Bali Who?

The other day when I posted excerpts from Al Gore's Nobel Prize acceptance speech I felt a little foolish. I did so immediately after opening my email, before I'd checked news on the net. I thought everyone would be doing this story, but maybe I would choose different excerpts.

Guess again. The first American to win the Peace Prize in a generation, and winning it not for stopping a war or advocating an end to war, but in an unprecedented recognition that the global environmental climate crisis is the chief threat to peace for the next generation or more. But the American media ignored it. Completely. (Except for NPR.)

Now the U.S. media is all but ignoring the 180 nation climate crisis conference in Bali. Most of the coverage is coming from foreign sources, including from news organizations in China.

I suppose all blogs would like to present you with news you won't find anywhere else. But news of what one leader called "the greatest project in the history of human civilization"? He's Indonesian, so what does he know.

So for the latest news from Bali...excerpts (my edits, my emphases) from the French news agency AFP:

Talks on halting the juggernaut of climate change swung into top gear here Wednesday with a blunt warning from UN chief Ban Ki-moon that the world was counting on a breakthrough.

Meeting on the Indonesian resort island of Bali, environment ministers have until Friday to agree a framework for tackling global warming past 2012, when pledges under the Kyoto Protocol expire. "If we leave Bali without such a breakthrough, we will not only have failed our leaders but also those who look to us to find solutions, namely the peoples of this world," Ban said.

"This is the moral challenge of our generation. Not only are the eyes of the world upon us. More important, succeeding generations depend on us. We cannot rob them of their future."

He said they had to focus not only on curbing greenhouse-gas emissions but helping those least to blame for global warming yet most at risk.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono echoed Ban's warning. "We are embarking on the greatest project in the history of human civilization. And the worst thing that can happen here is to end our conference with no consensus, no breakthrough, and it's all business as usual."

In a video message from Oslo, where he received the Nobel peace prize on behalf of the UN's top climate change panel, Rajendra Pachauri spelt out key points on global warming: The unbridled burning of fossil fuels is stoking a greenhouse effect that is warming Earth's surface with potentially calamitous consequences, he said. By century's end, millions of people -- many in poor tropical countries -- face the risk of drought, floods, storms and rising sea levels.

The Bali talks do not themselves seek to draw up a new climate pact but to set a format for further negotiations. However, delegates point to several sticking points:
-- DEADLINE: Ministers must decide whether negotiations for the post-2012 deal should be given a deadline to wrap up by the end of 2009. This would give countries time to ratify the new deal so it can take effect as soon as Kyoto runs out.

-- POLITICAL SCOPE: The European Union wants a reference by industrialised countries that a cut of 25-40 percent in their emissions by 2020, compared to 1990 levels, will be a guideline for the post-2012 haggle. The United States, Japan, Canada and others however are against that. "We want to be sure that the text that we have before us is going to be neutral -- it will leave all options on the table and, again, will not prejudge outcomes, which should be something that comes at the end of the two-year process," said US negotiator Harlan Watson.

German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel countered that such figures are essential for rich countries to show emerging giant economies they are serious about action.

-- DEFORESTATION AND TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER: There is no agreement yet on how future talks should address forest loss and a transfer of clean technology to developing countries poised to become major emitters.

One diplomat predicted that by Friday's deadline, ministers may be reaching for their phones to lobby for help from their leaders. The ministers have "a massive task at hand if they are going to rescue this meeting," said Greenpeace's Cindy Baxter.

However, on the issue of forests, yesterday the British paper the Guardian was, well, less guarded: Negotiators working on a new global climate deal in Bali scored their first success today with progress agreed on deforestation and how to help poor countries adapt to climate change.

Officials said steps to protect forests were included in a new draft of the so-called Bali roadmap, and that they expected them to appear in the final text produced at the end of the talks on Friday. The move would make financial rewards for not cutting down trees a key part of a new climate deal. Hilary Benn, the environment secretary, said: "It looks like we're going to get something on deforestation, which would be great."

It's no surprise that the U.S. of Bush is resisting anything substantive on anything, especially mandatory goals for greenhouse gas emission cuts. China is also flatly not interested in setting goals. Together these are the two major greenhouse gas polluters on the planet. But Canada and Japan are not being very constructive, either. With its newly elected pm, Australia has joined the coalition of the willing to do something to save civilization, but the question is what will the rest of the world do while it is waiting for the new U.S. president--who Al Gore told delegates is likely to have a different approach to the climate crisis, whoever he or she is. How strong a message will they send?

Update: To be fair, the New York Times now has an article, but it doesn't add much to the above.

What Arctic Melting Means

In his Nobel speech, Al Gore referred to the melting of Arctic ice, and the prediction that summer ice will be gone in seven years. But apart from the likely extinction of polar bears, what does this mean in the context of Climate Crisis effects?

The AP had a story on this today, because some scientists, who initially "shocked" the community by predicting that summer Arctic ice could be gone as soon as 2040, are now saying it looks like it could be pretty much gone by 2012--in five years. The story explains some of the significance.

Jay Zwally is a NASA climate scientist: "The Arctic is often cited as the canary in the coal mine for climate warming," said Zwally, who as a teenager hauled coal. "Now as a sign of climate warming, the canary has died. It is time to start getting out of the coal mines." The story goes on:

What happens in the Arctic has implications for the rest of the world. Faster melting there means eventual sea level rise and more immediate changes in winter weather because of less sea ice.

In the United States, a weakened Arctic blast moving south to collide with moist air from the Gulf of Mexico can mean less rain and snow in some areas, including the drought-stricken Southeast, said Michael MacCracken, a former federal climate scientist who now heads the nonprofit Climate Institute. Some regions, like Colorado, would likely get extra rain or snow.

Melting of sea ice and Greenland's ice sheets also alarms scientists because they become part of a troubling spiral. White sea ice reflects about 80 percent of the sun's heat off Earth, NASA's Zwally said. When there is no sea ice, about 90 percent of the heat goes into the ocean which then warms everything else up. Warmer oceans then lead to more melting.

"That feedback is the key to why the models predict that the Arctic warming is going to be faster," Zwally said. "It's getting even worse than the models predicted."

NASA scientist James Hansen, the lone-wolf researcher often called the godfather of global warming, on Thursday was to tell scientists and others at the American Geophysical Union scientific in San Francisco that in some ways Earth has hit one of his so-called tipping points, based on Greenland melt data.

"We have passed that and some other tipping points in the way that I will define them," Hansen said in an e-mail. "We have not passed a point of no return. We can still roll things back in time — but it is going to require a quick turn in direction."

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"We Must Make It Right"--Al Gore's Nobel Speech

A novel--and Nobel--experience to find in my inbox an email from the Nobel Peace Prize winner with his acceptance speech. Passing on some excerpts seems the least I can do. Al Gore's entire speech, which he officially delivered today, was about the Climate Crisis. I've added my own emphases in bold.

So today, we dumped another 70 million tons of global-warming pollution into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet, as if it were an open sewer. And tomorrow, we will dump a slightly larger amount, with the cumulative concentrations now trapping more and more heat from the sun.

As a result, the earth has a fever. And the fever is rising. The experts have told us it is not a passing affliction that will heal by itself. We asked for a second opinion. And a third. And a fourth. And the consistent conclusion, restated with increasing alarm, is that something basic is wrong.

We are what is wrong, and we must make it right.

Last September 21, as the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun, scientists reported with unprecedented distress that the North Polar ice cap is “falling off a cliff.” One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study, to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could happen in as little as 7 years.

In the last few months, it has been harder and harder to misinterpret the signs that our world is spinning out of kilter. Major cities in North and South America, Asia and Australia are nearly out of water due to massive droughts and melting glaciers. Desperate farmers are losing their livelihoods. Peoples in the frozen Arctic and on low-lying Pacific islands are planning evacuations of places they have long called home. Unprecedented wildfires have forced a half million people from their homes in one country and caused a national emergency that almost brought down the government in another. Climate refugees have migrated into areas already inhabited by people with different cultures, religions, and traditions, increasing the potential for conflict. Stronger storms in the Pacific and Atlantic have threatened whole cities. Millions have been displaced by massive flooding in South Asia, Mexico, and 18 countries in Africa. As temperature extremes have increased, tens of thousands have lost their lives. We are recklessly burning and clearing our forests and driving more and more species into extinction. The very web of life on which we depend is being ripped and frayed.

But unlike most other forms of pollution, CO2 is invisible, tasteless, and odorless -- which has helped keep the truth about what it is doing to our climate out of sight and out of mind. Moreover, the catastrophe now threatening us is unprecedented – and we often confuse the unprecedented with the improbable.

We also find it hard to imagine making the massive changes that are now necessary to solve the crisis. And when large truths are genuinely inconvenient, whole societies can, at least for a time, ignore them. Yet as George Orwell reminds us: “Sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.”

In the years since this prize was first awarded, the entire relationship between humankind and the earth has been radically transformed. And still, we have remained largely oblivious to the impact of our cumulative actions.
Indeed, without realizing it, we have begun to wage war on the earth itself. Now, we and the earth's climate are locked in a relationship familiar to war planners: "Mutually assured destruction."

Now comes the threat of climate crisis – a threat that is real, rising, imminent, and universal. Once again, it is the 11th hour. The penalties for ignoring this challenge are immense and growing, and at some near point would be unsustainable and unrecoverable. For now we still have the power to choose our fate, and the remaining question is only this: Have we the will to act vigorously and in time, or will we remain imprisoned by a dangerous illusion?

We must abandon the conceit that individual, isolated, private actions are the answer. They can and do help. But they will not take us far enough without collective action. At the same time, we must ensure that in mobilizing globally, we do not invite the establishment of ideological conformity and a new lock-step “ism.”

That means adopting principles, values, laws, and treaties that release creativity and initiative at every level of society in multifold responses originating concurrently and spontaneously.

This new consciousness requires expanding the possibilities inherent in all humanity. The innovators who will devise a new way to harness the sun’s energy for pennies or invent an engine that’s carbon negative may live in Lagos or Mumbai or Montevideo. We must ensure that entrepreneurs and inventors everywhere on the globe have the chance to change the world.

When we unite for a moral purpose that is manifestly good and true, the spiritual energy unleashed can transform us. The generation that defeated fascism throughout the world in the 1940s found, in rising to meet their awesome challenge, that they had gained the moral authority and long-term vision to launch the Marshall Plan, the United Nations, and a new level of global cooperation and foresight that unified Europe and facilitated the emergence of democracy and prosperity in Germany, Japan, Italy and much of the world. One of their visionary leaders said, “It is time we steered by the stars and not by the lights of every passing ship.”

We must understand the connections between the climate crisis and the afflictions of poverty, hunger, HIV-Aids and other pandemics. As these problems are linked, so too must be their solutions. We must begin by making the common rescue of the global environment the central organizing principle of the world community.

But the outcome will be decisively influenced by two nations that are now failing to do enough: the United States and China. While India is also growing fast in importance, it should be absolutely clear that it is the two largest CO2 emitters — most of all, my own country –– that will need to make the boldest moves, or stand accountable before history for their failure to act. Both countries should stop using the other’s behavior as an excuse for stalemate and instead develop an agenda for mutual survival in a shared global environment.

These are the last few years of decision, but they can be the first years of a bright and hopeful future if we do what we must. No one should believe a solution will be found without effort, without cost, without change. Let us acknowledge that if we wish to redeem squandered time and speak again with moral authority, then these are the hard truths:

The way ahead is difficult. The outer boundary of what we currently believe is feasible is still far short of what we actually must do.

We have everything we need to get started, save perhaps political will, but political will is a renewable resource. So let us renew it, and say together: “We have a purpose. We are many. For this purpose we will rise, and we will act.”

The Dreaming Up Daily Image

an example of tube clouds, courtesy transportcafe

Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Series

Here's the movie/ TV series we're apparently living in: Marty McFly goes back to the future and discovers that in the early 21st century the United States is becoming a totalitarian oligarchical pseudo-theocratic no-nothing paranoid dictatorship, thanks to the accession of George W. Bush to the presidency. Let's hope he's back to the past, figuring out how to prevent it so that this time-line can end.

Those of us inside this sad story are deep into Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, the series, updated with cell phones and Internet Newspeak babble. Latest evidence centers on torture and the denial of Constitutional rights, and the astounding fact that Guantanamo, the American Gulag, is still open for business, and the Bushites are still fighting to retain their anti-Constitutional powers. There's the news that the CIA destroyed tapes of a torture session, and at least some outrage about it. It's clear now that so much of the Bushites' furious activity defending torture and spying is to protect their asses against courts to come.

Speaking of which, the Supreme Court is determining at this very late date just what rights those swept up by the Bushite Shock Doctrinaires in their war of terror really should have. On anything before the Court, I've found Linda Greenhouse to be the very best guide. Surprisingly, she seems to sense that the Court is not going to rubber-stamp the Bushite retrenchment to police state barbarism, but the actual decision won't happen until summer.

Another subplot of the series is the skittering towards theocracy and further intolerance, with damage not only to Constitutional freedoms but the unfettered creativity of thought so necessary to our particular future.

The Christian Right's political and organizational disarray, and the silence coming from the White House since reelection, may have suggested this is yesterday's news--until Mitt Romney's speech this week showed just how far we've fallen in recent decades. That the speech was billed as this Mormon candidate's statement mirroring JFK's famous speech to hostile Protestant ministers about being Catholic and running for President--that in fact Romney used JFK's speech as a virtual Cliff's Notes for his--showed how far we've moved from the Constitution.

There are a couple of good articles at salon on the subject (and as they point out, Mike Huckabee is an even more direct threat), but getting to them can be pretty annoying. And there's this specific comparison, with links to others. The JFK passage that's so telling is this one:

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

Granted, that the "no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom to vote" was a bit tongue in cheek, because even then the more fundamentalist wing was willing to do so. But it wasn't the norm, and it wasn't done openly. Of course now, it's become standard, and because it's accepted, so much more dangerous. Go back another 30 years to Sinclair Lewis warning that when dictatorship comes to America, it will come under the banner of Christianity.

Romney's speech didn't come out and call for America as a Christian nation (nor is Huckabee likely to, though he comes close), but he does attempt to hijack the Founding Fathers to support his notion that we've got no America, no Constitution, without organized religion and belief in God. Which god, whose god, that's never said, but it's part of the tradition to make a few references to "our Jewish friends" and even "our Catholic friends" while meaning the Protestant God. These days it's a little different than in the Christians vs. Communists 50s--there's more common cause among the most rabidly conservative wings of Protestant, Jewish and Catholic religions, as they come more and more to represent the whole of their bloc. Conservative--meaning traditional-- beliefs are honorable. Intolerance is another matter entirely, and that's where these folks are heading. Some of them are already there, openly. The next step is the Christian police state.

Romney's announced enemy is the "religion" of "secular humanism," a patently political attempt to make common cause with this contortion of categories spawned in the Reagan era that never quite caught on except as fund-raising bait in fundie mega-churches. Maybe a little better than the War on Christmas for rallying the Christian soldiers marching not as to, but to, war. Still, the implication leads to Guantanamo for secular humanists. Far-fetched? Look around, and tell me about far-fetched.

They'll be marching to war against their fellow countrymen, who must no longer be free to muse and make the most personal and most human judgments imaginable on the basic issues of our existence. To differ is to be cast out. It's as totalitarian as you can get, and leads directly to 1984 oppression and, even more directly, to dullness and stupidity.

Too bad. Really too bad. Because if we're going to have a future, we won't get there by mindless adherence to dogma, by blindness, dull comformity and stupidity. It is in enforcing these that religion becomes--in a kind of ultimate irony--soul-destroying. And these days, future-destroying too.

The Dreaming Up Daily Image

by Ananganak Pootoogoo at Inuit.com.

The Climate Solzhenitsyn

I've been meaning to pass along part of Bruce Sterling's latest post at Viridian Design. He says that Al Gore winning the Nobel Prize shows that taking the climate crisis seriously "pretty much wins the global culture war" though there will still be those in America "who hate and fear Al and all his works on principle, and always will." But here's his main point:

The good news is there's at least one American statesman left whom the world considers of Nobel class caliber. Gore's a kind of climate Solzhenitsyn in the midst of a dark regime. People from outside the Soviet Union used to look at Nobelist Solzhenitsyn and think: "Well, we can't give up on 'em; here's this heroic guy endlessly scraping up and archiving true data about gulags and torture and prisons, even when the regime denies such things exist." In the continental superpower biz, what goes around comes around.

I'd like to engage in some brisk triumphalism here... yeah, like I won the goddamn prize by sending a lot of emails... but I prefer to take a lead from Al's own sobering response. Al's not making any big deal of this. I suspect that's because Al has sincerely and actually come to realize, on some bone-deep, post-cynical, wolves-at-the-door level, that there really is a global climate crisis. That's not a vehicle for generating Al Gore worship. It's an emergency. A deep, terrible, lasting emergency whose permanent scars for society all lie ahead of us.

Sterling has moved to Torino, Italy--a place I've wanted to visit for awhile, although I was more interested in the cafes and the chocolate, while Sterling is rhapsodic about what the city is doing to meet the challenges of the climate crisis. He's exhilarated about being there--the city of the future for real! It may not be universally transferable, especially to less cosmopolitan places like this one, but it sounds great. As long as they keep the cafes and the chocolate.

Iowa

It's about a month until the Iowa caucus and this fateful election really begins. Here's my prediction for the Iowa result:

Democrats
1. John Edwards
2. Barack Obama
3. Hillary Clinton

Republicans
1. Mitt Romney
2. Huckabee
3. John McCain

The most daring prediction there is McCain coming in as high as third. If he does come in third, he could win New Hampshire. Among the Dems, even with a second place showing, Iowa might help Obama the most for New Hampshire. Of course a lot can happen in a month. But the sense of inevitability for Hillary and Rudy has gone, at least for the moment. Then again, this could be a very weird year, when what happens in Iowa and New Hampshire doesn't matter as much as it did in 2004.

The Dreaming Up Daily Image

noctilucent clouds in Arctic regions are a new kind
of clouds that may be related to global heating.

Climate Crisis: The Democratic Plan

Update: On the Rec List at European Tribune and Docudharma.

In a previous post, I analyzed the emerging Republican plan for the Climate Crisis. Basically it is to mix denial with assertions of doing something, in order to essentially do nothing (or not enough) to stop greenhouse gas pollution, while waiting to use the opportunity of a climate-related disaster in the U.S. to shift attention to their version of crisis management, which is disaster capitalism.

The Democrats are much different, yet there are also two sets of problems I foresee for them--one of which has pretty much the same result as the Republican plan, and the other involves a lack of preparation for near-term crisis, and how the Republicans are likely to try to take advantage of that.

Crucial to this analysis is my insistence that the Climate Crisis has two very different parts: the threat of truly catastrophic changes in the future if we don't stop greenhouse pollution now (the "Stop It" component) and the need to address serious problems and disasters that are going to happen in the relatively near future because of climate change--problems it is too late to stop (the "Fix It" component.)


"Stop It" Requires Focus and Strength

On the need to address the Climate Crisis, on its predominant importance, and on the need to reduce greenhouse gases, the major Democrats--the congressional leadership and especially the presidential candidates--are all saying the right things. They clearly recognize the needs in the Stop It arena. The question here is: will they follow through with action that is sufficiently strong?

This question is dramatized by the UN climate crisis conference in Bali that began Monday. A quote from an AP story on its beginning hour: "The eyes of the world are upon you. There is a huge responsibility for Bali to deliver," said Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of the conference. "The world now expects a quantum leap forward."

The question is: do the Democrats have the will and the ability to lead that quantum leap? Several of the candidates have fairly bold proposals, though not as extensive or creative as those proposed by Al Gore in his congressional testimony last March--and this was before the latest scientific information and observations that generally show things are getting worse faster than previously believed. Endorsing this complete list would be a better start.

For the task ahead is monumental. We need to essentially end greenhouse gas pollution by mid century, and we've heard political leaders around the world state this--yet despite those words, emissions of the two most important greenhouse gases hit an all time high in 2006.

In the U. S. an obvious requirement would seem to be the election of a Democrat as President, and a Congress with a working Democratic majority. But that alone is unlikely to be enough. The nation must be focused on this effort--and related energy, economic, health and environmental matters--so to make that possible, it seems necessary that these candidates make the Climate Crisis a priority issue in their campaigns.

So far that hasn't happened, though it is much more of an issue this time than in 2004 or 2000, both with the candidates and the public. Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg told the Washington Post: "It's a huge issue. I've been stunned by this," said Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, who found in a May poll that energy independence and global warming were cited as America's most important domestic challenge by 29 percent of respondents, second only to health care. "I think this is a top-tier voting issue that has crossover appeal," Greenberg said.

But it can't be a stealth issue, important to the public but not discussed as a major issue in public. That's where the problem is. The predispositions of the TV networks and other sponsors of the debate have made discussing the issue almost impossible. There is rarely even a related question. Planting a question in a campaign event audience on the climate crisis is the least of the sins of Hillary Clinton's staff--it may well have been a public service. When a debate was devoted to the topic in Los Angeles, only three of the candidates even showed up: Hillary, John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich. Although I can't find any reference to it online at the moment, I read that there will be another such debate in New Hampshire--where it is a major campaign issue--involving candidates from both parties, with the Republican team captained by Ahnold, and the Democrats by Al Gore.

Years ago Bill McKibben used a phrase I still think is essential--he said that there had to be "emotional consensus" to effectively address the Climate Crisis. That's an emotional consensus in the American citizenry large enough to form a wave that sweeps change ahead of it. The next President will have to be the FDR of Climate Change, only this President won't have the stark reality of the Depression or World War II in front of the public every day--there will be signs and manifestations, but most of it will be in the future--including nearly everything that ending greenhouse gases pollution can accomplish.

If candidates are elected because of their commitment to stop greenhouse pollution, then there is a chance for change. But it will also require courage and concentration to actually do what is necessary. It will mean resisting politics as usual, and the usual compromises over substance. There will come a time, quite soon, when no respectable politician in either or any party will deny the reality of the Climate Crisis, any more than now deny that smoking causes cancer. But will legislation and presidential initiatives be strong enough? That's going to be the question.

Reading the writing on the wall, businesses--especially in the energy sector--are already advocating that the Climate Crisis be addressed, and they want to be players in devising how. Some of them may only want to make sure these efforts are sustainable. But some of them are probably angling to make these efforts as weak as possible.

We've already seen stronger legislation in Congress dropped by its sponsors in favor of weaker bills that can get more support, especially from Republicans. But this time the price of too little, too late may be the end of civilization, the end of life as we know it on the planet, or simply unstoppable centuries of suffering.

"Fix It": Anticipate or Lose

As hard as the conceptual leap will be to act now to create results in the far future, there's an equal or even greater conceptual challenge. Disasters and longer lasting catastrophes are going to happen, and sooner or later they will be understood as manifestations of the Climate Crisis. They're happening now, though either not in the large population areas of the U.S., or they are "natural" phenomena (droughts, heatwaves, storms) people have seen in the past, unrelated to global heating. But that connection will be made, perhaps in a big way, fairly soon. And in our either/or culture (particularly political culture), we may find it too difficult, too complicated, too "nuanced" to see the need to Fix the problems in the present and near future, while still Stopping the more catastrophic effects in the far future.

I believe some Republicans are ready to jump on such disasters as a way of owning the issue, and of deflecting change from efforts to end greenhouse pollution towards efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate crisis effects as they happen in the present or very near future. Conversely, I don't see evidence that Democrats are thinking about these problems, or talking about them. And if they aren't ready to respond when something happens, they may be leaving themselves open to devastating political attack.

Republicans--and even some Democrats--may well take advantage of anxiety and even panic by saying we can't afford to worry about the far future--we need to use all our resources to save ourselves in the present, and if we need to burn fossil fuels at a high rate to do it, we must.

Democrats must be ready for this argument. They must be ready to assert responsibility for the present and the future, at the same time. They must be ready to address disasters and crises, not with the "disaster capitalism" and fearmongering for political advantage that the Bushites used in response to 9-11, with the bogus war on terror and the invasion and occupation of Iraq, all to profit their corporate cronies. Or how they responded to Katrina, by using the disaster to rid the Gulf of the poor and people of color, while enriching corporate cronies.

Many of us realize the immense difference in response to 9-11 and Katrina that America would have seen if the Supreme Court had not appointed G.W. Bush, and Al Gore had become President in 2000. Democrats must articulate for the nation at large just what those different kinds of responses would be, and will be. Democrats must take this issue away from Republicans--a pre-emptive strike, if you like.

Democrats must make it clear that with the leadership of government, the cooperation and help of progressive business and unions, and the compassion and commitment of citizens, together we can address both parts of the Climate Crisis simultaneously: we can Fix what needs to be fixed for ourselves and the peoples of the world already in trouble, while we Stop greenhouse gases pollution from destroying the future.

The Dreaming Up Daily Image

Horsehead Nebula

Why Are We in Iraq

Update: This essay on the Rec list with a good discussion at European Tribune.

With the deal last week between the Bushites and the current Iraqi government to formalize the intention to keep U.S. troops in those huge permanent bases in Iraq, and to "encourage" foreign investment (i.e. U.S. oil companies and related Bushite corporations), two prominent theories--not mutually exclusive by any means--got additional evidence for their answers as to why the Bushites began and prosecuted the war and occupation of Iraq.

One theory is Naomi Klein's in her book, The Shock Doctrine. Basically she outlines a strategy used in various parts of the world to further the goal of enriching large corporations--almost always run by or with strong ties to the folks now identified as Bushites, but who have pulled strings, or assisted their mentors in doing so, in previous Republican administrations. On Thursday she got the opportunity--the first I know of--to explain what she means on U.S. television: on a very well done segment of Countdown with Keith Olbermann. (Her theory aside, Klein should be regularly analyzing geopolitics and the news on U.S. television.) Here's what she said about Iraq:

KLEIN: Well, Iraq is the classic example of the shock doctrine. You had a military strategy that was called Shock and Awe. It was a military strategy designed to maximize disorientation. The theory was—This is a quote from Richard Armitage, the former deputy undersecretary of state, who said that the theory was that Iraqis would be so shocked, they would be easily marshaled from point A to point B.

In that moment when they were supposed to be easy to control, easy to martial, you had Paul Bremer waltz in his Brooks Brothers suits and Army beauties, the uniform of the disaster capitalists, and say Iraq is open for business, and create this sort of—an attempt to create a corporate Utopia for American multinationals.

It didn‘t work out. Then you saw the emergence of a third shock, not an economic shock, but shocks to body, the shock of torture, as they attempted to control this rebellious country. There‘s three kinds of shocks in “The Shock Doctrine,” the shock of the crisis, then an economic shock therapy program, and then, if people don‘t behave, a third shock, which is the shock of torture.

But didn't it work out? Certainly it's been messy, and so far such favored corporations as Halliburton, Bechtel and Blackwater have had to take their considerable piles of money and run, but could this latest agreement be the Bushite victory?

Jim Holt in the London Review of Books reverse-engineers the Iraq war and sees how this is entirely possible. First, he outlines the prize Iraq represents. That it's all about the oil isn't a news flash to a lot of people, but probably most don't know just how much oil is involved:

Iraq has 115 billion barrels of known oil reserves. That is more than five times the total in the United States. And, because of its long isolation, it is the least explored of the world’s oil-rich nations. A mere two thousand wells have been drilled across the entire country; in Texas alone there are a million. It has been estimated, by the Council on Foreign Relations, that Iraq may have a further 220 billion barrels of undiscovered oil; another study puts the figure at 300 billion. If these estimates are anywhere close to the mark, US forces are now sitting on one quarter of the world’s oil resources. The value of Iraqi oil, largely light crude with low production costs, would be of the order of $30 trillion at today’s prices. For purposes of comparison, the projected total cost of the US invasion/occupation is around $1 trillion.

To get and keep control of that oil--even if it takes another decade or two--is the purpose of those bases, Holt suggests. He mentions that "Five self-sufficient ‘super-bases’ are in various stages of completion. All are well away from the urban areas where most casualties have occurred. There has been precious little reporting on these bases in the American press, whose dwindling corps of correspondents in Iraq cannot move around freely because of the dangerous conditions." But they are all mini-cities or walled suburbs. He refers to Thomas Ricks' reporting on one of the bases, the Balad air base: "Although few of the 20,000 American troops stationed there have ever had any contact with an Iraqi, the runway at the base is one of the world’s busiest. ‘We are behind only Heathrow right now,’ an air force commander told Ricks."

(Holt mentions something that I pointed out a couple of years ago--that U.S. bases in Iraq meant that U.S. bases in somewhat unstable Saudi Arabia, that so upset Osama bin Laden, could be closed--and they have been.)

But even if the U.S. and the West can't get much Iraqi oil into their pipelines for awhile, they still win because the U.S. presence deters their major competitor for oil in the world: China. Without more energy, China's economy can't keep growing at its current rate. By denying China this source, the West has a chance to weather the Chinese economic storm.

So Holt wonders: Was the strategy of invading Iraq to take control of its oil resources actually hammered out by Cheney’s 2001 energy task force? One can’t know for sure, since the deliberations of that task force, made up largely of oil and energy company executives, have been kept secret by the administration on the grounds of ‘executive privilege’. One can’t say for certain that oil supplied the prime motive. But the hypothesis is quite powerful when it comes to explaining what has actually happened in Iraq. The occupation may seem horribly botched on the face of it, but the Bush administration’s cavalier attitude towards ‘nation-building’ has all but ensured that Iraq will end up as an American protectorate for the next few decades – a necessary condition for the extraction of its oil wealth.

Which is why the failure to nurture a strong central government is actually success: If the US had managed to create a strong, democratic government in an Iraq effectively secured by its own army and police force, and had then departed, what would have stopped that government from taking control of its own oil, like every other regime in the Middle East?

So if you're thinking in terms of dollars and cents--even in billions or trillions--the whole thing makes sound business sense:

The costs – a few billion dollars a month plus a few dozen American fatalities (a figure which will probably diminish, and which is in any case comparable to the number of US motorcyclists killed because of repealed helmet laws) – are negligible compared to $30 trillion in oil wealth, assured American geopolitical supremacy and cheap gas for voters. In terms of realpolitik, the invasion of Iraq is not a fiasco; it is a resounding success.

In fact the only counter argument Holt can muster is that the Bushites don't appear to be this smart. Still, there is reason to be sceptical of the picture I have drawn: it implies that a secret and highly ambitious plan turned out just the way its devisers foresaw, and that almost never happens.

Yet it makes perfect sense, even rhetorically. When real politik Republicans talk about freedom, they mean the freedom of themselves, their rich cronies and supporters to loot the world unencumbered by law, morality or compassion. (It's also why they're not bothered at all about the missing billions likely used for graft and other payoffs. Or why the current rampant corruption in Iraq is of no concern. After all, China has no problem with it either in their colonies such as Cambodia. It's part of the price of business.) That certainly seems to be what the Bushites mean when they say they're bringing freedom to Iraq.

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by Kenojuak Ashevak at Inuit Gallery

Gratitude

It's a hard time to be thankful, at least in the usual way the word is used for the American Thanksgiving. Our prosperity and comforts seem selfish when contrasted with all the pain and injustice in the world, and like those first Pilgrims, a lot of what we enjoy is paid for by the pain and oppression of others. This year in particular, we may reflect that quite a bit of our comfort is contributing to killing the planetary life that supports us.

It's hard to concentrate on being thankful when it all seems to be falling apart before our eyes. Reuters reports that "Americans enter the holiday season in a dark mood, with economic worries, security fears and a lack of confidence in government fueling growing pessimism, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday."

So given all this, I wanted to share excerpts from an article I've read, entitled "Gratitude," by Joanna Macy. It has a different perspective on gratitude, that is both spiritual and political.

There's only a couple of paragraphs from it online at the Shambhala Sun site, the magazine in which it appears, but it's in the current November issue, so you should still be able to find it on the stands.

The article begins:

"We have received an inestimable gift. To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe--to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it--it is a wonder beyond words. It is an extraordinary privilege to be accorded a human life, with self-reflexive consciousness that brings awareness of our own actions and the ability to make choices. It lets us choose to take part in the healing of our world."

"Gratitude for the gift of life is the primary wellspring of all religions, the hallmark of the mystic, the source of all true art. Yet we so easily take this gift for granted. That is why so many spiritual traditions begin with thanksgiving, to remind us that for all our woes and worries, our existence itself is an unearned benefaction, which we could never of ourselves create."

That our world is in crisis--to the point where survival of conscious life on Earth is in question---in no way diminishes the value of this gift; on the contrary. To us is granted the privilege of being on hand: to take part, if we choose, in the Great Turning to a just and sustainable society. We can let life work through us, enlisting all our strength, wisdom and courage, so that life itself can continue.

There is so much to be done, and the time is so short. We can proceed, of course, out of grim and angry desperation. But the tasks proceed more easily and productively with a measure of thankfulness for life; it links us to our deeper powers and lets us rest in them...."

Macy is writing within a Buddhist tradition (she mentions specifically the Tibetan Buddhist path) and much of what I'm leaving out relates to Buddhist practice. What she says more generally pertains directly to that path, but certain points jumped out at me as being more universal. Especially this paragraph:

"The great open secret of gratitude is that it is not dependent on external circumstance. It's like a setting or a channel that we can switch to at any moment, no matter what's going on around us. It helps us connect to our basic right to be here, like the breath does. It's a stance of the soul...."

Gratitude not for what we have but what we are, and for the given world we are part of. Gratitude not for what we have versus what other people don't, but for what we have in common: being alive and human in the web of planetary life.

She directs her ideas towards another feature appropriate to this week: consumerism. (Even before Thanksgiving Day has really begun, stories abound on the importance of "Black Friday," the first and erstwhile biggest day of the Christmas shopping season. In fact, one story claims that retailers don't even want to wait until Friday--they want to turn Thanksgiving itself into a shopping day.) But Macy's approach to gratitude, not being dependent on possessions and comforts, turns it a different way:

"Thankfulness loosens the grip of the industrial growth society by contradicting its predominant message: that we are insufficient and inadequate. The forces of late capitalism continually tell us that we need more--more stuff, more money, more approval, more comfort, more entertainment. The dissatisfaction it breeds is profound...

So gratitude is liberating. It is subversive. It helps us realize that we are sufficient, and that realization frees us...."

Macy directly relates gratitude to activism:

"There are hard things to face in our world today, if we want to be of use. Gratitude, when it is real, offers no blinders. On the contrary, in the face of devastation and tragedy, it can ground us, especially when we're scared. It can hold us steady for the work to be done."

She writes of "the activist's inner journey" as a spiral, which begins with "opening to gratitude", then "owning our pain for the world," "seeing with new eyes," and "going forth." Gratitude is the wellspring:

"[Gratitude] reconnects us with basic goodness and our personal power. It helps us to be more fully present in our world. That grounded presence provides the psychic space for acknowledging the pain we carry for our world....

Then, ever again, we go forth into the action that calls us... Even when we don't succeed in a given venture, we can be grateful for the chance we took and the lessons we learned. And the spiral begins again."

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Cloud over Arcata. BK photo.

Climate Crisis in Court

Update: On Sunday the New York Times took editorial notice of this decision and opined: The ruling comes at an important moment. Congress is beginning to consider global warming legislation, the E.P.A. is fashioning a response to the Supreme Court, the State Department is preparing for a new round of global climate talks in Bali, and everyone is worried about the cost of oil. The California decision should help persuade all these players that the time for delay and denial is long past.

Before the UN climate crisis report released today overwhelms the topic, there's this from Friday's news:

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a federal transportation agency on Thursday to rewrite its fuel economy standards for many SUVs, minivans and light trucks, arguing that the new rules are inadequate in part because they fail to properly assess the risk of global warming.

The decision is a huge win for several environmental groups and 11 states, including California, that argued that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's new fuel economy standards ignored the effects of carbon dioxide emissions.

The decision was the most recent example of growing pressure on the Bush administration to require automobile makers to sell more fuel-efficient vehicles.

Thursday's "court decision is a rebuke to the Bush administration and its refusal to make meaningful steps to reduce global warming pollution from our automobiles," said Pat Gallagher, director of environmental law at the Sierra Club. "The decision tells the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that it can't monkey the numbers when it sets fuel economy standards by ignoring the cost of carbon emissions."

Debate Drama and the Climate Crisis

A few additions and clarifications to yesterday's comment...I am well aware that the candidates have their own motives and strategies for what they say and how they say it at the debates, but that's the only aspect of the debates that gets reported and analyzed ad nasueam.

What I find significant is that the candidates are out there campaigning, not only talking but listening to concerns expressed in Iowa and New Hampshire and elsewhere, particularly in today's campaigning style that emphasizing town meetings and other forums where citizens ask questions and even engage the candidates one on one. So they hear what voters are concerned about. But who do the TV "journalists" listen to, who are asking the questions and otherwise making the rules of these debates? It seems to me they listen mostly to each other, and of course their bosses.

There's a real and growing disconnect between what's important to the voters and what's important to cable and network TV. The candidates respond to this--partly because of what they hear from voters, and partly because they know about and even care about these issues. Say what you want about Bill Richardson's image, style and poll numbers--he clearly cares about health care, education, immigration, energy and environmental issues. Joe Biden and Chris Dodd may be afterthoughts to the hosts and handicappers, but they know a lot about what to do and how to do it in America's relationship to the world, and to not benefit from their knowledge but to instead indulge these low wattage media "stars" in their blather is criminal.

And Dennis Kucinich--before the media bobbleheads got their single story together so they could shout it at each other all day today--that for instance the crowd was on Hillary's side at the debate in "Vegas"--some observers remarked that the person the crowd responded to the most was Dennis the K, especially when he uttered the word "impeachment."

That the people in that room, whoever they were, did not approve of John Edwards going after Hillary so relentlessly, or Obama lumping her in with Romney and Rudy, and at the same time, cheered Dennis most of the time, seems to comport with my image of the Democratic electorate this year. They want substance, and they want boldness; they are civil and they are angry.

As for the issues that voters care about but the media finds too boring to talk about, one of the biggies these days is the climate crisis. After being dazed and confused by the subject for a number of years, it is now a matter of widespread public concern. If you needed any evidence of that, listen to how the candidates are trying to cram in their positions and plans on the subject whenever they're asked anything remotely relevant.

And the climate crisis is going to become much more relevant to this campaign in a formal way, later today in Los Angeles at a candidate's forum and in particular at a bipartisan presidential forum on energy and climate change in New Hampshire next month, weeks before the primary. Both Democratic and Republican candidates will participate, and each "team" will have a "captain": Ahnold for the Repubs, and for the Dems, Al Gore.

Debate Drama

For me the central drama of the Democratic candidate debates is the conflict between candidates trying to address serious issues versus TV "journalists" asking simpleminded and irrelevant questions designed to create soundbites and basically to up their ratings with manufactured conflict.

To show even more clearly that these are engineered as shows, CNN--which ran last night's debate-- has been exposed as selecting questions posed from the audience as well as their own questioning which dominated the debate-- in one case, preventing a student from asking the serious question she wanted to ask, about nuclear waste storage, and insisting she ask Hillary Clinton whether she preferred diamonds or pearls.

This comes after a week of bushwah over the Clinton campaign suggesting to a student in Iowa that she ask Hillary a question about global warming. I am no fan of the main figures in the Clinton staff or how they operate. But all campaigns do this all of the time, and if it takes planting a question to get the Climate Crisis discussed, I'm for it.

What disgusts me is this bloodlust for ratings that goes through all kinds of contortions to turn the campaign into a prize fight, in the place of the kind of debate the nation and the world needs and deserves over the future.

The Heaviest Warning

In what sounds to be its heaviest warning yet--and despite efforts by the U.S. to soften its language--the BBC is reporting that the final summary report to be released tomorrow by the Nobel Peace Prize winning UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is going to be harsh and unequivocal, with a new warning of possible "abrupt and irreversible" climate change.

According to the BBC, "Among its top-line conclusions are that climate change is "unequivocal", that humankind's emissions of greenhouse gases are more than 90% likely to be the main cause, and that impacts can be reduced at reasonable cost. "

The report now being completed "strengthens the language of those earlier reports with a warning that climate change may bring "abrupt and irreversible" impacts. Such impacts could include the fast melting of glaciers and species extinctions."

"Climate change is here, it's impacting our lives and our economies, and we need to do something about it," commented Hans Verolme, director of the climate change programme with the environmental group WWF. "After this report, there are no politicians left who can argue they don't know what climate change is or they don't know what to do about it."

The summary is expected to be released Saturday, and will accompany a full report, in addition to the three reports on aspects of the Climate Crisis already issued this past year.

The Dreaming Up Daily Image

click for additional awesomeness. from uwm.edu

Dreaming Up Solutions

This blog is supposed to be about dreaming up a future even if it seems the world is downward bound. Unfortunately most of the babble here is about the downward bound part.

But there was a piece in Monday's SF Chronicle called "Inviting Everyone to the Party to change the world" by Ellen Freeman Roth, about innovative ideas and actual accomplishments discussed at the annual Pop! Tech forum, its purpose being "to fuel positive social change through innovation and technology."

Some approaches were "outer world" and technical :

Victoria Hale described how she created this country's first not-for-profit pharmaceutical company, OneWorld Health, whose drug to treat the parasitic disease Leishmaniasis could save thousands of lives annually. Marine ecologist Enric Sala discussed the devastating human impact on the oceans and the potential to reverse the damage. (Consumers can start by limiting fish purchases to those certified by the Marine Stewardship Council.)

Other approaches were "inner world" attitudes: Carl Honore, author of "In Praise of Slowness," said we're so connected electronically that we're disconnected emotionally from each other. "We need to create new cultural norms around technology," he said, touting the spiritual and creative benefits of slowing down. "I, for one, have rediscovered my inner tortoise."

Nina Jablonski, evolutionary biologist and head of anthropology at Penn State University, warned that in this abstract electronic age we must remember we have bodies, and touch is important. We're still primates. Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind suggested that in addition to logical thinking, we're going to need imagination, empathy and synthesis. (Which you might say is the Holy Trinity of this site.)

The piece ended with some ideas for homemade carbon offsets. You can read the whole thing here and there are podcasts with more ideas and inspiration from that conference at the Pop!Tech site. Yeah, some of it may make you squirm with suburban NewAgey cooties, but on the "inner" stuff, we never did learn the real lessons of the 60s before it all got distorted, and there's been considerably more info and refined ideas since on integrating body and mind, feelings and spirit: the constituents of soul.

And it's hard to argue with many of the "outer" innovations--including heartbreakingly cheap solutions to terrible problems in the vast areas of the earth where people are poor and sick, for want of a few simple medications, and a pair of cheap reading glasses. Some of these were discussed in the latest in the Charlie Rose Show Science series (Episode 10 on Global Health.) It may be a bit hard to get past the Pfizer sponsorship, or for quite a few Mac and indie computer people to accept what the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is accomplishing, but let's face it, some much needed money and attention is going to dreaming up and trying solutions to some of the worst health problems on the planet, that plague the poorest. Not to mention what the Gates Foundation and the millionaires involved in Bill Clinton's projects are doing for the natural environment essential for the future. Criticism is part of the process, but so is doing what needs to be done for real.

The Dreaming Up Daily Image

"Guitarra" by Picasso

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

“It’s such an odd notion, particularly in this technological society, of whether your life is justified by being a novelist. And the nice thing about getting older is that I no longer worry about that. I’ve come to the simple recognition that would have saved me much woe 30 or 40 or 50 years ago — that one’s eventual reputation has very little to do with one’s talent. History determines it, not the order of your words.”

Norman Mailer
in 2007

R.I.P.

Norman Mailer, who died
Saturday at the age of 84.

R.I.P. Norman Mailer

For much of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Norman Mailer was everywhere. In a period in which public intellectuals, from anthropologist Margaret Mead to journalist-philosopher Walter Lippmann, used the full range of public media--popular magazines and daily newspapers as well as specialized journals, television talk shows as well as university speeches--to offer insight and the play of intelligence, no one was more intelligent or playful than Norman Mailer.

He was an original, pugnacious in defiance and pushing his championing of ideas to their edge, and sometimes over it. He was infuriating to many. He risked being ridiculous, and he often enough was. But he had his moments--like his chaotic confrontation with Gore Vidal on the Dick Cavett Show, which ended with his moving, naked statement of the heights of writing to which he aspired.

He was perhaps the last great champion of the American novel, though his achievements now, especially in those years are measured in his polemics and nonfiction. Still, I can remember being riveted reading his now mostly forgotten late 60s novel, Why Are We in Vietnam?, a titanic riff on the American soul, as I recall it.

He was one of the clearest voices articulating the postwar change in America--he noted that a characteristic of plastic, and this society made of plastic, is that it shows no wear until it just breaks. I remember to this day something I heard him say on TV, and then read in one of his earlier books (he was stealing his own material): "Totalitarianism is the interruption of mood."

He remained a provocative, complex and subtle intelligence to the last, even as he mellowed and grew wiser. Life overcame his single dedication--life and his own energies and interests. He said and did a lot of crazy things, but for several decades at least, no one was more alive to the times.

For the last few decades his interests haven't much been mine, and I have read little of his later books. What I most learned from him in those earlier formative years was the courage to think large, and to care deeply about what few others care about in this society that fascinated him: the exact journey of words, the shape of sentences. His image to others may be of ego, violence and odd notions on sex, morality and the nature of reality, but to me he was one of the last to offer writing--especially the novel--- as a hard and holy occupation.

His New York Times obit is here, and an essay by Michiko Kakutani.

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cloud from bushveld.co.za

The Daily Babble

Following up on the Power Shift conference on the Climate Crisis this past weekend, there's this report: Some 5500 mostly young delegates met outside Washington, which the environmental online magazine Grist calls "huge -- consider, by way of contrast, that this year's much publicized YearlyKos convention attracted just 1,400 attendees."

Further evidence of intense youth interest in their Climate Crisis future comes from the children of Republicans. Al Gore often says it should not be a partisan political issue, but it may be turning out to be a generational issue.

Meanwhile, after making brave noises against Bushite support for torture and the attorney general nominee's refusal to condemn the practice of induced temporary drowning, the elders of Congress shamefully approved his appointment. Why? I guess because Bush is so popular, and because America believes he's taking the country in the right direction, he has political power to overwhelm the opposition.

Meanwhile, Bushite plans to bomb Iran for Rudy go forward--ostensibly to prevent that nation from acquiring a nuclear weapon in years to come, while supporting the increasingly dictatorial regime in Pakistan, which has working nuclear weapons. And Rudy? Well, Mr. Law & Order's favorite police chief is being indicted. Maybe our big mistake was learning to trust anyone over 30.

The Dreaming Up Daily Image

"Fire, Water, Air, Land" by Joseph
Wilson (Coast Salish) at Inuit.com

Climate Crisis: The Republican Solution

Yes, I believe the Republicans do have their own plan for addressing the Climate Crisis, or at least as represented by the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld ruling class.

After promising to abide by the Kyoto Accords during his 2000 campaign, G.W. Bush did exactly the opposite in office, and suffered no immediate political damage (it was the other guy in 2004 who got labelled a flip-flopper.) Years of energetic climate crisis denial followed, which increasingly involved suppressing data and conclusions from other parts of the government, and ignoring recommendations of scientific organizations.

The policy of suppression and censorship continues--most recently in slicing off about half the prepared testimony of the director of the Centers for Disease Control on the health effects of climate change, concentrating on eliminating the substantive findings. But like some medieval Pope moving slowly towards acknowledging that the earth revolves around the sun, Bush began gingerly mentioning global climate change, and even convened an international meeting on the subject in September.

His solutions continue to be woefully inadequate, but there are probably also strategic. He emphasizes research and technology, which essentially mean government money going to corporations, or universities whose research will eventually enrich corporations, without the inconvenience of paying for their own R& D.

The obvious Bushite strategy is to postpone action on reducing greenhouse gases, which would inconvenience the oil and coal companies and related technology corporations that were and will be run by Bushites and their cronies. But I suspect this is only part of the strategy.

I've written before about the two different elements of the Climate Crisis: the near-term effects and the effects further in the future. The near-term effects are by now unavoidable--the only actions that can be taken is to try to fix the problems that climate change create. I've called this the "fix it" element.

Those sounding the alarm about the Climate Crisis, including Democrats, are concentrating on the effects further in the future, because they are potentially catastrophic. Yet only by acting now, or very soon, can we avoid those consequences 20 or 50 or 100 years from now. And by the time those consequences start becoming obvious, it may well be too late to prevent ultimate catastrophe, which very well could be the end of human civilization and life as we know it on earth. That's why action is needed now on severely reducing greenhouse gases. I've called this the "stop it" element.

I believe the Bushite Republican strategy is or will be to concentrate on the "fix it" element, and ignore the "stop it" element. That is, they will refuse real action on stopping greenhouse gases, until the near-term effects of the Climate Crisis become overwhelming. And then they will say that we can afford only to fix these problems, and if we need fossil fuel energy to do it, that's the price we have to pay. The future will have to take care of itself.

Politically, this is a realistic strategy, especially given the Bushite record. It is realistic because they will not be asking people to address a crisis they can't yet see, or transform society in order to avoid a greater catastrophe that hasn't yet happened.

Effects happening in the present can be used to focus fear, and fear is the great motivator--the easy push-button they've used very effectively. Naomi Klein's book, The Shock Doctrine, exposes this general strategy: use shocks to create fear, use fear to create dependence on the strong leader's solutions, and use that dependence to create more centralized control, and use that control to funnel taxpayer dollars to crony corporations.

Each shock is a profit-making opportunity for the few. The rest become victims of "disaster apartheid."

So what near-term effects am I talking about? Because of a drought that the Southeast couldn't see because it was so bizarre, Atlanta has 90 days of water left and no plan to deal with it--except maybe to cut off water to Mobile. The rest of the Southeast is also in a grim drought situation. And this is just the beginning--some 36 states are likely to have water problems in the next five years--in the Southeast, Southwest, Northeast, Great Lakes--almost everywhere.

Drought in the West will eventually have an impact on food supplies and prices. Then the Midwest. But drought isn't the only effect--there are floods as hit in Texas and most recently in Mexico, where a million people were affected.

Then there are the health effects, that the Bushites want to suppress for now: as the "edited" parts of the CDC testimony enumerates them: Direct effects of heat, health effects related to extreme weather events, air pollution-related health effects, allergic diseases, water- and food-borne infectious diseases, vector-borne and zoonotic diseases, food and water scarcity, at least for some populations; mental health problems, and long-term impacts of chronic diseases and other health effects.

Fires, hurricanes and other storms--sooner or later, someone is going to connect the dots. If that someone is a Republican, he is going to say that these are the effects of climate change--we aren't sure why the climate is changing, we just know it is. So we must confront these effects now with all our resources. The Republican President will take over, and the war on terror will be the template: civil liberties will disappear, militarization of the society will ensue.

The information on health effects will stay suppressed until something big happens--mosquito-borne disease epidemics in areas where they hadn't happened before, or any large-scale epidemic or effect. Something big enough to cause a giant shock--one which the American people will be unprepared for, partly because this sort of information is being suppressed. Shock is important: it clouds judgment, calls out for immediate solution, and it is easy to exploit.

This Republican President (or presidential candidate) will promise to solve the problems now, not the problems of fifty or a hundred years in the future. If the recent past is a guide, the people will respond. They will regress into the status of scared children, and the Republicans will issue their no-bid contracts to enrich each other, and make sure they are protected.

That's consistent with Naomi Klein's vision, and I think she's right:

"Looking ahead to coming disasters, ecological and political, we often assume that we are all going to face them together, that what's needed are leaders who recognize the destructive course we are on. But I'm not so sure. Perhaps part of the reason why so many of our elites, both political and corporate, are so sanguine about climate change is that they are confident that they will be able to buy their way out of the worst of it."

Next time: the Democratic Solution, which has its own problems.