'Toontime: Hot Times on Planet Earth

[credit: Steve Benson]
Wackdoodle sez: An' that ol' boy Putin plays with matches!

Congress fiddles while Forty-four gets in a round or two or three. US Person is not blaming Majority Leader Harry Reid for the Senate's inability to take up the most fundamental problem affecting our times: global warming. The Senate is a broken institution, and he knows it: broken on the back of a few revanchist ideologues who are willing to manipulate arcane rules of procedure to thwart the popular will.  Reforming the Senate's filibuster rule (apparently created by mistake thanks to Vice President Arron Burr, who also killed Alexander Hamilton) will have to occur before taking on the enormous task of changing the way America powers itself.  According to our current Vice President, Joe Biden, Repugnants have been threatened with loosing the privileges of their seniority unless they support the GOP leadership on every single procedural vote.  One thing is certain--business as usual will take us over the cliff of catastrophic climate change.   How catastrophic? Canadian scientists report the possible collapse of the oceans' food chain. Rising sea levels could create millions of climate refugees. The Pentagon is already forecasting regional wars over water and food supplies. Mass fatalities and livestock die off can be caused by extreme heat and more violent storms.

The problems facing activists who want to do something about climate change are many and serious.  But a few of the largest impediments can be quickly identified.  First is the proposed legislation itself. The cap and trade mechanism sponsored by Senator Kerry (D-MA) is another corporate inspired boondoggle.  Most informed climate activists do not support it, and the progressive base is rightly uninspired by it.  The nation needs incentives to switch from carbon to alternative energy sources, not more futures markets dominated by the likes of Goldman Sachs.  The federal government also needs revenue.  A carbon tax would generate a lot of revenue as well discourage the continued and extravagant burning of carbon.  Everything from new coal power plants to low mileage SUVs could be taxed in ways to make their continued use cost prohibitive or at least accurately priced.  Of course, any kind of new tax is anathema to corporate America and their captive politicians, but the corporatists are using our air, land and water as open sewers without cost.  That has to stop.  If this extreme inequity alone is not enough to ignite popular support, then channeling some of the new revenue to Americans so they can afford higher energy costs might be an appropriate feature of a new energy tax scheme

Second, the ability of purchased politicians to block fundamental energy reform must be illuminated and eliminated.  Whether this is done on a rule by rule basis or a wholesale reform of Senate procedure is a matter best left to members, but the institution's dysfunction must be remedied.  The House passes legislation without super-majorities, and the American people support passing bills in the Senate in a similar fashion.  Without changing the Senate, America cannot go forward into an alternative future.

Third, the occupant of the White House has to get behind the issue of climate change in a committed way. He refused to invest any political capital in the effort to pass the cap and trade legislation.  Forty-four should begin the campaign to pass carbon tax legislation with an unmistakable symbolic initiative: retrofitting the entire White House for energy efficiency.  The retrofit includes reinstalling the solar panels that Jimmy Carter, the last President to do anything significant about alternative energy policy, put on the roof and Ronald 'Raygun' Reagan took down as a statement about the "new dawn in America". The current occupant can even use the South Lawn if a bigger array is necessary. It is simply irrational to spend more on drone aircraft than solar energy technology.  Unless we change how American powers itself, Reagan's version of a "new dawn" will bring our doom.