Five Before Chaos

… has always been, I believe, rooted in capitalism and economic libertarianism. Basically, if anthropogenic global warming proponents are correct (as I believe they are), it basically means that we can’t just “do what we want” regardless of the consequences. One of those right wing definitions of freedom seems to be mind-numbingly simple , i.e. freedom is doing (or buying or destroying, but certainly not having sex with) what you want, regardless of the consequences. It certainly doesn’t take into consideration other people’s freedoms to be free from pollution, dirty water or having the public commons completely corporatized and exploited.

And of course, apologists for this worldview inevitably point to “market based” solutions and the convoluted illogic that regulations are hampering environmental progress, as though if there were no MPG standards, and they could build a car that gets 2 MPG, somehow people will miraculously all start buying hybrids. It’s really as crazy as what the Rapture-Ready™ crowd believes, but it’s more harmful, as it truly affects every single thing on the planet.

This free-market fundamentalism consistently fails to address a rather salient point… how do you fix things, when consumers, given a choice between something environmentally friendly or not, healthy or not, toxic or not, repeatedly choose the detrimental option? Nobody seem to be able to give me a decent answer on that, instead blathering on about “individual choice” and “it’s not my fault if people make bad choices”, or when all else fails, “who are you to decide what’s right?”, as though there are really upsides to lead paint or BPH that are somehow escaping me. If all else fails, some vague reference to the Soviet Union and waiting hours on line for a roll of toilet paper are thrown in for good measure.

Continue reading

I’m not holding my breath that anything substantial is going to come out of the Copenhagen talks; until we deal with megacapitalism itself, we’re not going to make any headway on climate change. But I do like Greenpeace’s latest billboard campaign over there showing the leaders apologizing twenty years from now for not doing anything. BAGNews Notes has more, as well as a link to the whole series.

The Center for Inquiry in Amherst, New York is a secular humanist organization that publishes, among other things, the excellent Free Inquiry and Skeptical Inquirer magazines. They also cover lots of advocacy and such all around the world poromoting critical inquiry and secular humanism.. Of course, with us secular humanists being a distinct minority, large as is it is, CFI doesn’t seem to make it in the news so much unless its one of their spokesman on a news show calling bullshit on the latest psychic nonsense or quack medicine.

So I was pleasantly surprised last night to read that the CFI has drawn some serious attention to a high-school textbook that essentially has a fair amount of bullshit in it regarding both global warming and a highly distorted view of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. From the Center for American Progress:

Last week, the Center for Inquiry, a Hudson, NY think tank, announced that “a civics textbook used in many secondary schools around the country contains inaccurate and misleading statements, in particular in its analysis of certain constitutional law issues, including school prayer, and global warming.” The Center had been notified by Matthew LaClair of Kearny, NJ, a high school senior whose Advanced Placement (AP) Government class uses American Government, written by James Q. Wilson and John DiIulio, Jr. The Center’s critique is forcing the book’s publisher, Houghton Mifflin, and the College Board (which runs the AP program) to review the book, now in its 11th edition. According to President Bush, Wilson “may be the most influential political scientist in America” and DiIulio is “one of the most influential social entrepreneurs in America.” Wilson is the Ronald Reagan Professor for Public Policy at Pepperdine University and the chairman of the Council of Academic Advisors of the conservative American Enterprise Institute. DiIulio, a University of Pennsylvania professor, was the first head of Bush’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives but later became disillusioned with the “Mayberry Machiavellis” inside the White House. By co-authorizing this textbook, DiIulio threatens to jeopardize his impressive academic record on criminal justice and American public life.

It’s a good read, and the article describes how some of the book reads like your typical list of discredited right-wing talking points:

The book claims that “the scientific community is divided over the issue” and that “activist scientists say that the earth is getting warmer; skeptical ones note that the earth’s atmosphere has been getting cooler.” Furthermore, it claims, “Science doesn’t know whether we are experiencing a dangerous level of global warming or how bad the greenhouse effect is, if it exists at all.” Environmentalists are portrayed as “elites who often base their arguments on ideology as much as facts.” The section on global warming is illustrated, without explanation, by a photograph of a snowstorm.

And of course, if one looks at the references for the global warming, it’s chock full of – you guessed it – conservative and industry-funded think tank “scientists” which is almost often the case with these things, as my regular readers would know quite well.

The b.s. isn’t limited to global warming misinformation. In regards to Constitutional law, it gets it quite wrong in regards to gay rights and school prayer, among other things, even pushing the incredulous line that the ridiculous Christian concept of “original sin” was highly influential on the Founding Fathers in writing the Constitution, even though:

The doctrine of original sin was explicitly rejected by Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams. The Constitution is indeed designed with checks and balances because the Founders recognized the fallibility of mankind, but “their conclusions about human nature were based on historical experience, not religious doctrine.” In fact, in the Federalist Papers, the records of the Constitutional Convention, and the state ratification conventions, there is not a single reference to “original sin.”

Of course, the publisher says they will “review the book” and possibly make some changes, but considering who the authors are and the general mindset of the book, I wouldn’t count on it being a more factual revision. Hats off to CFI for calling bullshit on this.

eorge Lakoff’s Rockridge Institute has written some fine pieces in regards to the framing and language for progressive arguments. There’s one of those good posts today over at Open Left, in regards to what specifically needs to change in terms of our thinking-at-large in regards to the issue. To those with a deep connection to the earth and a strong environmental ethic, it’s obvious common sense, and of course it’s not going to have an effect on idiot wingers who delight in the irony in global warming activists having to use air travel to get around (as if that somehow disproves the whole shebang) or who are still oblivious to the irony fact that most of the deniers get major funding from the polluting industry, but it’s moreso a good outline about how we need to start reframing the whole mindset. First off, there are major conservative ideas that have defined the “truth” that need to be quashed, if we’re ever going to make any real progress on the issue:

• Nature is a resource to be exploited.
• Wealth is measured simply by money.
• The economy and environment are distinct and inevitably in conflict with one another.
• Polluting is a right, so companies should be compensated for the cost of clean-up.
• Markets are natural and naturally good.
• Government is distinct from markets and intrudes upon them.

Sound familiar? Much of the “logic” of these arguments can easily be applied to many of the other problems our nation faces, such as wealth inequity and healthcare as well. Ands as they point out it’s not just a about ideas. There need to policies behind these ideas, as well. Now, they expand on these points, and I want you to go over and read it, but the main highlights:

• Nature is the basis of our survival.
• Wealth is well-being.
• A healthy economy depends upon a healthy environment.
• We all own the air. It is our right to have it clean.
• Markets are tools for achieving societal goals.
• Government makes markets possible.

Of course, the free-market fundies will take issue with these, especially lthe last two points here, but tough shit. We’re redefining things here. They’ve called the shots long enough and we’re all paying for it.

It’s nice whenever some of Bush’s “screw the earth” policies get turned back in the courts. This time, it’s a major provision of his Orwellian-named “Healthy Forests Initiative”:

A federal appeals court on Wednesday blocked a Bush administration rule that allowed logging and burning projects in national forests without first analyzing their effects on the environment.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the U.S. Forest Service violated the National Environmental Policy Act when it issued the 2003 rule, which was billed as a way to reduce wildfires.

As part of the “Healthy Forests Initiative,” the “hazardous fuels reduction” rule exempted logging projects up to 1,000 acres and prescribed forest burns up to 4,500 acres from environmental review.

The court said the agency’s failure to properly analyze the rule caused “irreparable injury” by allowing more than 1.2 million acres of national forest land to be logged and burned each year without studying the ecological impacts.

Don’t get too happy, though. Bush is more than likely working on some nefarious rule that will reclassify these trees as “enemy combatants” or something, where they will be sent to Guantanamo, or more likely, burned, because he can’t figure out how to waterboard a tree- “I don’t know why it ain’ workin’! The damn roots just keep sucking up the water!”.

Next up, a piece of global warming legislation is advancing in the Senate, the Lieberman-Warner bill . Yeah, Lieberman actually did something good, but that’s still not getting him off the hook for all his other bullshit. Now, this legislation still doesn’t go far enough (as Bernie Sanders pointed out), but what’s important about this is it managed to make it to the floor without all of the Repub attemts to add a bunch of amendments to neuter it. A particularly funny one was one that would ease the emissions standards if they “negatively affected poor people”. Funny how Repubs all of a sudden care about “poor people” for the first time in recent memory. It was a ruse anyways, and more importantly, we’re fast reaching a point where some hard choices are going to need to be made, even if the short-term economics may not be optimal. This practice of economics always trumping environmental concerns in this country (more often than not, bitching, threatening and whining from big power producers) is in part why our environmental crisis has reached the level that it has. More on Sanders’ role in this bill over at Grist.

Every now and then I read something so succinct that really nails it, that I wish I could just reprint the whole damn thing here. Today it’s Paul Krugman’s latest, “Gore Derangement Syndrome”, which really lays out some serious insight into why the wingers get their panties in a wad about Al Gore, as well as the broader aspect of why they’re so in denial about global warming.

Partly it’s a reaction to what happened in 2000, when the American people chose Mr. Gore but his opponent somehow ended up in the White House. Both the personality cult the right tried to build around President Bush and the often hysterical denigration of Mr. Gore were, I believe, largely motivated by the desire to expunge the stain of illegitimacy from the Bush administration.

And now that Mr. Bush has proved himself utterly the wrong man for the job – to be, in fact, the best president Al Qaeda’s recruiters could have hoped for – the symptoms of Gore derangement syndrome have grown even more extreme.

And as Krugman notes, this vitriol is escalated by the fact that Gore keeps being right (as in ‘correct’). But the larger, underlying point that Krugman points out is that they fear the policy implications of taking climate change seriously, in that they’re going to have to change the way they do things, and laissez-faire free market capitalism simply will not work:

“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals,” said F.D.R. “We know now that it is bad economics.” These words apply perfectly to climate change. It’s in the interest of most people (and especially their descendants) that somebody do something to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, but each individual would like that somebody to be somebody else. Leave it up to the free market, and in a few generations Florida will be underwater.

Everything I’ve just said should be uncontroversial – but imagine the reception a Republican candidate for president would receive if he acknowledged these truths at the next debate. Today, being a good Republican means believing that taxes should always be cut, never raised. It also means believing that we should bomb and bully foreigners, not negotiate with them.

So if science says that we have a big problem that can’t be solved with tax cuts or bombs – well, the science must be rejected, and the scientists must be slimed. For example, Investor’s Business Daily recently declared that the prominence of James Hansen, the NASA researcher who first made climate change a national issue two decades ago, is actually due to the nefarious schemes of – who else? – George Soros.

Which brings us to the biggest reason the right hates Mr. Gore: in his case the smear campaign has failed. He’s taken everything they could throw at him, and emerged more respected, and more credible, than ever. And it drives them crazy.

Yeah, I know, I paraphrased almost half the article, but it needs to be read. And I’ve said it before… if we sit around and wait for “consumer choice” to dicatate positive environmental change, it’ll be too late, because Americans are more concerned aobut comfort and convenience that making a sacrifice that entails doing the right thing for the good of the planet.

crossposted at Green Mountain Daily. 

Had the mood to blog this morning, and thanks to this post from Julie at GMD, I’ve got plenty to chew on about some of the horrible energy proposals coming up in the U.S. Senate and Congress that you need to know about. 

First off, there’s a proposal to increase subsidies for coal liquification. Yes, you heard right, one of the dirtiest fuel sources on earth. There’s an extensive post over at MyDD that details the many ways that this is a bad, bad idea. Increased emissions, according to the EPA. More mountaintops destroyed and rivers clogged (have you seen how this has devastated West Virginia?), as well as the devastating poverty and health problems that are part and parcel of working in the coal industry.

Continue reading