Blog Action Day '09

My first job out of college was with Clean Water Action Project, canvassing door-to-door to raise public awareness--and funds--to protect the eco-balance.

From Clean Water Action, I moved on to the League of Conservation Voters, working hard to elect members of local legislatures, Congress and even the President of the United States--who sometimes must have to stand naked--based on their record when confronted with environmental legislation and stewardship.

In his NY Times column last Monday, Paul Krugman re-made the same points we at Clean Water and League of Conservation Voters were making all those years ago: Mother Earth spins round, but her needs can't be spun, anglesd, twisted, or re-framed. When it comes to earth, it's all about the science: it's only biology, chemistry, and physics that determine what kind of world we live and will live in, 'cause Mother Earth can't be lobbied.

Well, in re-reading Krugman's essays of 9/28/09 and the above-cited, from 10/5/09, I'm finding no such quotes vis-a-vis the biochemiphysical reality of our planet.

No matter. All energy.

Point is, Krugman is saying--again--things my colleagues and I were saying, as were Al Gore's professor in '76, and then Gore himself:

Climate change is real, and it's happening now. It won't get really bad till the end of this century, but that doesn't mean it isn't bad now.

It also doesn't mean we can't do a lot now to avert worse. And that it doesn't have to wreak economic chaos.

As Krugman explains, "First, the evidence suggests that we’re wasting a lot of energy right now. That is, we’re burning large amounts of coal, oil and gas in ways that don’t actually enhance our standard of living — a phenomenon known in the research literature as the “energy-efficiency gap.” The existence of this gap suggests that policies promoting energy conservation could, up to a point, actually make consumers richer.

Second, the best available economic analyses suggest that even deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions would impose only modest costs on the average family. Earlier this month, the Congressional Budget Office released an analysis of the effects of Waxman-Markey, concluding that in 2020 the bill would cost the average family only $160 a year, or 0.2 percent of income. That’s roughly the cost of a postage stamp a day. "

What's holding us back, boys and girls, is that, according to Krugman--and I agree--" the campaign against saving the planet rests mainly on lies."

The right, and some who claim the "centrist" mantle, are so focused on "Waterloo-ing" President Obama, that they're willing to sit idly by while the Becks and the Limbaughs, the Heritage Foundation, "and the rest," ditch intellectual honesty in favor of perverting President Obama's--and America's--forward progress.

Just a reminder:

"Just say, 'No!'"