Best way to end war is to avoid it's causes.

In the long run, it is always better to have been able to avoid wars than to have won them. Yet, it would seem that this lesson is one we are loathe to study.

We are beginning to see the inevitable effects of climate change. Entire island nations will disappear and their populations will have to go elsewhere. Will they keep their identities or be absorbed into another culture? Are their places willing to provide either the physical space for that to happen?

We are beginning to see climate refugees in Africa. Here again, the same questions arise. What nations are going to be willing to accept the responsibility for such refugees? Where will they be allowed to go and what will happen to their identities as a people?

I greatly feat that these dislocation will lead to hundreds of millions of dispossessed, disaffected peoples, a breeding ground for rage and violence.

We have it now within our power to slow down the rate at which our climate is changing. No one country has been more responsible for our current state of the world than the United States. We have legislators who are willing to discuss the matter, seemingly forever. Whether we have a government that is willing to act is another question.

Failing actions that consider the results until the 7th generation, the only choice for some will be violence, terrorism and war. The way of peace is to fix these problems before it is too late.

During the 2004 campaign for President of the United States. We heard a lot about the courage of John Kerry in Vietnam. Now, I think about the Mekong Delta, where so many lost their lives in a war that did not have to happen. This is what the Mekong Delta might look like by the end of the century if we can limit sea level rise to only 1 or 2 meters. The Mekong Delta has a population of ~20 million and is Vietnam's largest rice growing region. Sen. Kerry is now leading an effort in the U. S. Senate to craft a comprehensive climate change bill. Will he have the courage to do what really needs to be done to stop global warming, or will this turn into yet another salvo in the ware against the people of Vietnam?

Sen. Kerry, it is up to you. Have you reported for duty yet?

Have they all gone crazy?

I am beginning to doubt my own sanity. The more I read about the machinations of the U.S. Senate, the more I am convinced that they must still be eating Senate Bean Soup and breathing the fumes. How in the world can they come up with some of the proposals that the are airing… behind closed doors, of course. Does no one else find it strange that Senators Kerry, Graham and Lieberman (KGL) would come up with a plant at purports to "reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the next four decades, including provisions to limit business costs while ramping up domestic production of oil, gas and nuclear power." How do you reduce greenhouse gas emissions while making it easier and cheaper to use up the oil and natural gas that we have as fast as we can? Don't take my word for it, this was the NY Times reporting.

The Times goes on to the good news if you are the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and don't believe in climate change.

In a bow to industry demands, the senators' proposal would pre-empt U.S. EPA climate regulations under the Clean Air Act and halt dozens of state climate laws and regulations now on the books. Also, only facilities that release 25,000 tons per year of greenhouse gases must participate in the climate program.

I thought the Kerry was supposed to be a leader, someone who had a vision of where this country could go. Maybe we were lucky that he lost in 2004, because with Bush in the White House, at least we knew who the enemy of mankind was.

You may note, that I mentioned the Chamber of Commerce above. According to the Times, they were one of the enterprises in the room, having their say before the rest of us get ours. Of course, the Chamber's position on Climate Change is well known. The want a circus trial like the "Scopes Monkey Trial", and more recently they asked the EPA to consider its greenhouse gas endangerment finding. And Kerry is briefing them on how we will stop global warming?

Allow me to take this one step more. If this is what Liberal Icon Kerry is doing, then what about one time darling of the progressive netroots, Jim Webb has going. He and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) have a new bill called the Clean Energy Act of 2009. It is nothing more than a big boost for nuclear industry. According to an alert today from the Nuclear Information Referral Service:

Last fall, Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Jim Webb (D-Va.) introduced S. 2276, the "Clean Energy Act of 2009." But this bill is the opposite of a "clean energy act"! In fact, its primary intent is to encourage the construction of at least 100 new reactors in the U.S. by 2030, encourage reprocessing of radioactive waste, promote additional "small, modular" reactors, and build a new nuclear power infrastructure. Alexander and Webb claim they'll do all this with less than $20 billion over the next 10 years.

My goodness, you don't need Republicans to ram this through Congress, the Democrats will do it for you, and my own Senator Boxer will lead the way, ever bit a cheerleader for nuclear as is her erstwhile Republican opponent Chuck DeVore.

I am not a big fan of Michael Moore, but this is one time that I wish he had his camera in the room while Kerry and friends were making sure they didn't step on any corporate toes with their new bill. Maybe Moore could come up with KGL and me.

All Politics is Personal

The death of Ted Kennedy filled television, I think even Fox News did a eulogy. Most of it was the same, no matter what channel you happened to have on the screen. The recent publication of his memoir, True Compass, only brings a lot of it back again.

Out of it all, there were only two comments that stuck with me. One came from John Kerry and the other from Joe Biden. Kerry continued to return to his paraphrase of Tip O'Neill's dictum that "All Politics is Local." Kerry said that he learned from Kennedy that "All politics is personal."

Biden gave a great example of what that really meant. Talking to GMA on the morning after Kennedy's death, Biden recounted this story.

On the day Barack Obama and Joe Biden were inaugurated as president and vice president, Sen. Ted Kennedy had a seizure that nearly took his life.

The next day Biden received a call from Kennedy, who joked about the seizure and then asked in a very serious tone how Biden's granddaughter was doing.

"What do you mean, Teddy?" Biden said.

"I'm afraid I frightened her. Is she OK?" he said.

Biden's granddaughter, Naomi, then 15 years old, had been sitting at Kennedy's table during the inauguration luncheon where he had the seizure. That is the essence of personal politics. Really caring about the people that you deal with. I don't see that often enough in the Green Party, especially in California. What I do see in personal attacks, innuendo, hurt feelings, retribution, grudges that have gone on far too long. None of these are Green and, as personal politics, none of them are effective. Maybe that is the way things are in other parties. I think all of the conflagration that surrounded Howard Dean and the Dems. Greens need to be better than that to be successful.

An Anti-Corporate Candidate?

I have no problem with Ralph Nader or any other candidate running as a Green. I truly believe, however, that a campaign based solely on the populist, anti-corporate message that we have long heard from Nader will not achieve much this year. I am worried that the rhetoric of the anti-corporate message will become the focus of his campaign, whether he intends that or not. The media will make it so.

Within the past several weeks there has been a major uproar over the question of whether Ralph Nader endorsed / did not endorse John Edwards. (He didn't, in case anyone is confused.) However, he did establish a linkage between the anti-corporate rhetoric of Edwards and his own actions for most of his career. It is worth noting that Edwards message did not resonate with enough of the Democratic primary / caucus participants to become a major factor, dropping to as low as 4% in Nevada and rarely over 20%, despite the fact that he has been campaigning very hard for a long time.

Authenticity Counts. I think that Edwards failed for two reasons. The first is that he never convinced a large number of Democrats that he was authentic. In a real sense, you have to BE the message that you deliver. The images of Edwards and his multi-hundred $ hair cuts and the opulent lifestyle of his mansion undercut the populist message. In many ways, his wife was a much more effective communicator that he was. There is strong evidence that this was also part of Kerry's failure in 2004. That moment when he accepted the 2004 nomination with the obviously contrived act of stepping forward, saluting and saying that he was "reporting for duty" created negative reactions when "test marketed" in a media savvy manner. (ref. "Words the Work" by Dr. F. Luntz) Authenticity counts.

Aspirations. The other failure in Edwards message is that it was not aspirational. It was all about the things that he was against, on our behalf, of course, but still, it failed to show what real vision he had for this country, where he would lead us. All that he could offer to close the deal was just about the same laundry list of policies as the other two except on climate change where he was clearly the strongest. In contrast, Obama is all about the vision thing and one might question the substance... but his campaign has been much more successful.

Lesson for us. Whoever wins the Green Party nomination must not fall into the trap that Edwards built for himself. A campaign that is only about the evils of corporate America and how they conspire to keep good people off the ballot is a campaign that will fail. Conversely, a campaign that is
about the power of a united people act on our own behalf, freeing us from the constraints the media consolidation that has silenced the voices of the public, making us owner of our own future. will re-establish Greens as a party with something to offer this country.

There is much the Green Party needs to accomplish. We must aspire to lead towards a new future. We need candidates who reach back to the core of their life experiences and find the path to that future. Authentiic. Aspirational.

Choose Your Future: Vote.