It has been a while since this blog waxed pessimistic. But, now seems like a good time, thanks to HuffPo contributor Alison van Diggelen.
She interviewed Robert Ballard. On the topic of Global Harming, the ocean explorer of Titanic fame believes it already is too late. “If you want to know the truth: it’s too late. All the ice is going to melt. There’s a lag and it’s already in the system.”
The current hazard to life on the Planet as we know it is as black as coal, or tar sands, or crude oil, hurtling towards us, densely populated by lobbyists and other less than human things that continue to drone, “Resilience is futile.”
Curiously, nothing was said in the interview about ocean acidification, something about which many oceanographers worry as much as climate scientists are worrying about the disappearance of the polar ice caps. Leading climate scientist and director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, James Hansen, has expressed concern about the ice melting, yet has resisted the assertion that crossing this tipping point is irrevocable.
Instead, Hansen has called for the phaseout of coal by 2030. While acknowledging that the governments are lying to the people in words and deeds, e.g., authorizing new coal-fired power plants, supporting unconventional fossil fuels, and subsidizing the search for more oil, Hansen holds out the hope that humanity will resist continuing along the path of atmospheric and hydrologic degradation.
- Image by Getty Images via Daylife
Perhaps, humanity will find the hope and courage that Dr. Hansen emulates. Meanwhile, as Jeff Biggers observes, “While President Obama addresses the US Congress in his historic State of the Union tonight, our nation will sit back and burn an estimated 115,000 tons of coal.”
Close to 250,000 tons of CO2 will be released from coal-fired plants during the hourlong presentation; hundreds of pounds of toxic mercury emissions will enter our air, and inevitably, into the lives of our children.
As we watch the President on our televisions and computer screens generated by coal-fired electricity, arsenic from coal ash, along with boron, selenium and lead, will quietly seep into our watersheds. Drawing from American Lung Association estimates, three American citizens will die prematurely during the State of the Union due to illnesses related to coal-fired plant pollution; three coal miners will also die today from black lung disease. Millions of tax dollars will be allocated in this single hour to cover the external health care and environmental costs of coal.
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Speaking of our government lying to us, Barry said clean coal last night.
As snarkily observed for Ecopolitology on the topic of Communicating Climate Change:
I saw him today at the SOTU
A glimpse of green in his hand
I knew he would make a connection
At his feet was a devastated land
No, you can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
And if you try sometime you find
You get Business As Usual
(With apologies to Mick)
“I don’t understand you; it was Fanfare for the Common Man.”
Hey, that’s great; and, this here epic is about The Three Letters.
“Oh, I know that one, the first letter said, “Blame it on the previous administration’, right?”
Yes, but no, these three letters are all the same. I’m talking 3E’s.
“Oh.”
I heard a lot about Economics last night, so much so, that after a few words amidst the applause, I became despondent. This would be another politics as usual speech at the height of Washington Theater season, another Super Bowl when the outcome is known and the commercials comprise the true contest.
From the standpoint of symbolic interactionism, I can appreciate that the Speaker welcomed the Black Man into her house. I trust that Equity is an Issue.
My concern is with the “glimpse of green”, ecology subjugated, BAUAAAE.
“Policymakers must understand that unlike a steel tariff, action on climate change is not something that can be postponed a year,” said Richard Somerville, a research professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and co-author of the Copenhagen Diagnosis, a synthesis of the most policy-relevant climate science since the 2007 IPCC report. “The longer we delay in reducing our emissions, the higher the global temperature increase we lock in.” — Common Dreams
Brooklyn Treehugger Brian Merchant reports that President Obama seeks to cut from the federal budget $38 Billion in coal & oil subsidies. Too bad, Grist’s David Roberts predicts, special interests almost certainly will keep this from happening.
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