Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumThis is what a real climate plan looks like: Martin O’Malley’s bold approach sets the standard.
Martin O'Malley laid out an aggressive, moral case for tackling climate change. Let's hope it catches on.
he Pope is a tough act to follow, but Martin OMalley made a good show of it. Last week, on the same day that the pontiff released his new encyclical calling for a global effort to combat climate change, OMalley released his own plan for reducing emissions and staving off global climate catastrophe. Its an aggressive platform that frames the fight against climate change as a moral imperative, rather than simply a question of science and economics, and in an op-ed for USA Today, the former governor of Maryland said that climate change is at the center of my campaign for president.
Well hot damn, Martin. As the Huffington Posts Kate Sheppard notes, the OMalley plan sets a very high standard for other Democratic candidates to meet. He directly rejects the all of the above energy policy favored by the White House (and quite a few Republicans) and instead calls for an end to the use of fossil fuels within the next 35 years. In keeping with the framing of climate change as a moral issue, OMalley makes a point that ending fossil fuel use is a public health imperative, and would extend the lives of 200,000 Americans each year. He also says outright that hed reject approval for the Keystone XL pipeline.
OMalley has long been a hawk on climate change, and this platform is in keeping with his record. Much of what hes laid out in this document is meant to emphasize that he is very much to the left of Hillary Clinton on the issue. The last time Hillary ran for president, she toured through Appalachia talking up the benefits of clean coal as part of her last-ditch effort to steal the nomination from Barack Obama. This time around shes been a bit cagier on climate policy, though just recently she came out in favor of tweaking the Renewable Fuel Standard to get more biofuels onto the market. By laying down a clear and ambitious goal for climate policy, OMalley is injecting some clarity into the climate change debate and giving environmental activists something to rally around. Hes also undoubtedly trying to steal some of the enthusiasm surrounding Bernie Sanders, a darling of the environmental movement.
OMalleys climate change strategy gets to the aggravating paradox at the heart of the climate change policy debate: the urgency of the matter and the high cost of inaction require an aggressive response, but the aggressiveness of the response lessens its political viability. So the harder you try to get something meaningful done, the less likely you are to actually do anything.
http://www.salon.com/2015/06/22/this_is_what_a_real_climate_plan_looks_like_martin_omalleys_bold_approach_sets_the_standard/
The2ndWheel
(7,947 posts)That's great. More people to add to the population issue.
That's the toughest part about this whole topic. Fix one thing, and something else becomes a problem. Cut down on the fossil fuels, and it'll keep more people healthy. Those people will then need jobs. Then all those people will need housing. And food. And water. And this, and that. All of that will require resources. Resources that then won't be available for other forms of life, helping with the extinction issue.
There really is no answer.
elleng
(130,902 posts)is that your answer? Sorry, won't work. I'll die sometime in the next 30 years or so probably, but my 20-something daughters just INSISTED on having children, THAT'S the way the world works! MAYBE it's nature's joke on all of us: Exist and Perish.
The2ndWheel
(7,947 posts)The web of life is too complicated for a single species to try and fix everything. It can't be done. We can't take everything into account. Like I said, we fix A, B is a problem. We fix B, C is a problem. We fix C, and A changes. We go back and fix A, and now D pops up. We fix D, now B is different. Fix B, and we didn't even know H existed, but it's now causing problems. Fix H, and now A, B, and C are an issue. Fix all those and A2EE5twb77K is a problem.
This is why making it a moral issue, the way the articles says it, doesn't really help the situation. Physical reality, and human morality, are two different things.
FSogol
(45,484 posts)GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)Kickity-kick, recity-rec.
elleng
(130,902 posts)GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)For many years I was convinced that the most important aspect of life was the fact that it was doomed - from individuals, to our civilization, perhaps even to life itself. All as a result of human behaviour that we can't seem to bring under control.
I still believe that to be the case, but it's no longer the most important aspect of life. Living is.
My desire is to make the best of each moment whatever the idea of best means to me at the time. Right now that desire requires of me a full awareness and acceptance of what has happened, is happening and may soon happen to the world of which I am an indivisible part. It requires being aware of the myriad of social, psychological, historical and physical contributors. It requires me to assemble a personal worldview that is as explanatory as I can make it, within the bounds of my own personality and my moment-to-moment definition of truth.
I have come to realize that the key ingredients in my worldview must be kindness, courage and compassion. Objective truth plays its role of course, but that notion seems to me a far slipperier concept than softer, less absolute qualities like kindness and compassion.
So now I get an enormous lift out of hearing people like O'Malley and the Pope make definitive statements on the imprtance of fighting the ecological battle that is in front of us.
My inner landscape has shifted. Im beginning to understand that, whether there are "solutions" or not, such ideas are stations on the path of right action. Theres a fine line between seeing something as a forlorn hope and realizing that whether or not it is forlorn is beside the point. Yes, human beings are at least quasi-deterministic products of evolution, environment and history, but we are hardly standard products of that process, if you take my meaning.
The flag-bearers of collective determinism (Guilty as charged, yer Honour!) may be called by their worldview to discount the influence of concepts like personal conscience and nobility. However, that does not mean that those who hold down the other side of the yin-yang circle must follow their lead; quite the contrary, in fact. And for those lucky few who have one foot in the shadow and the other in the light, the poignant awareness of probable failure only adds to the liberating joy of doing it anyway.
This is why I'm so encouraged by O'Malley's platform and the Pope's encyclical. Certainly, changes to our personal consciousness and behaviour in response to such a clarion call may be seen as a forlorn hope in the face of the unfolding global ecological catastrophe. However, making such changes despite that awareness speaks to a fundamental goodness lurking in our nature.
elleng
(130,902 posts)and I'm WITH YOU!
NATURE is my 'truth'
and it also includes my daughters and grandchildren, without whom my raison d'etre would be much abbreviated.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)It's a lot easier to be a hard-nosed fatalist when one doesn't have kids.
elleng
(130,902 posts)and I must say I'd hoped my kids wouldn't have kids of their own, but what's the chance of that? NIL, I'd say, so here I am, 'realist' hoping my progeny's future will at least EXIST with some semblance of comfort and success.
Ghost Dog
(16,881 posts)All is Nature.
Ghost Dog
(16,881 posts)This is important.
RiverLover
(7,830 posts)Thanks for posting!!
President O'Malley....I could get used to that.