Most of you have probably seen the video Al Gore is sending around, urging you to urge your congresscritters to pass the American Clean Energy and Security Act. Perhaps you've received a similar appeal from any number of mainstream environmental (a notable exception being the Center for Biological Diversity) or Democratic party affiliated "grassroots" organizations peddling the same basic message.
While watching the clip and reading the pleas, the following came to mind.
Passing this bill will demonstrate leadership? What planet is Gore talking about? The do-nothing compromise ACES bill is a sham and should simply be rejected out of hand. Proposed "strengthening" amendments define putting lipstick on a pig.
Its long-term target of reducing emissions 83% below 2005 levels by 2050 has been known for five years to be inadequate. The reductions demanded by science are 90% below 1990 levels by 2030... and Gore knows it.
Further, if these reductions aren't coupled with demand destruction of one type or another in other resources (fisheries, forests, water, minerals, soil, etc), as well s with serious, coordinated environmental remediation and restoration efforts, all we'll be doing is buying enough time to let our kids deal with it.
Maybe.
One way or the other, alternative energy sources aren't going to power a "green" return to economic growth. Get over it. They will, however, allow us to transition to a sustainable future.
The prevailing mindset that the ACES bill is better than nothing simply must cease. The standard progressive copout "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" should come with a mandatory prison sentence for anyone so enamored with the status quo to have the audacity to utter it in public.
Does anyone really believe we still have the luxury of doing the absolute minimum necessary to perhaps put off the worst of the climate chaos predictions when those are beginning to come to pass decades before they were supposed to from the greenhouse gases we passed out of our tailpipes (cultural as well as automotive) thirty years ago? The major change since then is that things are worse.
Urge your congresscritters to pass stem cell research immediately so they can grow a spine. I suppose a brain would be nice too.
About Me
- Dave Ewoldt
- Tucson, AZ
- My professional field is ecopsychology, which examines the psychological roots of the environmental crisis and redefines sanity as if the whole world matters. As a systems thinker, this extends to examining and finding systemic solutions to the global crises I call the Triumvirate of Collapse--Peak Oil, catastrophic climate destabilization, and corporatism. I'm a paradigm shift coach, which includes nature based healing, consulting in sustainable systems and organizations, and facilitating big-tent coalition development.
3 comments:
Seriously Dave, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Your inability to acknowledge anything short of your ideal as valuable basically makes you irrelevant to the political system you so desperately hope to influence.
And a buy local advocate such as yourself should be able to figure out how replacing foreign energy with local energy will create jobs.
So what's you brilliant plan to get better legislation in place?
I too am against ACES because it is corporate welfare, offering little of real substance to realistically lowering the levels of air pollution.
Regarding the forced decision environmentalist had to make in choosing the lesser of two evils doesn't make ACES less evil, in fact, choosing the lesser evil makes one evil also. I don't believe in wishy-washy people, much less wishy-washy environmentalists.
I guess the corporate elite through manipulative psychology discover the means to capitalize on ignorance.
you increment your incentive to them ten times. Keep the buy in button in a simple to discover put and convey great substance routinely to discourage perusers from suspending.
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