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Re: Zombie Agreement From COP 17

robertjereski — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 12:29:08 -0000

You did not respond to his refusal to educate or support 350.org (Inc.) about the only other track in climate negotiations, the Cochabamba Peoples Declaration.

Lorna Salzmann gives a good explanation of how McKibben has distracted rather than informed the network here fromThe Nation May 3rd

An Open Letter and Appeal to Bill McKibben and 350.org

Dear Bill:

Many environmental activists, including myself, have applauded your
work and your writings for years and we know they have had a positive
impact on many members of the general public. Most recently, your
350.org organization has helped publicize the climate change issue and
thus has led the mass media to an acknowledgement of the impeccable
scientific argument justifying this 350 figure: a rapid reduction in
atmospheric CO2 from the present 389 parts per million (ppm) back down
to 350, the single most effective way available at present to avoid the
worst impacts of climate change.

But I am troubled by the inexplicable fact that neither you nor
350.org has proposed specific actions, policies or legislation to
actually reach that goal. The need for articulating these details is
especially urgent, as the U. S. congress continues to not only debate
over the goal itself but has, at the urging of special interests such as
the coal, nuclear and oil industries and major corporations involved in
biofuels and agribusiness, de-fanged the Waxman/Markey energy bill in
congress so as to minimize their own responsibilities and maximize their
profits. This bill comes uncomfortably close to being a denial of the
facts about global warming.

Even some of the major national environmental groups like Natural
Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense Fund have aligned
themselves not with the best science or the public interest but with
corporations in the coalition called US Climate Action Partnership
(USCAP), seeking modern "indulgences", namely carbon permit trading,
called cap-and-trade, which will allow the indefinite operation of
coal-fueled power plants, the major source of CO2, whose rapid shut-down
should be the centerpiece of any sane energy policy. Despite such a
carbon market in Europe, energy consumption there continues to rise each
year.

In addition to this scheme, which will create yet another market in
derivatives like the one that has shredded our economy and enriched
brokers and traders, (including Al Gore, founder of a carbon trading
firm), new coal-fired plants are on the drawing board, with their owners
passing on the costs to the government (i.e.public) of pie-in-the-sky
speculative schemes for carbon capture and storage (CCS), yet another of
the ill-advised subsidies to the energy sector that keep energy too
cheap to spur serious energy conservation or alternatives. All this is
in addition to the tens of billions of dollars in loan guarantees that
Pres. Obama is urging for nuclear reactors that the private sector,
quite rationally, refuses to invest in and which are neither safe nor
cheap and which will deprive renewable energy technologies of the
necessary capital and public support.

The central problem, as you well know, is that none of these schemes
has any chance of making a dent in the climate problem in the time frame
remaining to us. Expert scientists and scientific bodies now
unanimously agree that we have less than ten years to reduce the CO2
concentration to 350 ppm to avoid increasing the global temperature more
than 2 degrees Centigrade above pre-industrial times.

Beyond this period, irreversible and uncontrollable feedback will
occur from disappearing ice sheets, melting permafrost and ocean
warming, reducing biodiversity, destroying coral reefs, acidifying the
oceans, raising sea level, and leading inevitably to crises in drinking
water, food production, land use and public health that will cost
societies far more than it will cost to mitigate or avoid these impacts.
Recent scientific conferences addressed the strong possibility that the
earth’s temperature will increase within this century or soon after by
up to six degrees Centigrade, a level not experienced on earth in tens
of millions of years.

In this period, absent a plan to phase out existing coal plants and
mandate serious cuts in energy use, fossil fuel consumption will
continue to rise as it has since 1990, by 2% each year. Regrettably,
renewable energy technologies, however well funded, will not become
sufficiently operative in time to head off a climate emergency since it
takes 50 years to completely replace an energy system and economy.

The obvious solution, urgent if only partial, is to cut energy
consumption quickly and drastically in all sectors and on on all fronts,
using whatever strategies are needed: a transparent carbon tax on
fossil fuels at their point of extraction, production or import; an end
to all fossil fuel subsidies and tax breaks; stringent mandatory energy
efficiency standards and measures for all sectors, especially new
construction; and gasoline rationing, among other things.

It is imperative that energy prices increase to reflect the full
costs of production and their impact on the atmosphere and climate
change. Cheap energy created the problem; that era must end as soon as
possible.

Yet your group, 350. org, and you personally, have chosen NOT to
propose any specific strategy or route to achieve that reduction down to
350 ppm. Many of us are truly puzzled, even aghast, at your reluctance
to follow through in an effective and honest way.

We know that you are well informed on the issue and we see proof of
your concern and dedication. You are looked to as a leader and
spokesman. You influence public discourse. But all your work will come
to naught if the energy legislation now in congress moves forward in its
present form and your organization does not step up to the bat and help
shape a serious, science-based national energy policy in Washington.

All of us need to pull together with a unified, honest and
scientifically credible legislative agenda. I therefore make this
personal plea to you to put your own reputation and that of 350.org on
the line, and join groups like ClimateSOS and Rising Tide in opposing
any legislation that includes carbon trading and fossil/nuclear energy
subsidies, and which does not propose massive immediate cuts in energy
consumption across the board.

Anything less than this would be intellectually dishonest on all our
parts. If we truly believe that we must cut back to 350 ppm within five
years, there is no alternative to shunting the existing energy
legislation (ACESA) aside and replacing it with an uncompromising
muscular piece of legislation. Anything else would literally doom our
civilization.

Lorna Salzman

(Salzman is an environmental writer, lecturer and activist who,
starting in the early 1970s worked for major national environmental
organizations as well as the NYC Dept. of Environmental Protection. She
was the Suffolk County Green Party candidate for congress in 2002, and
in 2004 she sought the presidential nomination of the U.S. Green Party.
Contributions to defray the cost of this ad are welcome; please contact
the author at: lsalzman1. Her web site is: www.lornasalzman.com)

Re: Zombie Agreement From COP 17

robertjereski — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 10:04:30 -0000

Hey Bill McKibben, let's have more symbolic actions of putting solar panels on the white house! years of wasted organizing" and no mention of policies or of existing second tracks like Bolivia's introducing the Peoples Declaration is what we've gotten from this darling of the corporate media.

What a distraction! Really is quite revealing that he hasn't educated his network about the Peoples Declaration (which aims for 300 ppm not 350 aha!):
pwccc.wordpress.com/2010/04...

Gross.

Re: Veterans Call Attention to Personal and Societal Costs of War

robertjereski — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 09:43:29 -0000

I wonder why 'conservative estimates of 100,000 civilian casualties' from the Iraq and Afghan invasions is tolerated by objective journalists, let alone the 'progressive' community which might usually focus on exposing suffering of the least powerful at the hands of the lawless and powerful. The clippings from Iraq Body Count have been roundly criticized as unscientific and bound to drastically undercount.

Why isn't the Lancet Study - a rigorous epidemiological study of excess mortality which found 100,000 in its first of numerous studies back in 2004(!) - used? It is one of two peer-reviewed study and is not tied to war-mongering corporate media "journalists", politicians, or corporations:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

So why not use it!?

Re: Worst Food Additive Ever? It's in Half of All Foods We Eat and Its Production Destroys Rainforests and Enslaves Children | Food | AlterNet

robertjereski — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 07:58:35 -0000

This is very important information. But, because of their corruption, I wish that Rainforest Action Network wasn't featured in reporting it. Rainforest Action Network continues to support 'free' market approaches to ending deforestation. They don't support banning old growth forest industrial logging but instead support the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) which creates a market for 'well-managed' forestry products, including those from industrially logged old growth. Ridiculous.
RAN is a shakedown operation which doesn't take on the threats to rainforests systemically. They're symbolic feel-good, while providing cover for the distraction of FSC.

More on FSC: www.fsc-watch.org
More on R.A.N.: http://www.rainforestportal...

Re: Stand Up for Planetary Justice on October 24

robertjereski — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:10:42 -0000

Dr. Hansen also pointed out - why doesn't Peter Singer or, for that matter, Bill McKibben the environmentalist heading 350.org?! - that existing climate legislation by Representatives Waxman and Markey and Senators Kerry and Boxer fall disastrously short of the targets science determines are necessary:

http://www.climatedepot.com...

Why are some environmental organizations - ones not patently in bed with the worst corporate polluters like the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Nature Conservancy (see www.us-cap.org) - so timid about pointing out that "progressive" members of Democratic Party are wholly culpable for the terrible climate legislation we are confronted with in the name of 'climate change'.

I agree with Hansen and other scientists and activists that current legislation by Markey, Waxman, Kerry, and Boxer is "worse than nothing". It must be defeated and we must start with the proven effective mechanisms (not proven failed ones like cap-and-trade) and scientifically recognized targets like 300-350 ppm by end of century.

Here's a platform and effort which isn't timid about declaring what will and won't work and who is working for us and who for the polluters: www.climatesos.org

Re: Realism as Pragmatic Cooperation

robertjereski — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 00:27:31 -0000

the united states legislature is seeking to shape the world's response to the threat of climate change by providing the president with a bill. but special interests have made the bill (in the House) completely inadequate to what the science is telling us must be done. And the Senate will likely weaken this terrible bill.

Here is an initiative which Dr. James Hansen, one of the leading climate scientists in the world, has endorsed, which takes as its departure for climate change policy, what the science requires: