Category: Paris Climate Accord

We’re In Hot Water

The Daily Escape:

Harbor Seals hauling out on a buoy in Petersburg, AK. Wrongo and Ms. Right were passing by in a zodiac – July 2023 photo via the cruise line

It seems like it’s going to stay hot for a long while, and nobody wants to do anything about it. Temperatures are rising both on land and at sea, with climate experts ringing alarm bells about unprecedented sea surface temperatures:

“The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in late June warned that half of the world’s oceans may experience marine heat wave conditions by September.”

And it’s hitting close to home:

“Not only is Florida sizzling in record-crushing heat, but the ocean waters that surround it are scorching, as well. The unprecedented ocean warmth around the state — connected to historically warm oceans worldwide — is further intensifying its heat wave and stressing coral reefs, with conditions that could end up strengthening hurricanes.”

The NYT reported that the water temperature around Florida hit 90° yesterday.

And while it’s possible to score cheap political points on their governor DeSantis who would rather fight with Mickey Mouse and whatever “Woke” means this week while ignoring climate change, Wrongo won’t stoop to that. He’s sure that Floridians love their governor’s priorities. Just last week, as insurance companies were pulling out of Florida, DeSantis was saying not to worry, the insurers will return to Florida after the hurricane season.

As Pogo said many years ago: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Primarily, the enemy is the Republican politician who continues to vote against efforts to bring the world’s CO2 levels under some semblance of control. The fixes to climate change that will have the most impact involve changes in public policy that will never happen as long as Republicans hold enough votes to block them.

But the big idea is that we’re not going back to where we were heat-wise, no matter what we do to cut further CO2 emissions. As NYT journalist Jeff Goodell said on NPR: (brackets by Wrongo)

“We are moving into a different world, and we need to grasp that idea….the planet is heating up…because we’re putting CO2 into the atmosphere…..It is essentially permanent when we put it [CO2] up there….And the warming will not stop until we stop emitting CO2 and burning fossil fuels….And even if we stop [adding more] CO2, we are stuck with that warming planet for a very long time.”

So, even if at this moment we made huge changes, we would always be on this part of the temperature scale, unless we figure out how to take quite a bit of that CO2 out of the atmosphere.

A few red state legislatures are considering following South Carolina’s lead and simply banning all mention of global warming or climate change in official documents or state-funded research. They think the only real way to deal with the climate problem is to ignore it.

Worse, nobody has a good model for what happens when all that warm water sits and gets warmer. Some meteorologists have pointed out that if the Caribbean got hot enough, it could spawn a continuous series of Category 5 hurricanes, say, once a week from May to October.

Which would resolve the problem of insuring Florida’s oceanfront properties pretty quickly.

It’s becoming evident that we live in a world designed for a climate that no longer exists. What’s really sobering is that the climate that now exists won’t resemble the one that will exist a generation from now.

How our societies and political systems deal with this is the central question of the 21st century.

Wrongo and Ms. Right moved back to New England from California partly because of climate. We were concerned about how scarce water would become in Los Angeles, and we knew that Connecticut would have more water for longer. This week, several of our roads and bridges closed because we had too much rain, causing the Housatonic River to overflow its banks.

This shows that there are no longer any places that can be marked safe from climate change. It has become impossible to predict the future climate/weather anywhere based on the past. And we’re still not coming to terms with just how hot and dangerous things are becoming. Or how fast it’s happening.

Let’s close the week with a wake up tune. Here’s “The Effects of Climate Change on Densely Populated Areas” by People Under The Stairs, a hip hop group from LA formed in 1997:

Sample Lyric:

Hundred degrees at midnight for the third day in a row
Nobody sleepin’ well and I can feel the tension growin’
LA wth rollin’ brownouts, rollin’ papers and rollin’ sixties
Heat exhaustion increasing caution across the city
Some people hit the mall, they’re tryin’ to stay cool
Some people call the cops; “there’s black children in the pool”
Everybody’s lookin’ sideways, we’re ragin’ on the highways
I hate it, I’m tryin’ to stay hydrated and faded but my way Is blocked
By road construction like a scene from “Falling Down”
Cops, they tryin’ to function but it seems they takin’ down us
Brown people at will People get hot and then killed
As the sun begins to set it’s hotter, no-one can chill
Everybody’s windows open there’s not a moment of silence
Alcohol heatin’ frustration that’s increasing domestic violence
9-1-1 is overwhelmed, homie, guess you on your own
The hills are still on fire, I recommend you stay at home

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How Democrats Should Message The Midterms

The Daily Escape:

Sunset along the Last Dollar Road (from Telluride to Ouray), CO – photo by Rich Briggs Photography

Democrats are messaging like mad about the Jan. 6 attempted coup public hearings that start tomorrow. The NYT is asking whether the “Jan. 6 Hearings Give Democrats a Chance to Recast Midterm Message.”

The NYT thinks the real question is whether the “message” of the Jan. 6 hearings will “resonate” with voters. We know that the Republicans now deny that Jan.6 was an attempted coup. We know that the Big Lie, the Great Replacement Theory, and the idea of the Second Amendment uber alles, are mainstream views of the GOP. The Times shouldn’t be covering the mid-terms and the hearings as if they are sporting events – the future of the American experiment is on the line.

Along the way to becoming a Party that totally supports violence, for years, Republicans have been a Party of Senators who do nothing to solve America’s problems.

And it isn’t simply their position on government spending. Once upon a time, Wrongo considered Republican concerns about government spending and budget deficits a serious viewpoint. But since they give tax cuts to the wealthy and to corporations whenever they’re in power, they have lost all credibility on spending.

Under Republican rule, the US left the international consortium to blunt climate change. They walked away from an Iran nuclear deal that leaves the world in a much less safe place. They politicized the pandemic and mocked efforts by public health officials to prevent Covid from becoming the endemic disease it is today.

Going back five decades, they steadfastly opposed national health insurance for the millions of Americans who had none. Their opposition continued by causing the Clinton plan for health insurance to crash on takeoff. Republicans fought the ACA during the Obama administration, although it passed without a single Republican vote in 2010. They fought to overturn it throughout the Trump years.

Today, the Senate is in a position to act on multiple measures, including gun control, that would improve the lives of millions of Americans. They could vote tomorrow. But they won’t because neither Party can muster a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

The 2022 mid-terms provide a moment for all Americans, including Democrats, Independents, and a few Republicans to do some serious soul searching. They need to answer the question: Do you want a government that does nothing or a government that tries to solve problems?

Do you want to elect representatives who despise government, or do you want men and women who bring informed views and respect for our Constitutional democracy to the House and Senate?

Wrongo was in high school when the book “Profiles in Courage” came out. It was ghost-written for then-Senator John Kennedy (the original JFK, not the current empty suit from Louisiana). The book profiles Senators who defied the opinions of their Party (and constituents) to do what they felt was right. Most of them suffered severe criticism and losses in popularity because of their actions.

Today, no one expects to see a Senator of either Party act solely on the basis of moral courage. It is a terrible shame that it takes more courage for a politician to say or do the right thing than they can muster.

But there’s no public mandate for do-nothingism. And the structure of the Senate empowers a minority who doesn’t want anything to get done. When legislators refuse to legislate, they’re telling the American people that they couldn’t care less about urgent issues like gun violence, fair wages or voting rights.

They’re happy to sit on their hands despite Americans needing their help.

This is anti-democratic. If there was strong public support for do-nothingism, at least our governing institutions would reflect public opinion. But the Senate doesn’t reflect what the public wants.

The Senate has changed drastically since its “Profiles in Courage” days. It was conceived as the body that would cool the passions of the House and consider legislation with a national perspective. But today, the Senate has become a body that shuns debate, avoids legislative give-and-take, proceeds glacially, producing next to nothing.

Wrongo worries that in the mid-terms, Democrats will run mainly against the Big Lie, and their sparse record of legislative achievements. They should run against the “Do Nothing Republicans” in the Senate.

The Democratic Party is more diverse ideologically than the Republicans. This is a messaging challenge for them. The Republican’s coalition is narrower. It’s more ideologically homogenous. Given the Senate’s skewed geography, Republicans need only appeal to their base and little else, to succeed. That allows them to use simpler messages.

In “The Cause, The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783” by Joseph Ellis, he says that before the revolution, colonists didn’t think of themselves as Americans. They described their fight for independence as “The Cause”, an ambiguous term that covered diverse ideas and multiple viewpoints. It succeeded in unifying them against the British.

Running against “Do Nothing” Republicans would also use an ambiguous term covering multiple viewpoints. It would allow Democrats to move away from the idea that they have to sell a wider array of ideas to a wider group of voters.

It might also energize both Dems and Independents at a time when they are dispirited.

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Saturday Soother – October 30, 2021

The Daily Escape:

A Halloween prayer – photographer unknown. Fear is everywhere in the world. Is there reason for hope?

In comments on Wrongo’s post, “Climate Change Summit, Part II”, blog reader Gloria R. asked for some suggestions about how older people could help with climate change, given that the outcome will only be clear after the elderly are long gone.

Good question. In some ways, climate despair is a new kind of climate denial, blunting the momentum for action, just when we need it most. Despair can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But young people aren’t feeling hopeless. The first truly global social movements dedicated to climate action and climate justice have gained in size and strength, beginning with Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for the Future and spreading to the Sunrise Movement in America and to climate justice movements around the world.

First suggestion: These movements are long on enthusiasm and short of money. Maybe geezers could fund them?

Second, capital continues to leave fossil fuel investments. According to a recent study. this shifting of financial assets could potentially stop the fossil fuel companies from giving lip service to climate change, particularly if they lose political power. Maybe geezers could direct their financial advisors to move their investment $$ away from these big emitters?

Third, state and local governments set building codes and local energy-use regulations. They also set zoning and land use rules. So, maybe geezers could get political on a local level and work to make what we tend to call the “living laboratories for democracy” (state and local governments) havens of better climate policies and practices?

Fourth, some of us don’t have funds to back up our ideals. One thing geezers can do that is costless is to send a letter to their kids about what they did to make sure the future isn’t an environmental wasteland. That’s the premise behind DearTomorrow, a project that’s archiving letters about climate change written by people to their future children, selves, or family. The idea is to foster personal engagement with the problems and solutions to climate change. DearTomorrow asks letter writers to focus on positive themes and why they have hope for future generations. Writing a letter to their future self or loved ones makes it personal.

Fifth, join Elders Climate Action, a group of grandparents who mobilize elders to address climate change. They’re trying to protect the well-being of their grandchildren.

There you go, Gloria (and all geezers), five ideas. There are many, many others.

Finally, the response to the Covid pandemic demonstrated how societies and economies can pivot very quickly in response to a global emergency. The response was far from perfect. The rich countries took care of their own citizens first, and then moved in some cases reluctantly, to help the poor nations. But for the medium-term, we now have a blueprint for the globe working together on a global crisis.

Other reasons for hope:

  1. The global economy is growing faster than global emissions. That means energy efficiency is increasing without any erosion in economic growth. The pandemic slowed this down, but the trend is clear.
  2. Energy efficiency is moving from the margins toward a new normal in the products we use. Think how commonplace LED light bulbs are today.
  3. The price of solar and wind power has plunged, and there’s reason to expect that the cost of energy storage, key to an electric power grid reliant on renewable energy, will decline over time.
  4. The supply of clean energy resources is growing faster than new sources of “dirty” energy. Now, the potential for electric power generated from clean, steady sources is becoming a reality.

That’s Wrongo’s brief take on reasons to be hopeful about our climate future. But that’s no reason to stop the effort to hold corporations and politicians accountable for making climate change a top priority. On Thursday at a House Oversight Committee hearing, four fossil fuel CEOs refused to declare climate change an “existential crisis”, using weasel words to avoid reality. They must be stopped.

Enough for today, it’s time for our Saturday Soother, when we take a brief break from whatever is going on in the Virginia governor’s race and spend a few minutes concentrating on the natural world around us. Here in CT, we’ve seen temperatures in the mid-30s. We’ve started leaf blowing. It will go on until at least the first week of December.

Time to bundle up, grab a comfy chair by a window, and listen to Broken Peach perform a live Halloween version of Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love” in zombie makeup. Broken Peach is a cover band from Spain:

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The Climate Summit

The Daily Escape:

Fall colors near Smugglers Notch, VT – October photo by Montanus Photography

Representatives from 200 countries will meet in Glasgow, Scotland later this week to try once again to iron out an approach to heading off the disaster that will occur as global warming continues.

While this is a political gathering, the real focus should and must be on businesses. They are the primary sources of carbon emissions. And they are very concerned about their future should governments agree to serious efforts to limit global warming to 1.5°-2.0°C.

A real commitment would send shock waves through the business models of all corporations.

Corporations don’t like being forced by governments to do much of anything. With climate change, they prefer to make voluntary gestures, just enough to keep governments off their backs. One problem is that many have become more sophisticated in their soft climate denialism, as opposed to the 87-year old Oklahoma Senator who brought a snowball to the floor of the Senate.

If we’re serious about global warming, governments need to force corporations to pay for the damage they do to the planet. That should take at least two forms.

First, a global carbon tax. For big emitters, this would be an immediate threat to profitability. They will fight carbon taxes with all the weapons at their disposal. Reporters have exposed well-funded misinformation campaigns sponsored by them. More about carbon taxes below.

Second, corporations can’t be allowed to walk away from the pollution they create. Bloomberg reports that old oil and gas sites are a climate menace:

“There are hundreds of thousands of…decrepit oil and gas wells across the US, and for a long time few people paid them much mind. That changed over the past decade as scientists discovered the surprisingly large role they play in the climate crisis. Old wells tend to leak, and raw natural gas consists mostly of methane, which has far more planet-warming power than carbon dioxide.”

Bloomberg focuses on one company, Diversified Energy Co., owner of 69,000 wells throughout the US, making them America’s largest well owner. Diversified has alarmed some regulators and environmental advocates:

“State laws require that every well be plugged with cement after it runs dry, an expensive and complicated chore. At the rate Diversified is paying dividends to shareholders, some worry there will be nothing left when those bills come due. If a company can’t meet its plugging obligations, that burden falls to the state…”

Diversified’s business model is partially built on abandoning its played-out wells. If Diversified is allowed to walk, states are likely to be stuck with a $ billions mess. The only way to deal with this and similar problems is to change our bankruptcy laws so that liability for environmental damage isn’t expunged in bankruptcy. That change will require substantial political courage.

Back to a potential carbon tax: The Economist reports: (brackets and parenthesis by Wrongo)

“Even business[es]…realize that the best way to apply pressure is by imposing a global system of carbon taxes, with some form of redistribution to ease the pain on the poorest….The trouble is that only about one-fifth of global emissions is covered by a price on carbon. As a result, the global average price is just $3 per ton of carbon dioxide.

[But] To meet the ambitions of the Paris agreement, the IMF says the global carbon price needs to rise to $75/ton….For some heavy emitters covered by the European Union’s emissions-trading system, it is already above €60 ($69). In China’s new (limited) scheme, by contrast, it is a pittance. America has no federal (carbon tax) scheme of any kind.”

The first thing governments must do is to go after the big emitters like utilities, oil and gas firms, steel, and cement makers. A high carbon tax will cause price increases and thus force changes in consumer behavior. Tourist locations would see fewer tourists because flights would be more costly. Supermarkets would provide more local foods. Amazon might need to rethink their distribution strategy. Life as we know it for consumers would change, while for big emitters, this would be an “adapt or perish” moment. All the more reason why it won’t happen.

The largest problem will be trying to energize collective governmental action.

Self-interest leads every country to do as little as possible to solve this giant global problem. The only way to move these governments is for their citizens to care enough about the world 50 to 75 years from now. They must be willing to make significant sacrifices today for the sake of the future.

There are 30 US Senators who refuse to acknowledge human-caused climate change. That’s 30% of the Senate. As Greta Thunberg says to those not going to Scotland:

“Hope comes from people, from democracy, from you…It’s up to you and me…No one else will do it for us.”

Thunberg is saying that saving the planet will take better politicians. She’s correct. The necessary changes require a global political movement. That means there’s zero reason to be optimistic about the trajectory of global warming.

And like in our domestic politics, it’s another reason why we shouldn’t have 80-year olds in charge of our future.

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Saturday Soother – June 2, 2018

The Daily Escape:

Claude Monet’s home, Giverny, France via @archpics

So much to think about as the week ends: It is one year since Trump pulled the US out of the Paris Climate Accord. The nuclear summit with North Korea is back on. Trump now has a trade war going on against Europe, China, Canada and Mexico.

It is difficult to see how the US emerges as a winner in any, or in all of these, when the other side always has the option to say “no”. But this weekend, let’s ignore Roseanne Barr’s tweet about Valerie Jarrett, and talk about Trump pardoning the racist conspiracy theorist Dinesh D’Souza.

On May 19, 2014, D’Souza plead guilty to making illegal campaign contributions to a Republican senatorial candidate. He confessed and admitted his guilt. D’Souza admitted that he violated federal campaign financing laws, and by pleading, he became a convicted felon.

As an admitted criminal he need to pay his debt to society for his transgressions. But D’Souza is a member in good standing of the Party of Personal Responsibility, so he was pardoned by Donald Trump. After all, the rule of law is based on the assumption that Republicans are patriots and Progressives are America-hating zealots. And, D’Souza had surely paid a price for his patriotism … or something. Let’s review what D’Souza said in court:

I knew that causing a campaign contribution to be made in the name of another was wrong and something the law forbids…I deeply regret my conduct.

This is the person Trump claims “was treated very unfairly by our government!” It is possible to claim that D’Souza was persecuted because of his politics, but there’s absolutely no proof that was the case. D’Souza pled guilty in order to receive the lightest possible sentence for the federal crime he admitted to.

The pardon serves Trump’s purposes in one important way: It sends a signal to members of the Trump followers who are under investigation by Robert Muller that they will not be held accountable by the federal government for crimes committed on Trump’s behalf while he holds office.

The true problem was captured in a tweet by David Frum about the D’Souza pardon:

And this is exactly why Trump’s contempt for democratic norms and values really matters.

But, enough of politics! It is time to take a few moments to untether from the internet, and get soothed by contemplating the natural world. So, turn off your phone (unless you are reading this on your mobile). Brew up a vente cup of Finca La Maria Geisha Natural from San Diego’s Birdrock Coffee ($51.00/8oz). Taste its bright notes of stone fruit and honeysuckle, its plump mouthfeel and flavor-saturated finish.

Now, sit in front of a large window, and listen to Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 9 in C major, Op. 59,  No. 3, published in 1808. Here it is performed live by the Jasper String Quartet at the Jerome L. Greene Performance Space in New York for WQXR’s Beethoven String Quartet Marathon on November 18, 2012:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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Trump’s Termites

The Daily Escape:

Missouri Breaks, MT – photo (via)

US Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced that there would be no change for the Missouri Breaks National Monument. Zinke is from Montana, so saving one for his peeps isn’t a big surprise.

Missouri Breaks is one of 27 monuments established during the previous 20 years by presidents using the Antiquities Act. The Antiquities Act allows presidents to set aside objects of historic or scientific interest to prevent their destruction. The law was created in 1906 to guard against looting of sacred American Indian sites.

In April, Trump ordered the Department of the Interior to review the status of every national monument designated since 1996. As a result of the review, these cultural and/or natural treasures could be significantly reduced in size or even eliminated, and the Antiquities Act itself could be severely limited. The land would remain owned by the federal government, but might lose its protected status, and be contracted to private enterprises. When you allow corporations to ‘lease’ land for oil, fracking, mining, ranching, etc. fences go up, private police forces are hired to keep people out for their ‘safety’.

Not everyone agrees that Trump has the authority to do what he wants. From the Washington Times:

If President Donald Trump or any successor desires the authority to revoke national monument designations, they should urge Congress to amend the Antiquities Act accordingly. They should not torture the plain language of the Act to advance a political agenda at the expense of regular constitutional order.

The LA Times disagrees:

Indeed, those who claim that the Antiquities Act does not grant a reversal power cannot find a single case in another area of federal law that supports that contention. To override the norm, legislators have to clearly limit reversal powers in the original law; the plain text of the Antiquities Act includes no such limits.

Who knows? Next, Der Donald will lease the Grand Canyon to China for use as a landfill.

But the bigger picture is that behind the smoke and mirrors of Trump’s pathological lying and the media’s obsession with Russia, his cabinet appointees are working like industrious termites, eating away much of the support beams of our nation’s rules-based edifice.

Consider Attorney General Jeff Sessions. From the New Yorker: (brackets and editing by the Wrongologist)

He [Sessions] has reversed the Obama Administration’s commitment to voting rights…He has changed an Obama-era directive to federal prosecutors to seek reasonable, as opposed to maximum, prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenders…he has revived a discredited approach to civil forfeiture, which subjects innocent people to the loss of their property. He has also backed away from the effort…to rein in and reform police departments, like the one in Ferguson, Missouri, that have discriminated against African-Americans.

Although candidate Trump promised to protect LGBT rights, President Trump last week vowed to remove transgender service members from the armed forces, and Sessions…took the position in court that Title VII, the nation’s premier anti-discrimination law, does not protect gay people from bias. Most of all, Sessions has embraced the issue that first brought him and Trump together: the crackdown on immigration…

All across the government, Trump appointees are busy chewing through the existing regulatory edifice, ending not just Obama-era rules, but others that have been in place for decades.

Another truly damning thing is Trump’s surrogates’ efforts to undermine foreign policy. The WaPo reports:

Trump signed off on Iran’s compliance with profound reluctance, and he has since signaled that when Iran’s certification comes up again — as it will every 90 days, per a mandate from Congress — he intends to declare Iran not in compliance, possibly even if there is evidence to the contrary.

According to the New York Times: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

American officials have already told allies they should be prepared to join in reopening negotiations with Iran or expect that the US may [unilaterally] abandon the agreement, as it did the Paris climate accord.

It is difficult to see how this ends well for the US. Imagine, Iran and North Korea both pursuing nuclear weapons to deploy against the US. Why would we want to engage on two fronts, when one (North Korea) is already so problematic?

What is the Trump agenda? Are there any articulated goals? What are the strategies to achieve them?

Have we heard a concrete proposal for any of his big ideas (health care, tax reform, or infrastructure)?

We have not, but his termites keep chewing, and soon, our whole building will be compromised.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – June 4, 2017

Re: The Trump severed head “joke”: Kathy Griffin isn’t funny, and this wasn’t a joke. Here’s the problem with what Griffin did: A joke has to be funny, and this simply wasn’t. The only message you can take from her severed Trump head photo is: “look at me, I’m Kathy Griffin!” Griffin is getting what she deserves for putting her desire for attention ahead of everything else.

Yes, she has the right to produce the image, but that doesn’t mean it has to be accepted by the rest of us. If you mimic what ISIS does to their victims, you deserve to lose your job on CNN. She needs to grow up; CNN did the right thing.

On to cartoons. Quite the week for climate change drama. Trump’s action on Paris could have been inspired by the Saudi sword dance, but it is it different than Griffin’s?

Trump said he was elected to represent Pittsburgh, not Paris. Trump lost Pittsburgh to Clinton, and Pittsburg’s mayor says the city will follow the Paris Accords. But, in Trump speak:

Trump seems intent on completely eradicating the Obama legacy:

The news about back-channel communications with Russia leads to Jared Kushner:

The medicine in Trumpcare II is no better than in Trumpcare I:

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