into today’s terrible economic mess in the first place. Identifying and strongly supporting liberal Democrats should have been part of the answer. Punishing pro-corporate Dems instead of pro-people Dems was, is and will remain the wrong thing to do.
I share the dissatisfaction with under-performing and anti-American CorporateDems. In 2012, Democrats across the country need to make a very strong push for liberals and progressives who want to put the American people first. Republican Teabaggers have a lot of cute sound-bites. But make no mistake about it, they want power only to further expand the difference between the richest 1% of Americans and the rest of us. Ohio and Wisconsin have set themselves back even further from actual economic recovery. Instead of helping themselves out a few years from now, any relief won’t be felt for more than half a decade from now, at the earliest. It’s not up to your politicians, Dems. It’s up to you. You need to take the lead in setting and keeping this country on the right track.
[Update]: I forgot about the $3 Billion (!) for the Hudson River Project that Gov. Chris Christie threw into the gutter. Oh, and Gov.-elect Rick Scott of Florida doesn’t want $2.5 Billion the feds have authorized for high-speed rail between Tampa and Orlando. Tell you what, the rest of us will gladly take these funds and put them to good use in our states. Numerous rail projects are possible in Colorado. Any funds from the federal government would help get those projects underway. Our economies would benefit as a result while your economies wouldn’t. If that’s what you want to do in order to maintain some ridiculous notion of proper economic policy, by all means, keep rejecting funds.
Meteor Blades, among others, picked up on the very same notion I did.
An average homeowner will waste $500 fewer dollars annually than their neighbor who owns an energy wasteful house. That number does factor in improvements’ capitalized costs, according to the DoE. What is included in improvements? Things like increased insulation, more efficient lighting, making buildings and ducts more air-tight and checking up on commercial buildings after they’re built.
How big a deal is $500 per homeowner per year? Republicans are always touting reducing taxes as a way to put more money in homeowners’ pockets. Well, they’ve missed a huge opportunity for decades now to do just that with energy codes. The average American spends $2,340 in annual energy costs. That compares to $1,897 in property taxes and $822 in homeowners’ insurance. Knocking $500 off energy costs brings them down beneath average property tax numbers. But instead of starving municipalities of much needed monies by slashing taxes, savings on energy can be put back into those municipalities when homeowners spend the money. And they’re increasingly spending any saved money on necessities instead of consumer wants.
Saving energy isn’t just good for homeowners’ wallets either. It’s very good news for our energy security and reducing our global warming forcing. Less energy wasted means less dirty fuels burned. Hopefully, it’s not too late to implement these and other easy solutions.
I was disheartened by Election 2010′s results for this reason among others: a good number of candidates who won their races are Republican Teabagger global warming deniers. As the anti-science movement gains more control of what’s left of the Republican Party, extremists of all stripes are gaining prominence. Unfortunately for the planet and our civilization, the anti-science extremists are going to ensure that global warming takes even stronger hold.
President Obama can make all the nice talk he wants about working together and everybody getting along. When I read that four Republican Teabaggers are trying to chair the House Energy Committee in order to reopen the floodgates for a deregulated fossil fuel industry, launch investigations against climate scientists and kill all clean-energy efforts, I take the Teabaggers at their word. If President Obama truly understands the magnitude and immediacy of the global warming crisis barreling towards us, he will also take them at their word.
So it was with some small measure of joy that I read this morning that climate scientists in the U.S. may no longer largely sit on their hands and wait for the truth to sink in to minds too small to comprehend that truth.
On Monday, the American Geophysical Union, the country’s largest association of climate scientists, plans to announce that 700 climate scientists have agreed to speak out as experts on questions about global warming and the role of man-made air pollution.
I know I will repeat this many times over the next two-plus years, but I’ll start saying it now to establish the record: you will hear lots of nonsense about the feverish imagined results of an illegal computer hacking last year, that climate scientists’ emails somehow proved the science didn’t show what it was showing. It’s all b.s. “Five independent panels subsequently cleared the researchers involved and validated the science.” That’s the truth.
I’ve written about the Heartland Institute before and gotten some flack from global warming deniers. Let’s see what Heartland has to say about a leading right-wing conspiracy-du-jour:
“People who ask for and accept taxpayer dollars shouldn’t get bent out of shape when asked to account for the money,” said James M. Taylor, a senior fellow and a specialist in global warming at the conservative Heartland Institute in Chicago. “The budget is spiraling out of control while government is handing out billions of dollars in grants to climate scientists, many of whom are unabashed activists.”
Their work is among the most stringently accounted for. Heartland and other deniers want the public to believe that scientists and the government are running amok, doing gosh-knows-what. If you think about that for just a few seconds, you can discern the seditious intent underpinning such an argument. Furthermore, if Heartland was truly concerned about the budget, they would be fully energized to stopping the occupation of two foreign countries, which has cost in excess of $1 Trillion already and continues to climb, as well as the Bush tax cuts for the rich, which were never paid for and are also costing the budget $1 Trillion. Since they’re doing neither, we know that their concern for this argument is trollish at best. Finally, who cares if climate scientists are activists, unabashed or otherwise. Is James or Heartland seriously arguing that people can’t exercise their freedom of speech rights? There are more amendments to the Constitution than just the 2nd, after all. The truth is this: today’s Cons only believe in free speech if they’re the ones speaking.
I checked the Mauna Loa Observatory’s monthly CO2 concentration today and was a little surprised to see that October’s concentration was higher than September’s. This has happened in prior years, so nothing terribly odd is going on. It mostly has to do with natural processes not lining up neatly with our arbitrary calendar system.
It could also mean that 2010′s average concentration might be above 390ppm for the first time in recorded history. Or it could just come painfully close to doing so and 2010 could be the last year that the concentration remained below 390ppm. Through October, 2010′s average CO2 concentration is now 389.925ppm. The rise in average monthly values from September to October will continue through November and December. Recent years saw November’s concentration ~1.4ppm higher than October’s and December’s concentration ~1.5ppm higher than November’s. If those trends hold true this year, 2010 would come in just under 390ppm for the year: 389.9ppm.
Please keep in mind that leading climatologists have recommended 350ppm concentration as the likely threshold beyond which major consequences from global warming occur. We must reduce our concentrations back under 350ppm as soon as possible if we want to keep global average temperatures from rising less than 2C this century. The higher the concentration goes, the higher the average temperature will be by century’s end.
The state of global polar sea ice at the beginning of November 2010 is once again poor compared to climatological conditions (1979-2008). The Arctic sea ice extent remains well below average for this time of year. The Antarctic sea ice extent is above average, but not nearly so much as the Arctic sea ice is below average, which is why the global sea ice extent continues to track below average also. Global sea ice area has made a nice recovery since the mid-year low of ~17.5 million sq.km. Some portions of the Arctic Sea weren’t as warm as they were after the 2007 or 2008 melt seasons, which has allowed Arctic Sea ice to refreeze in those areas quite rapidly. One of the plots below will demonstrate nicely which areas were cooler and which were warmer. The prime melt season for Antarctic sea ice is about to begin. The global sea ice area will start to plummet as the southern sea ice melts before bottoming out in a few months’ time.
Liberalism was rejected, but not by the voters. Some voters may have been fooled into thinking they were rejecting liberalism, but did the Democrats even attempt a truly liberal agenda?
Did the Democrats pass a stimulus package as large as liberal economists Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz and Nouriel Roubini said we needed?
Did the Democrats pass Cramdown or a WPA-style jobs program?
Did the Democrats even put a single payer health care plan on the table? Did they fight for a public option?
Did the Democrats reject the generals’ request to further escalate the war in Afghanistan?
Did the Democrats shut down Gitmo, secret renditions, or domestic spying?
Did the Democrats end Don’t Ask Don’t Tell or the Defense Of Marriage Act?
Did the Democrats even begin to address immigration reform?
Did the Democrats pass Cap-and-Trade or respond to the BP oil disaster by ending deepwater drilling?
The list could go on and on.
Ignore the pundits and remember the battles over the issues, including the battles that never happened. The voters didn’t reject a liberal agenda because they didn’t see a liberal agenda. Many wouldn’t know what a liberal agenda looks like, because no one has bothered to show them one.
I’m sort of torn on this news. In light of historical losses in the House and a dysfunctional Senate, President Obama is changing strategies to deal with one-third of his reported primary priorities as President: global warming. Instead of pursuing a cap-and-trade approach (which passed the House in 2009, when Democrats still held majorities), the President will pursue other solutions in the next two years. It would be ironic if he decided to really use his powers appointed to him as chief executive. I know full well the Republican Teabaggers would scream and howl about his arrogance, but remember we didn’t hear a peep out of them back when Bush was using more powers than he Constitutionally held. What was good for one of the Teabaggers isn’t good for someone else.
President Obama could have used the past two years to establish the range to which executive powers could be applied. By not doing so, or at least by being more timid than his predecessor, changing how he approaches problems now will be met with scrutiny and alarm that might not otherwise have been the case. By pushing the envelope in the next two years, on a signature policy topic, however, I think a lot more could be done in the global warming arena. It is the largest crisis facing this country in terms of negative economic impact, not to mention long-term existential viability. That is to say, too much time has been wasted pursuing strategies that were doomed to fail from the start. There is no more time available on this issue if the goal is to maintain the largest parts of our societies and ecosystems. Global warming therefore presents the perfect opportunity on many fronts for President Obama. Addressing this crisis vigorously and unapologetically would help redefine his image in the public’s eyes. The crisis would finally be dealt with as it should have been and President Obama and the Democrats would likely come out of the 2012 elections in much stronger shape than they did the 2010 elections.
For those still left wondering what happened this election cycle, perhaps the Fed’s plan to buy up to $900 Billion in Treasuries by next June can shed a little light on things. They’re going to announce details of how they’re going to buy them ahead of time, allowing wealthy investors (not average Americans) the chance to buy them first, then sell them to the Fed for a profit. The rich devise plans to make themselves richer, not share with the rest of America. That’s one reason why tax cuts for the rich are such a stupid idea. Wealthy entities are wealthy for a reason: they horde their wealth. Keep the nonsensical Bad Trade deals around while inventing new ways for the wealthy to multiply their wealth and the rest of America continues to fall further and further behind.
Jobs aren’t coming back, they’ve been shipped overseas. Without jobs, Americans can’t spend. Without growing consumer demand, corporations have no incentive to hire. Meanwhile, banks get to kick people out of their homes, which in some cases might be illegal. No jobs and no houses means no growing economy. Nobody in government is stepping in to meaningfully stem the tide on these disastrous trends, letting the “market” to iron out the problems instead. This is what worshipping at the free-market mantle has wrought.
The Democrats left in office are for the most part more progressive than the corporate apologists that got voted out of office. If they want to fare better than their colleagues did in 2012, they had at least better make a show of fighting for Main St and tell Wall St to start sucking it up. The economy is not too far away from that cliff President Obama keeps talking about. If Republican Teabaggers get what they want, we’ll fall right over it.
