Phew.
Back in 2015, both a President and a Pope stepped up to call for action on
climate change, and the world sort of responded with an agreement.
For the
first time, a Vulgarian-American led his party’s field in a run for the
Presidency.
And once again, we experienced the hottest year on record.
I
can’t help but think that the world is facing a return to those turbulent
times, so I’ve prepared a wish list of things I hope happen – or stop happening
– for 2016.
The
only thing worse than losing a war is losing a war that doesn’t actually exist.
I’m afraid that’s what West Virginia is doing with the War on Coal.
Big
Coal has been hemorrhaging jobs since the the Reagan Administration. Market
conditions, mechanization, and mountaintop removal mining caused the job loss,
but it’s more convenient to blame Obama and the EPA and pretend that coal has a
future.
I’d
love to see coal states in Appalachia and elsewhere get a grip and begin to
rebuild their doomed economies.
Part
of Obama’s “war” against coal included pouring $1.6 billion into a resurrection
of FutureGen, a Bush-era research project to develop “clean” coal. FutureGen 2
failed, and the industry’s clean coal lobby group underwent dramatic
downsizing. The $1.6b wasted here is more than three times what was wasted on
Solyndra.
Clean
coal is dead, folks. And if coal could solve “energy poverty,” Appalachia
wouldn’t be America’s Haiti.
Political press and
pundits: Four words, three of them printable:
Wake
the f**k up.
Climate
change may be the issue of our lifetimes, but it’s apparently still not a thing
in Presidential debates.
One
might have expected a mention of energy, the environment or climate change in
the two primary debates that happened within a week of the historic Paris
climate summit. But no.
In
both the GOP debate on the Las Vegas Strip, and the Democrats’ showdown in New
Hampshire, the respective moderators from CNN and ABC couldn’t bring themselves
to utter the C-Word.
Maybe
the general election will be different. For the sake of argument, let’s just
say it’s going to be Hillary Clinton versus some guy who would rather listen to
Ted Nugent talk about climate than a climate scientist. We all know that the
news media loves conflict, right? Won’t that be a conflict?
Pay
attention to a truly existential issue. It’s how political reporters will be
judged, long after the world has forgotten how many Kardashians sat at your
table at the Gridiron Club dinner.
GOP:
Nobody’s ever won a War on Science
If
you don’t accept that screeds against climate science and other environmental
issues and political attacks on scientists are just wrong on the facts, perhaps
you can accept that they’re a really, really bad long term political strategy.
As
President Obama pointed out, no other significant political party in the world
rejects the notion of acting on climate change. And no parliament or
legislature is as hostile to science as the one that’s controlled by the 21st
Century Republican Party.
I’m
hoping that in 2016 at least one national political figure who’s latched on to
climate denial will grow a backbone, respect the science, and look out for
national and global issues instead of kowtowing to far-right funders, a rabid
minority of voters, and a broken political system. Just one.
It
may have taken him 400 years, but even Galileo beat the Vatican when they
declared war on science.
Fomenting fear,
manufacturing doubt
In
the 1940’s, we imprisoned Japanese-Americans for being Japanese. In the
1950’s, there was a Communist under every bed. In the Sixties, Vietnam War
opponents and civil rights advocates were traitors. In the Seventies
following the OPEC embargoes and the Iranian hostage crisis, we began to
develop a hatred of Islam.
In
the Eighties, we had a Cold War revival and backed terrorists in Central
America, all while feminists, gay people and environmentalists bootstrapped
their way up the Hate Parade. In the Nineties, we impeached a President
for lying about oral sex.
In
the 2000’s, hatred of Islam returned with a vengeance, and with a costly war
under false pretenses.
So
there are two takeaways here: America’s dumb streak is nothing new, and that
learning-from-the-mistakes-of-history thing is not all it’s cracked up to be.
Just
the same, in 2016 I’m hoping that we get a little bit better about recognizing
and addressing the real threats and not freaking out over more remote ones.
There’s
no doubt that ISIS is evil, and a real threat. But last week, Bloomberg ran a
stunningly inane opinion
piece from the Manhattan Institute saying America should ditch
renewable energy because “ISIS is not putting up windmills or solar panels.”
The
piece didn’t even attempt to explain why this might make sense.
And
the Town Council of Woodland, North Carolina, rejected a zoning variance to
permit construction of a solar farm after hearing testimony from residents that
the solar panels would cause cancer, suck up all the sun’s rays, and halt plant
photosynthesis.
The
solar farm owners promised that their project would not turn tiny Woodland into
a dark, barren hospice, but wouldn’t you expect them to say that?
Manufacturing
fear and doubt costs money, sometimes lives, and maybe our future. We all need
to be better at recognizing it, responding, and understanding that it’s been
hurting us for years.
And a few more words
for my media colleagues
Or
maybe a few less. This is smaller stuff, but indulge me in a few pet peeves.
There
are more than a few odious, un-original clichés that routinely work their way
into news stories.
I’m calling for a global agreement to limit the emission of
toxic phrases.
Never
again lead into a story about a whale by saying it’s “a whale of a
story.” Or declaring that anything involving slow-moving pandas is
“panda-monium.” Write this and I’ll find a way to bus you back to your
college newspaper. Or write teases for small-market TV.
For
our anti-science friends, let’s set an 18-year pause on the “climate change/hot
air” joke. First, it’s not much of a joke.
Second,
after the redoubtable Charles Krauthammer deployed this in a December column on
the Paris summit, I Googled “climate change” and “hot air” to learn that the
Pulitzer-winning Mr. Krauthammer was preceded by 861,000 other people in using
the unwise-crack.
(Note:
If you insist on using this line, may I suggest that “global warming” and “hot
air” is more original? Only 750,000 hits on Google.)
I
also hope that the otherwise-stellar journalists at the Associated Press can
get over their denial of the use of the term “denier.” Sigmund and Anna Freud,
who popularized the concept of denial a century ago, would surely recognize
that a group of people who minimize a problem, selectively reject relevant
information, or scapegoat the problem on another cause (sunspots!!) are
practicing classic denial.
Activists: Don’t say
2016 is our last chance. There will most definitely be a 2017.
Publicists: For God’s sake,
don’t ever say “Every Day is Earth Day” ever again. Especially if you work for
an industry where No Day Is Earth Day.
For questions or feedback about this piece, contact Brian Bienkowski at bbienkowski@ehn.org.