Rising oceans, retreating president

[villager]

Rising oceans, retreating president


The earth's climate just took a one-two punch. First a jab from the right:

Mitt Romney said, "President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet. My promise...is to help you and your family." Romney got big laughs from a crowd apparently planning to live on some other planet.

Then the crushing hook from the "left":

President Obama gave Shell Oil approval to drill beneath the Arctic Ocean off Alaska.

President Obama seems to be moving ahead with the Tar Sands pipeline, blocked global action in Copenhagen and Durban, and created fairly weak auto fuel standards. Romney's promise is to out-do Obama.

Our job is to push back against both agendas, regardless of how we plan to vote. Self-censorship on climate is not an option.

Join us in demanding a serious response to climate change.

We reject our government's promotion of fossil fuel extraction and consumption. We insist on an immediate and dramatic shift to the clean energy sources of solar, wind, and wave energy. Destroying our climate is not acceptable, not even if someone else proposes to destroy it a little more quickly.

<snip>

http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=6542

[locks]

1. we have met the enemy

Thanks for the sad but so important reminder what will happen to our beautiful home if we elect "leaders" like Romney and let those great citizens united keep on buying off all our elections.

[villager]

2. It gets worse under Romney. It "doesn't get worse quite as fast" under Obama or other Democrats

Some choice, considering.

[limpyhobbler]

4. ditto nt

[AverageJoe90]

3. I betcha Obama's only partly going along to keep the Establishment and his cronies off his back.

That's become increasingly obvious the more I look at things. As soon as he wins another term, I fully expect him to start turning things in the right direction again.

Also, weak fuel economy standards? Last I checked, 54 mpg by 2025 was pretty good! If Obama really, truly was in bed with them, I don't think we'd have seen ANY remarkable change in fuel economy.

[Odd Won Out]

5. I wish that I had your optimism

that Obama will find his voice on the environment in his second term.

I think a lot depends on the make-up of congress. If he is still playing defense against an uncompromising Tea-bag dominated congress, he will be fighting a lot of battles that may make the environment a bargaining chip. Also, our country believes a lot less in global warming that it used to, so the momentum (as well as how the argument is framed) is with the fossil fuel lobby.

[phantom power]

6. I don't think it's possible to overstate the fact that Obama is a center-right politician

Obama looks good compared to modern Republicans, because modern Republicans are barking-at-the-moon crazy. But he doesn't do center-right things because of 11-dimensional chess, or because he's putting one over on big bidness, or because Congress forces him to. He is a center right guy.

[XemaSab]

7. +1

n/t

[AverageJoe90]

8. He may govern center-right, that IS true.

But he's been trying to put one over the Establishment since he got into office.....and I now seriously doubt he won't stop trying in his second term, either.

[pscot]

14. I'd like a link for that one

[Kolesar]

9. Because you say so, I suppose ... eom

[NickB79]

10. Within Obama's second term, the Arctic ice cap will likely melt completely

It will be like trying to turn the Titanic AFTER it's hit the iceberg: too little, too late.

Better man the lifeboats.

[AverageJoe90]

11. Not quite too late.

I doubt it ever will be, to fix things(to say otherwise, frankly, plays right into the hands of those destroying the environment in the first place!). But before you accuse me of having a rosy view on this issue, lemme tell you this: The possibility of hundreds of millions possibly starving to death, the possibility of global civilization being significantly harmed & shrunk and crashing the economies of countries like China and India, water wars in Africa and the Middle East, etc. as any sort of pessimistic, but rather, a possible outcome. What isn't realistic, however, is to expect that things can't be fixed: it's about as naive as the deniers claiming that ACC doesn't exist at all.

[NickB79]

13. Hypothetically sure, in practice unlikely

It's becoming clearer every day that the world's major powers will put off any meaningful attempts at fixing the climate until they can no longer afford to ignore the economic woes a shifting climate will impose. By then, the cost of stopping some of the positive feedback loops already kicking into gear will be astronomical. However, the damage done to the world's economies by climate change will likely push us back into a global depression as economies crash around the world, severely limiting their ability to fund massive geo-engineering projects to sequester carbon.

From a purely scientific standpoint, we could fix the climate today with modern technology. But, from a purely scientific standpoint, we should also have colonized a large portion of the solar system by now and have 100% renewable energy powering our planet. We have not achieved those things yet because the costs are just too great for our economies to bear in the short term, and I doubt climate change will be any different.

[AverageJoe90]

15. The system is broken and needs fixing.

And yes, I am talking about the world financial system......we will just have to find some way to either offset the cost or ignore it all together(better to be in debt for a millenium, than to potentially see the climate screwed up for another century or two, which could come at the cost of several billion lives over the course of that time frame.), and I'm afraid it may require radical changes on a global scale......which are really quite overdue.

(Although, TBH, I don't know where you got this "But, from a purely scientific standpoint, we should also have colonized a large portion of the solar system by now" part from. We couldn't have gone that far, really.)

[Nihil]

12. Hope & Change eh? You "Hope" he's going to "Change".

> I betcha Obama's only partly going along to keep the Establishment and his cronies off his back.
> That's become increasingly obvious the more I look at things.

I betcha you're wrong and think you need to look even more at things as the facts are not obvious
enough for you yet.

> As soon as he wins another term, I fully expect him to start turning things in the right direction again.

Partly agree: I fully expect him to turn even more to the "right" direction.

> Last I checked, 54 mpg by 2025 was pretty good!

Last I checked, 2025 was thirteen years after the election and nine years after he leaves office.

That's a good three governments away - plenty of time to "adjust" or "correct" the figures ... for national
security reasons of course ...