Top 10 Things You Should Know About The Farm Bill | Environmental Working Group

With all of the discussion discussion in Washington about cutting costs, it is really disgusting that they have not taken the Farm Bill into account. I guess that the fact Representative Ryan is from a farm state makes a difference. The Environmental Working Group has provided a concise list of what we mostly don't know about the cost of our food and why our taxes are so high.

Here is just one item from their list.

1) The farm bill doles out billions of taxpayer dollars in subsidies to the largest five commodity crops: corn, cotton, rice, wheat and soybeans. Those payments go out, regardless of need, and they mostly fail to help the nation’s real working farm and ranch families. In fact, since 1995, just 10 percent of American farms – the largest and wealthiest operations – have raked in 74 percent of all subsidy payments.

The last time the farm subsidies came up for review, both our Democratic Senators, Feinstein and Boxer, supported the continuation of business as usual. Guess they know which side of the aisle is buttered.

De-addnex Oklahoma?

The history of the State of Oklahoma is essentially the story of the marginalization of the Indian population of the United States and then the seizure of those lands to further the expansion of white America and the 19th Century rush to exploit nature for all it could provide: land for farming, ranching and most of all for oil. The Cherokee, moved over the Trail of Tears from Georgia to Oklahoma were only the most well known of many tragic exploitations.

Exploitation is still the goal of Oklahoma, as one can gather from this short clip of Sen. James Inhofe in a session of the Senate Committee Environment and Public Works, Chaired by California's Barbara Boxer.

It seems that the rest of the nation has moved beyond the pompous self-indulgent, might I use the word rapacious, resource exploitation of the 19th Century, but that the State of Oklahoma has not. It continues to elect, and re-elect such as Sen. Inhofe. Perhaps it is time that we consider de-annexing the State of Oklahoma and returning it to the rule of the Indian tribes that still live there.

PS: To my politically correct Green friends, I used the term "Indian" as a number of my "Native American" friend have used that term to describe themselves, as in the name of this important publication: Indian Country Today.

Politicians preen in public, scheme in secret

If Darren Sakmuelsohn is correct in his NY Times Greenwire post, our Senators are now talking about a Climate Plan B that would still implement some sort of cap-and-trade... but only for power plants... everyone else being free to emit all they want.

"A power plant-only cap and trade could be doable on the Hill," Mark Helmke, a senior aide to Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), said today.

Senate Democratic and Republican staffers are studying a package that combines a mandatory limit on power plant emissions with separate programs outside of the cap-and-trade program aimed at cutting greenhouse gases from other sectors of the economy. "It'd be done with efficiency standards for buildings and stronger CAFE [corporate average fuel economy] standards for transport," Helmke said.

OK, it is just an idea being floated for public reaction... but it is a horrible idea. If all our legislator's did was pass the "doable" then I could do the job as well as Barbara Boxer and a hell of a lot better that DiFi. We elect them to apply their brain mass to figuring out solutions to problems, not solutions to electoral calculus.

In fact, I wonder what Boxer is really doing to end the embarrassment of our current climate non-policy. It looks like she has punted the ball over to firm of Kerry, Graham and (shudder) Lieberman. Oh how I wish we had a Green positioned to take on Boxer next year. If you surmise that her opponent would be Carly Fiorina, then it would be a race in which an ecology savvy Green can make a good case. If Nuclear Chuck DeVore pulls enough right wing-nuts to the polls to take the primary, then Boxer is the environmental choice and Greens would be less attractive as an alternative.

Hope on global warming? Not likely.

It has always been easy for Greens and others who consider themselves progressives to find reasons for the easy reception of the climate change denial message. We blame it all on the power of corporate advertising, on lobbyists, on the evil nature of a pair of ex-junkies (Beck and Limbaugh) on talk radio, on our own failures to adequately frame our own messages.

This morning I read a very different view that Dr. Genevieve Marcus forwarded to the Green California Forum. It was an LA times OpEd (now available only in archives for a fee) by Ted Kennedy biographer, Neal Gabler, in which Gabler asserted that conservatism had been transformed from a political movement into a religious one, where the certainty that one is right is much more powerful than rational discourse.

It's understandable that liberals prefer to think of their subordination as a matter of their own inadequacies or of conservative wiles. Theoretically, you can learn how to improve your message or how to match wits with adversaries, and a lot of liberal hand-wringing has been dedicated to doing just that. But it is becoming increasingly clear that liberals haven't just been succumbing to superior message control, or
even to a superior political narrative (conservatives' frontier individualism versus liberals' communitarianism). They are up against something far more intractable and far more difficult to defeat. They are up against religion.

It reminds me of book I had read long ago, The True Believer by Eric Hoffer or The Captive Mind by Cseslaw Milosz. The word of Milosz seems most to come to mind: "The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason. The passionless cannot change history."


Even highly respected figures like Joe Romm (Climate Progress) mix it up in the media ring in order to get the story told rationally. Today, he went after the NewsHour program on PBS for it's failure to admit that CO2 is a primary cause of our current climate change.

Greens want to arrive at a solution to our climate, energy and water problems that will provide a sustainable future for all. In order to do so, we have to provide sensible policy options in the current, highly charged political environment and then champion them with just as much passion as Gabler recognizes in the political fundamentalism that currently unites what is left of the Republican Party.

We seem not to be able to do both a the same time. Bill McKibben can raise our passions with 350.org, but he absolutely refuses to deal with policy. The writers at any number of sites can discuss policy until sunrise but often with a passion for action. Those who have both, Dr. James Hansen for example, have become the enemy of the climate deniers. But this weekend, Hansen, who has just recovered from surgery and treatment for cancer, joined students outside the Massachusetts Statehouse who refuse to sleep in dorms/apartments powered by coal-fired electricity.

I closely follow the machinations of the US Senate where our own Sen Boxer chairs the Committee on Environment and Public Works. There is where the search for votes has backed her into the corner of allowing Joe Liebermann and Lindsey Graham rewrite a bill that was only marginally successful.

Unless we offer alternatives we will never be the alternative. It is time that we push forward our policies with a passion, a passion for action rather than rhetoric, offering policies that point to a future of sustainable living instead of joining the Republicans to "just say no."

Republicans to the world: We don't want or need you.

It takes a lot to make a progressive hero out of Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) but between Oklahoma's Sen. Inhofe and the climate change blatherings of a couple of ex-junkies named Beck and Limbaugh, they have managed to to just that. But, they also had some help from our own Senator Boxer and Obama Administration, as I wrote before.

The delay of Boxer and the Obama administration in dealing with climate change have put the world at risk. Those countries with whom we should be working toward some solutions to the problems of climate change are, in fact, looking at the United States's failure to come to grips with reality and beginning to wonder just how much change with got when Obama swept into office.

At climate talks in Barcelona, the last UN sponsored meeting before Copenhagen, some 50 African countries walked out.

African delegates walked out of meetings during United Nations climate change talks in Barcelona, Spain this week, claiming that developed countries were not making solid commitments to cut their emissions of climate-warming gases.

Americans, in their usual arrogant manner, might dismiss this a bunch of poor countries whining about their status after centuries of exploitation. However these same countries are going to face the brunt of problems and have started to find ways of dealing with it. Already, we are seeing climate change refugees moving from country to country in Africa and  governments were forced to act now in light of what was sure to come.

African nations adopt refugee convention

Kampala / Agence France-Presse
African leaders on Friday ratified a convention on the protection of the continent's internally-displaced people, refugees and returnees, billed as the first of its kind worldwide.

The number of refugees in Africa is now close to 20 million. I wonder what America's Minute Man organization will say about illegals when climate refugees start to demand entry to the US because our arrogance devastated their homeland.

But back to the US and Senate Republicans. All but Graham have walked out of the mark up of the Boxer led committee meetings that were supposed to be marking up the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (Kerry - Boxer). As one Democratic Senator quipped, the Party of No has become the Party of No Show.

This act of (not sure what word to use… arrogance? stupidity?) makes US participation in the Copenhagen talks problematic. European leaders are aiming their messages directly at the US Congress.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Congress and the Obama administration Tuesday to take bold steps to address global warming, even as Senate Democrats and Republicans feuded over whether to press ahead with a climate bill.

I hope that Sen. Inhofe had someone read that Washington Post article for him.

The view from the British press is even bleaker.

The US has given up hope of reaching a global climate change treaty at Copenhagen and is working towards a deal late next year, the Obama administration said today. The decision ends hopes of a legally binding deal being sealed next month.

Through all of this, the failures of Congress to act will follow one after one until catastrophe forces action and then it will be too little. Shall we call this the New Orleans Syndrome, naming it after a city where, like climate change, the catastrophe was foretold, action was delayed, and even now is being buried in rhetoric like ruin of the 9th Ward was carted away, buried out of sight and the lessons forgotten.

We can no longer afford to leave the Senate in the hands of Republicans in a state of perpetual denial and Democrats in a state of perpetual compromise. The world is looking to the United States for leadership. Republicans would lead by mooning the world.

Front line in the war on the climate

We seem to have declared war on the climate and appear to be winning, for a change. The front line in this war is in West Virginia and Obama is sending all of our troops to Afghanistan.

Please read this post by Bo Webb over at Grist. It tells you what is happening on to the ground. Then call Sen. Boxer's office (202) 224-3553 and tell her that enough is enough.  She put her name on a bill that is supposed to be about stopping climate change.  She even put out a video  to rouse up her supports are some timely house parties.  But, she does not have the guts to tell her fellow Democratic Senators Rockefeller and Byrd that there will be nothing for coal.

Then follow Bo Webb's example and send a message to Obama that he can not represent my country in Copenhagen if he allows this to continue.

This is not an environmental issue.  It is a justice issue: social justice, economic justice, ecological justice.  Boxer has proven that she can count to 60, but she needs to learn to count to 350.

A colossal blunder from Obama?

I have really begun to think that Obama has made a colossal blunder in the way that he has chosen to handle climate change. It would seem to me that his presidency will be evaluated by history on the manner in which he has reacted to this crisis. It won't be Iraq, Bush's war, nor even Afghanistan… now known as Obama's War. It won't be health care. But those are the issues on which he has chosen to spend his time and his political capital.

It could be argued that he did not choose Iraq and Afghanistan. True about Iraq but he certainly has, from the days of the campaign, chosen to play in Afghanistan.

It is the focus on health care that concerns me and makes me question his judgment. It has the ring of a young man trying to prove that he could get done what Clinton could not, taking Obama forever out of Clinton's shadow.

But this is not issue number one. It won't determine the fact of our economy, or of our comfortable lifestyle. Climate Change will. Failure to address the biggest elephant in the room is a way to be trampled and I don't want my children to suffer for Obama's failure to take his biggest challenge head on.

In the mean time, opposition to Obama has had the opportunity to hone their economic arguments about big government and the costs to the tax payers. If the opposition to the economic bailouts has this ring, and the opposition to health insurance reform has this ring, what do you think will be the key element of the Republican opposition to doing anything about climate change? I can just hear Boehner and McConnel droning on now while Glen Beck stirs up the troops by labeling them "Commies".

There is only a very short time between now and the next meeting of the United Nations Climate Change Conference - Copenhagen. The best Obama can bring to the meeting is a flawed bill from the House of Representatives, a draft of a bill from the US Senate and a history of having climate change treaties not being ratified in the Senate. The prospects are bleak.

At this point, Obama has yet to expend any political capital to try and get a climate change bill passed in the Senate. Most of the heavy lifting about the economics of this issue has been carried by Joseph Romm at the Climate Progress blog. Even today, Romm cited Entergy CEO J. Wayne Leonard on Climate Change.

We are virtually certain that climate change is occurring, and occurring because of man’s activities. We’re virtually certain the probability distribution curve is all bad. There’s no good things that’s going to come of this. But what’s uncertain is exactly which one of those things are going to occur and in what time frame. In the probability distribution curve is about a 50% probability that about half of all species will become extinct or be subject to extinction over this period of time. What we will never know on an ex ante basis is whether or not man be one of those casualties or not.

We condemn Wall Street for taking risks with our economy — risks that all of you are trying very hard to reverse — but at the same time we’re taking exactly the same kind of risks, with no upside whatsoever, with regard to our climate, failing to practice even the basic risk management techniques in terms of climate change reduction.

In the same post, he quotes Carol Browner as saying it would be a “big mistake” if Congress passed a clean energy bill without a cap on emissions.

I agree with her assessment. I just don't think that this Congress has the courage to do that. There are too many who are too willing to compromise too much for the sake of another vote. So, we will invest in oxymoronic clean coal technologies until we figure out that it is too late. We will shift to burning wood at our power plants because it will be called a "renewable" and the CO2 will fill the skies as before.

This the the issue where science and politics are on a collision course. We must not let the politicians win. How I wish that there were Green willing to stand up and challenge Barbara Boxer in the Senatorial Race this year. Her Republican Opposition seems to be demonstrating their ineptitude at every turn, though Fiorina could bankroll whatever she wants for as long as she wants. DeVore might have the so many manic Republican votes locked up that she will drop out rather than throw good money after bad and we know that DeVore's solution to everything is to go nuclear.

The challenge from a Green would be all about doing the right thing, about standing for ones values and not the value of a contribution. If done right, it would be about correcting Obama's big blunder and saving humanity.

It's blog acton day and this is my contribution.

Boxer - Kerry Climate Change Bill nearly ready.

This is just to call attention to the fact that the Boxer - Kerry climate change bill is nearly ready for release. Actually, a text exists but the bill is such a moving target that by the time you down load it, it will have changed.

You can read a rather good synopsis on Joe Romm's Climate Progress blog. I won't repeat that here. I will agree with Romm that this bill is stronger than the House version from Reps. Waxman & Markey. It is still a long way from acceptable.

Let me just say that I am not as confident as Romm that the high cost of nuclear power will keep it from happening, even though the bill will contain subsidies for nuclear. I just do not trust this Congress that much. Of course, this is California and Boxer just might have to meet Nuclear Chuck DeVore in the Senate race next fall, no matter how much money Carly spends.

I will quote from the alert sent out today by the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, calling for more pressure on Boxer...my favorite Senator... (Feinstein is the other choice.)

Sens. Boxer and Kerry are set to introduce their major climate legislation.

Senator Boxer said recently that this legislation would include a nuclear title, but indications have been that it would be minor and narrowly focused.

However, we are growing concerned that this nuclear title may offer much too much to the nuclear power industry. If there is a nuclear title--and, of course, there shouldn't be at all--it must remain minor and narrowly focused.

As Massachusetts or California residents, your voices can help everyone. Please call Senator Kerry or Senator Boxer today and urge them to stand strong against the nuclear industry and its incessant calls for taxpayer bailouts.

Senator Kerry: 202-224-2742

Senator Boxer: 202-224-3553

While we have not seen the actual language of the proposed title, these talking points would be helpful to include in your call:

*Nuclear power already receives a competitive advantage when a price is placed on carbon. If the nuclear industry cannot compete with such an advantage, that's its own problem, taxpayers should not be expected to provide more help to the industry.

*Nuclear power is not carbon-free. The nuclear fuel chain is responsible for fairly significant carbon emissions--at least three times those of wind power, for example. This study provides substantive backing for this.

So, make that call to Boxer and let her know what you really think about nuclear energy. Not only do we not want any new, we want to see the existing power plants de-commissioned.

Civil Disobediance Pt. 2: People before Polar Bears

Yesterday, I received a mailer from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) that was trying to raise money to act on behalf of the polar bears. After all, climate change threatens their very existence. You can even buy polar bear shopping bags at an inflated, gotta raise money somehow, price.

I used to think that way myself. Those days are long gone. The situation is a lot more drastic and the specie being threatened is homo sapiens. Don't think that climate change is something that we have until 2050 to deal with. It is happening now and we had better recognize that fact.

If you click Read more! I will give more detail on three events that I don't hear Greens talking about, but they should be at the very top of the list: the dust storms that swept across eastern Australia, the Dutch experts who are advising California on methods to protect San Francisco Bay and California Delta, and my finally getting around to read The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis published by the Global Humanitarian Forum, headed by Kofi Anan. Each of these underscores the fact that Climate Change is real, it is here now, and people are being affected every day while the US twiddles its thumbs and the Senate can not yet pass a climate change bill.



Australian Dust Storms:
If you have not yet seen the effect of this, you have to watch this video. Otherwise, you might not believe it.

This is climate change in Australia. It is also what is forecast for the Southwest of the United States. We have already begun to see some effect in the mountains of Colorado as they are reporting red snow .

It is, sadly, probably too late to save much of Australia. But it is not too late to save the U.S. Southwest and other key regions in or near the subtropics. We can still prevent the worst. (Joe Robb at Climate Progress)

Dutch Engineers to save the Delta?
This is climate change mitigation right here in California. No, it did not make the local news. It was not on television, absorbed as it is with all things political unless it is a crime story. It did, however, make the San Mateo County Times and was carried in its sister paper, the Contra Costa Times.

The inevitable effects of climate change in California, and how cities can adapt to them, are starting to get more attention from Bay Area planners. While no one knows exactly how sea level rise will play out 100 or 200 years from now, analysts agree that more severe and frequent floods are going to be a part of it.

Avoiding sea level rise is by now impossible. The Bay has risen 8 inches since the start of the 20th century, and scientists worldwide agree that the Bay Area in particular can expect to experience sea level rise of as much as 16 inches by midcentury and as much as 55 inches by 2100.

Here is a link to a map of the Bay / Delta with a sea level rise of just 1 meter... 39 inches rather than the 55 mentioned in the quote above.

This should begin to give you a feel for the fact that mitigation of the effects of climate change is going to be very, very expensive. You know that the Conservatives in Congress, both Republican and Democrat, will sing the song that after bailout and a big impact Health Care bill, we just can't afford to tackle climate change now. It would do too much damage to the economy.

Don't let them sell you that line. It just is not true. If the money for levee repairs in New Orleans had not been spent on a new freeway exchange to allow access casino boats, perhaps the 9th Ward would not have flooded. It would have been so little.

Paul Krugman is already labeling this a big lie.

So the main argument against climate action probably won’t be the claim that global warming is a myth. It will, instead, be the argument that doing anything to limit global warming would destroy the economy. As the blog Climate Progress puts it, opponents of climate change legislation “keep raising their estimated cost of the clean energy and global warming pollution reduction programs like some out of control auctioneer.”

It’s important, then, to understand that claims of immense economic damage from climate legislation are as bogus, in their own way, as climate-change denial. Saving the planet won’t come free (although the early stages of conservation actually might). But it won’t cost all that much either.

The costs are right in front of our faces and California's politicians do not have the cojones (a Madeline Albright term) to take action now. They can't even pass a rational budget.

The Human Cost of Climate Change
It is not about polar bears, it is about people. Those who are fortunate to live in California can probably withstand whatever comes if we were on our own... and we just might be. However, there are hundreds of millions of people who don't have that ability. There people are the subject of Global Humanitarian Forum's Anatomy of a Silent Crisis.

We testify here to the human face of this dangerous problem. The first hit and worst affected by
climate change are the world’s poorest groups. Ninety-nine percent of all casualties occur in developing countries. A stark contrast to the one percent of global emissions attributable to some 50 of the least developed nations. If all countries were to pollute so little, there would be no climate change.

So, how bad is it. Here are some statistics from that report.

The findings of the report indicate that every year climate change leaves over 300,000 people dead, 325 million people seriously affected, and economic losses of US$125 billion. Four billion people are vulnerable, and 500 million people are at extreme risk.

Even Anan admits that there is an element of error in these numbers. But how big do they have to be to get our attention? This is no longer an economic or technological question. It is now a more imperative. The time for talking in pleasant drawing room tones has long passed.

What to do?
I was somewhat surprised when Dr. James Hansen of N. A. S. A. not only called for civil disobedience, but actually went to the Appalachians to try and block yet another mountain top removal coal mining effort. Recently I read a paper by Dr. John Lemons. He also considers this a question of ethical behavior and, like Hansen, suggests that it is time for civil disobedience. If not, he is very pessimistic.

As a natural scientist I have been engaged in global climate change issues since the early 1980s, particularly with respect to the integration of science with public policy and ethics. However, at this point in time there is little that I see that is a cause for optimism in the battle to solve global climate change on an ethical basis, to reduce immediately and significantly the emissions of greenhouse gases based on the best available scientific information.

We have heard it all. especially here in California where our Senator Boxer Chairs the Senate Committee that has to write and approve any legislation. So far, she has delivered speeches and little else. Likewise, Governor Schwarzenegger has gotten a reputation as a Green Governor, but many of his actions have been ecologically destructive and none of them, even his expensive plans for dams and a peripheral canal, have begun to address the problems of rising sea levels for the Bay and Delta regions. Even here, he is solving the wrong problem and still screwing it up.

When I was a very little boy, stocking were filled with candy and fruit if you were good and with coal if you were bad. Maybe it is time for Schwarzenegger and Boxer to receive their stockings full of coal.

Californians do not have coal mines to block. The few we did have (e. g. near Parkfield) have long played out or are too dangerous to enter. But, we can do some things. For starters, buy no foods that were not produced in California... better yet... grow your own. It might put Trader Joe's out of business but they need a new business model anyway. It does not make sense in a warming world.

The place for Greens to follow the news is with EcoAction Committee's Facebook Pages. If you know of opportunities for action of any kind, post a comment on this post.

The Urgency to Address Global Climate Change

There seems to be no urgency in the US. I mean, even Sen. Boxer looks at the problem as something to do when they clear health care reform off the table. Well, it is a hell of a lot more important than that.

I want to call everyone's attention to a paper by Dr. John Lemons that was posted at Climate Ethics earlier this month. I quote from the Introduction:

The goal of this paper is twofold: (1)to briefly describe recent scientific information on global climate change that suggests a greater need for urgency of action than might have previously been thought, and (2)to suggest that philosophers develop ethical stances that support nonviolent civil disobedience action to mitigate the problem of global climate change given its urgency.

(it loads faster from the 1st link).

There is a real opportunity to do something about this, now, not later. Obama gave a good speech today at the UN, mouthing all the right words as is his style. However, he can not deliver a good product out of a Congress where his party has overwhelming majority control. That is really sad. It says loads about the ethics of our leadership in Washington. Even our Senator Boxer seems to think that Climate Change is something that they will get to when health care is finally off the table. That just may be too late. The world will watch what the US does in Copenhagen in December and, based on past performance, it won't be much except talk.

This is no longer purely an economic issue, nor only about technology. As Dr. Lemons lays it out, our ethical standards are being challenged and we are failing.

Time for Greens to save this planet.

Climate Change and California Parks

I know that there are many who love going to California's many parks. There is one Green who travels out from LA to Joshua Tree National Park. I am sure that the following climate change prognostication will sadden him.

The emblematic tree of the Mojave Desert is in big trouble. At a February 2009 climate-change symposium in Joshua Tree sponsored by the National Parks Conservation Association, scientists spoke with gallows humor about the eventual need for Joshua Tree National Park to change its name. The way things are going, it looks as if there will be no Joshua trees left in the park before too many more decades go by. Victorville Daily Press.

You many think that Climate Change is something that we can avoid by buying better cars, or CFL's, or turning off the radio when leaving the room. The truth is that it can not be avoided and the effects are already being felt. Tell that to Sen. Boxer.

Peak Oil? Drill baby drill.

Joseph Romm's Climate Progress site has yet another reminder today that Peak Oil is a real consequence happening to us in real time. This one is based on a new report from Merrill Lynch that says we are there. This is similar to what George Monbiot got out of the International Energy Agency report back in December.




Some are concerned with the relationship of Peak Oil, the current economic crisis and the politics of both. Romm quotes from Greenwire (subs. req’d)

The global financial crisis has put a grinding halt to the frenzy in commodity investing seen for most of 2008.

This morning, CME Group — operators of mercantile exchanges in Chicago and New York — reported that trading last month fell 41 percent compared to January 2008 figures. Trading in energy futures and options at the New York Mercantile Exchange fell by 5 percent.

But output cuts by OPEC and the worsening oil production in countries outside the cartel could set the stage for another spike in energy and commodity prices in the years to come, experts say.

Analysts bullish on the long-term prospects of commodity prices say that oil could return to upward pricing pressure by as early as 2010 once demand growth returns to the world economy.

My response was left as a comment at Climate Progress.

We are now to the place where “drill baby drill” means “die, baby, die”.

We all know that oil is a finite resource. We all know that chasing the chimera of perpetual growth will, over time, increase demand, unless we do things radically different.

Why then do we fall for any effort that would take those resources that are becoming increasingly scarece and valuable and use them up as fast as we can. The only ones who will profit from this are those who are in a position to deliver the alternatives, or as the Oil Minister of Saudi Arabia told 60 Minutes, “Who has more sun than we do?”

When the American Petroleum Institute does their ad that says we have enough oil and gas in North America to fuel our cars and heat our homes for the next 60 years, why is no one asking “then what?”

I have asked this same question since I used it to ridicule Richard Pombo in 2006. The immediate economic gain of using up these resources as fast as we can is not worth the long term cost of having nothing left in the tank. I can think of no set of actions that is more likely to ruin the US economy as well as endanger all our futures, than this insane urge to drill more, use more. It is time to stop digging.

This is not just about some economic calculation. It is more like a political calculation. The economic point referenced above give no consideration to the costs of non-action on global warming. They seem to be issued with a prayer that the deniers be proven right. And in this, our "environmental" Senator Barbara Boxer says that there will be no action from Congress this year on Global Warming. I want to write:

Dear Senator Boxer,
When you grand children come to ask you what you were doing when you had a chance to make a difference, will you really feel good to say, "I did my best but there were just too many others who didn't want to go along." You are the one whose vote in the most recent farm bill was governed by the fact that, as you said, "We have our rice people and our cotton people." When it comes to climate change, what about our real people?

Are you willing to put your hold on this seat on the line in order to do what is right?

Yours truly,
Wes Rolley, Citizen.

Maybe we can all write a version of that… with a copy to your local paper, of course.

Blame it on what?

We all know that you can not take any single weather event and make a climate story out of it. But people do. Such is the way that some would use this winter's cold weather in the Eastern US to say "see, I told you Al Gore had it wrong."

However, not everyone lives in the Eastern US. And when you start averaging what else in happening around the world right now, you will understand. Follow me to the rest of the story by clicking Read more!


Let us begin with the stories coming out of Australia where the most we heard in the US was about the heat taking a toll on the Australian Open. Now, after weeks of record breaking heat, it seems as if the entire state of Victoria has erupted in flames. As of the instant that I write this, the 12:00 PM report in the Sydney Morning Herald lists 126 dead, many critically burned, many others missing.

In another report that you won't hear on our national new, obsessed as some are with Barry Bonds and A-Rod, comes out of the Argentinian Pampas. According to the Seattle Times, Argentina is in a similar situation to Australia as pertains to heat and drought.

STROEDER, Argentina — Skeletons of livestock are piling up in the scorching sun of the Southern Hemisphere's summer as the worst drought in a generation turns much of Argentina's breadbasket into a dust bowl.

The nation's farm sector stands to lose $5 billion this year alone — a huge blow to the economy of Argentina, a top world exporter of soy, corn, wheat and beef — as well as to the government of President Cristina Fernandez, which faces billions of dollars in debt payments this year.

I am sure that there are many in Kentucky right now who would like to have averaged this out, but the climate does not work that way. Extremes seem to require the opposite extremes. Now, California is experiencing a drought. One estimate is that it will cost our local economy more than $1 Billion and some 40,000 jobs while we are trying to stimulate our way out of a recession. This, with Folsom Lake at only 25% of capacity.

I would question whether this drought is just part of the normal cycle, since it is also hitting China as well. BBC is reporting this as the worst drought in 50 years and in one province, without rain for 70 days, some 70% of the rivers have dried up.

What this all adds up to is a global condition, not local weather and that puts it in the realm of climate, not weather. The deniers will still deny, but it is time to increase the pressure on those in Congress who still claim to be friends of the environment. When Barbara Boxer said that they would be no climate change legislation this year, she showed that the only thing that changed in Washington was the name on the White House mailbox.

Barbara Boxer's priorities

The economy is tanking faster than the Blue Angels fly. Every year, the world is losing greater value from deforestation than we have so far lost in terms of depressed stock prices.

The global economy is losing more money from the disappearance of forests than through the current banking crisis, according to an EU-commissioned study.

It puts the annual cost of forest loss at between $2 trillion and $5 trillion.

So, I get an email from Saint Barbara reminding me to get a flu shot, and they can't even get my name right...nor my gender. Email to me addressed to "Jean Rolley". I wonder if Jean got one address to Wes Rolley. So much for Governmental Competence, but then we knew that.

Senator Boxer wants to hear from you.

I get a lot of email from Senator Boxer. Normally, I know it is very self-serving. Even when I have sent a letter to her office, I got a response about all of the great things she was doing in the general subject area of my letter. Unfortunately, her actions were the exact opposite of what I said should be done.

Still she is again asking for input and I found a really great response that I want to share. The writer, Edward Chow, is a local, Santa Clara County member of the Green Party and has served as Chairman, Campus Greens at UC Berkeley. Read Boxer's letter and Chow's response in their entirety by clicking "Read more".



CHOW:
The following is from Senator Barbara Boxer. Let her know what you think. After her message is what I wrote to her.

BOXER:
Dear Friend:

Traffic and air quality are issues that impact all Californians. We all hope to quickly and safely travel to work or school and then home to our families. We also all depend on clean air that is too often degraded by cars, trucks and trains.

As the Chairman of the Senate’s Committee on Environment and Public Works, one of my most important priorities for the coming year is to authorize a new federal highway, transit and highway safety bill. The aim of the bill is to improve surface transportation nationwide, which can help improve our air quality as well. My committee has begun the process to write the next bill. I am writing to you both to offer some information about the process and to ask for your thoughts about the focus and priorities of the bill.

Recently, I held briefings in California to hear from transportation officials in California about their priorities. With the following links, you can watch video of the two briefings in Sacramento and Los Angeles and read the testimony of the witnesses:

Field Briefing in Los Angeles
Field Briefing in Sacramento

I also want to hear from you. I want to know your priorities for the next federal transportation bill. I hope you will use the instructions at the bottom of this page to send me your thoughts about what the transportation priorities for the nation should be for the coming years. What can be done to best reduce congestion? Do you want more public transit? What should be done to more quickly move freight across the nation? While these are not easy questions, I would like to hear from you. By considering the thoughts of Californians, I think we can craft a better bill for the nation.

Sincerely,
Barbara Boxer
United States Senator


To respond to this message, please click here. This link will take you to a webpage where you can reply to messages that you receive from Senator Boxer’s office.


CHOW:
Dear Senator Boxer:

As one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, California is poised to take a leadership role in stopping global warming even if the United States does not. However, real change will need to happen in Washington DC to tackle this issue, so I am thankful that this is an issue that we both care about.

First, we need to seriously fund public transit and high speed rail in California and in major metropolitan areas instead of spending billions in the coming years expanding our highways and airports.

Second, we need to put serious pressure on the auto industry to produce green vehicles. Plug-in hybrid and electric vehicle technologies were available a decade ago, but GM decided to scrap the EV1. Learning from past mistakes, we need to increase our CAFE standards for cars to 60mpg and 45mpg for light trucks by 2012 if we are to reach the target of an 80% reduction in our greenhouse gas emissions by 2025. The current plan for 80% by 2050 is not enough if we are to stop global warming, even though vague and distant goals may be more politically convenient.

Lastly, we need to show the world that we mean business when we talk about getting rid of our addiction to dirty fuels such as oil. There is too much talk about biofuels such as ethanol and other unclean, non-sustainable energy sources for our nation's vehicles. We need to seriously invest in converting to a solar economy with 100% electric cars. Gasoline, ethanol, and hydrogen are not the ways of the future, despite what big auto and oil companies are telling Congress and ordinary Americans. We also need to adopt a nuclear-free energy policy, a policy that the Republicans are going to do a major push for in the near future. The Democratic Party CANNOT give in to nuclear lobbyists and the conservative agenda!

Thank you for prioritizing the future of transportation in our country and I hope to hear your thoughts about these matters soon.

Sincerely,

Edward Chow

Note to Barbara Boxer: Get on board

As you can plainly see from the Science Debate logo in the right side menu, I have supported the idea of having a debate strictly on those issues that need to be informed by the best science that we have: Global Warming, Nuclear Proliferation, Medical Research, Education, Agriculture. I have already convinced my Congressman, Jerry McNerney to endorse this proposal. Now, I am working on Senator Boxer.

Today, I posted the following at the contact form on her Senatorial web site as well as calling her San Francisco Office. I focused on the College and University support that exists in California. The full list of such support is much larger. However, only two California Congress Critters have endorsed this proposal: Jerry McNerney (CA-11) and Sam Farr (CA-17). We need to have more support and we need to have Boxer's support on this.

Even though the criteria for participation in the debate was set so high (15% in national polls) as to preclude 3rd Party participation as well as that of Republican Dr. Paul, this is still an event that is worth supporting just because the issues are so important.

Please use my comments as a template and turn up the volume in Boxer's ear.

Invitations have gone out to Clinton, Obama, McCain and Huckabee to participate in a specific debate on issues that need to be informed by science. This would obviously include Global Warming, Medical Research, Agricultural policy, Education... all issues that you care about.

I would ask that you take the time to endorse this effort. You can do so easily on the debate organization's web site: http://www.sciencedebate2008.com/.

At least, note the large number of educational leaders who have endorsed this effort, including these California Universities: Stanford, UC-Berkeley, UC-Riverside, CSU-Monterey Bay, Humboldt State, Pomona College. Additionally, the presidents of Cal. Tech., CSU-San Bernardino, Harvey Mudd College, San Jose State, San Diego State and Fresno State have personally endorsed the debate.

But, this is a political issue and we need support from our political leaders in order to make sure that this happens.

California's Greenwashed Leaders

I am truly amazed that California's political leadership has so easily donned the mantle of "green" and have been allowed to get away with it without criticism. In fact, Schwarzenegger, Boxer and Pelosi have become the darlings of the environmental movement while selling out the public with flamboyant speech and flawed policies.

The list of examples is long. I will only focus on what they have said and what they have done regarding energy policy. The House of Representatives has just passed the CLEAN Energy Act of 2007 (HR 6). Speaker Pelosi announced this triumph with much rhetorical flamboyancy, calling it the "shot heard round the world" and holding up the baseball with which Bobby Thompson ended the dream of the 1951 Brooklyn Dodgers. It was truly an example of major arm twisting by a Speaker who rules with a heavy gavel.

I will admit that some of the bill is moving in the right direction. It does include new Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFE) standards for the first time in many years. It also has major flaws specifically in the manner that it has implemented a Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). Pelosi considered that part of it's significant achievements.

MSNBC tempers their reporting of some of the benefits with the following:

"We will send our energy dollars to the Midwest, not the Middle East," countered House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, referring to the bill's emphasis on promoting renewable energy sources, especially ethanol, which would see a sevenfold increase by 2022 to 36 billion gallons a year.

Republican Roscoe Bartlett (MD-06), the most articulate and environmentally responsible Republican in Congress, found RFS to be a fatal flaw in this bill and voted, surprisingly to some, against the bill.

What Pelosi is not saying, but what everyone knowledgeable understands, is that you have to be very careful about the choice of technologies and the food vs. energy issues. Every kernel of corn that goes into ethanol is not going into our food supply where it is the primary food for raising livestock, it is a primary food for dairy cattle, it is a major ingredient in most packaged foods. The result, higher food prices for everyone and no reduction in polluting greenhouse gases. It is too bad we can not legislate away the gaseous content of political speech.

As for Boxer, one need look no further than her refusal to take substantive action against commodity subsidies. I have commented on this before. What I did not do there was to make the case that failure to act on subsidies has major environmental implications. We are facing serious water problems in California. The Federal Government and the California Water Project are subsidizing the water to farmers, subsidizing the electric power costs to pump that water and then we are subsidizing the growing of cotton in the desert with it's large scale need for irrigation. This is practicing environmental stupidity for the slight chance that Boxer will get a few more votes in farm country.

And don't get me started on our "green" governor. He is like the Hulk, green when he has to be. Yes, his efforts to improve the transportation sector are beneficial. But he has ignored the building sector and that uses almost twice as much energy as does transportation. In one situation after another, he has acted as a cheerleader for development, even in the flood plains of our rivers, even when we don't have the water to support it. His proposals for a peripheral canal, necessary in his mind to support continued population growth in So Cal, would be a long term disaster for the delta, for agriculture in that area.

Restore the Delta's most recent (12/03/07) newsletter should be an eyeopener to anyone who thinks that Schwarzenegger really cares about the environment. The conclusion here:

Without a doubt those who are pushing for a peripheral conveyance system are influencing each and every process currently unfolding. Yet, we still do not know how freshwater must pass through the Delta in order for the estuary to have good water quality.

At a time when "green" is the word everywhere, when even Honda declares that they are the "greenest car company in America" we need more than greenwashing. We need better leadership.

Down on the farm

I would like to call attention to another fine article concerning the Farm Bill of 2007. This time, the San Francisco Chronicle almost gets it. Unfortunately, Carolyn Lockhead still had to play the "fair and balanced" game, giving multiple views without taking the easy step of providing the information that would tell the reader what was truth and what was spin. But that is media coverage of politics from the beltway.

It is incomprehensible that either of our Senators could have the slightest doubt about continuing the current subsidy practices. If subsidies for American Cotton are in this bill, the President will have to veto it. This may be the first time that he is more correct than Congress. Allowing cotton subsidies to continue will open up major international trade problems and the costs could be $Billions. But I have written about this recently.

The Chronicle's quote from Dennis Cardoza (D-CA 18)is typical of the political BS the Democrats use to try and hold on to farm country seats.

"The traditional support that Republicans and this president receive from farm country is evaporating rapidly," said Cardoza, who secured new money to research and market fruits and vegetables. "They're more concerned about foreign corporations dodging American taxes than they were for real hardworking, salt-of-the earth people plowing the fields in the Midwest."

I am not sure what he means. When a majority of cotton subsidies go to less than 10% of all cotton farmers, something is amiss. The current system is set up for big business agriculture and gentleman farmers with a penthouse in the city. It dodes not go to those "real hardworking, salt-of-the earth people plowing the fields in the Midwest."

The minimum acceptable change in the subsidy structure is for the Senate to accept the Dorgan-Grassley limits on subsidy payment.

There is a natural affinity between the ecological and grassroots democracy goals of the Green Party and the needs of small farmers and rural communities. In California, Green Party efforts backed Restore the Delta as this non-profit brought fishing, farming and environmental interests together to try and preserve this hub of California's water supply.

Maybe this congress will muddle through with a barely acceptable bill, one with Dorgan-Grassley. But it will still favor everything that is big: farms, agri-business, transportation costs, energy use. Fundamental change will happen when the farmers and Greens align their efforts for a food policy that prioritizes a sustainable economy that benefits the health of our citizens, our land, and our farmers.

Lockhead does us a favor at the end of her Chronicle Story. She allows Wisconsin Representative Ron Kind to get in a few last words.

What subsidy supporters cannot explain, Kind argued, "is why we have a farm bill where 70 percent of the people in production agriculture get nothing ... including the specialty crop producers. And they're not going bankrupt. They're not being driven out of business. So the question is, why do these five main grain crops deserve so much of the subsidies and so much of the money, when it's concentrated in so few hands? That's the great story in all this."

Kind had an amendment to this bill and it was killed by Pelosi playing power calculus with farm country votes. The only Californian to side with Kind was Oakland's Barbara Lee. She got it right, again.