With health care 'repealed,' GOP turns to climate change

Saturday, February 12, 2011

With health care 'repealed,' GOP turns to climate change

If I am hungry, that is a material question. If others are hungry, that is a spiritual question. -- Berdyadev

In a little hilltop village, they gamble for my clothes. I'm fighting for salvation and they give me a lethal dose. -- Bob Dylan

Your policy vacillation is destroying my only home. -- Fr. Paul R. Bear

With health care 'repealed,' GOP turns to climate change - Politics Wires - MiamiHerald.com:

Posted on Thursday, 01.20.11
Hard part begins for GOP: Replacing health care law
Planet Washington Blog - Musings from the Capitol
BY RENEE SCHOOF
MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

"...There is an enormous failure, in my view, to see the ethical and moral dimensions of this issue," said Donald Brown, a professor of environmental ethics at Penn State University. "It's very difficult for people in the United States to see that self-interest is an important consideration, but we also have responsibilities to people in Africa."

Brown argues that farmers facing worsening drought in African countries are the first victims of a changing climate, and that every year of delay in slashing U.S. emissions makes helping them harder.

Politicians give two reasons not to act to restrict emissions — it would cost too much, and there are uncertainties about what the exact effect of climate change will be.

Brown said that skirts a fundamental issue.

"The economic argument has been used to scare people, without reflecting on rights and responsibilities," he said. And uncertainty "requires, ethically, that if the harm is big enough, that the burden of proof should shift to the person who wants to do the dangerous behavior, particularly in cases where if you wait until all the uncertainty is resolved, it's too late."

Politically, it's a tough sell. There aren't the votes in Congress for a broad cap-and-trade approach to cut emissions. Also, there's not much chance that Congress this year will vote on other measures to bring emissions down.

"Here's the thing," said Dale Jamieson, a professor of environmental studies and philosophy at New York University. "So climate change is in some ways an incredibly complex issue. It's slow motion. It has millions of different players. The effects are disaggregated."

But it's also simple, he said. "It really comes down to this — the U.S. and countries like us — we're dumping on others and harming them because of acting in our own interest."

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Penance -- Then and Now

In the Middle Ages, there was no buying and selling of carbon indulgences. Now it's a booming business. "The worst of the carbon-offset programs resemble the Catholic Church's sale of indulgences back before the Reformation," said Denis Hayes, the president of the Bullitt Foundation, an environmental grant-making group. "Instead of reducing their carbon footprints, people take private jets and stretch limos, and then think they can buy an indulgence to forgive their sins." The New York Times, 4/29/07

The 12 Steps of Carbon Awareness

1. We admit that we are selfish users of the earth's limited resources. Standing alone, we feel powerless to stop our wasteful ways. We resolve to manage our lifestyles more effectively, to address the rapidly mounting ecological crisis.

2. We believe that through increased social awareness we can reduce our individual and collective carbon footprint.

3. We have decided to step up our social activism until such time that global warming is effectively stabilized and reversed.

4. We will conduct a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves and our behavior together on this planet.

5. We will reveal the exact nature of our wrongs to the natural and social world.

6. We resolve to overcome the persistent defects of character that result in our imposing an excessive carbon burden on the planet and other human beings.

7. We invite other conscious consumers and natural beings to help us overcome our personal and collective shortcomings.

8. We will engage in a regular program of study and inquiry to understand all the persons, natural beings and planetary processes we may have harmed and disrupted, and to the extent possible, we commit to making amends to them all.

9. We will make direct amends to nature and other people injured by reckless use of resources wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. We will continue to take personal inventory, and when we are wrong, we will promptly admit it.

11. We will look within ourselves and our communities to mobilize a collective response that is fully commensurate with global warming and other pending ecological threats.

12. Having achieved profound clarification and inspiration through these steps, we will also carry this message to other compulsive consumers. By our example and leadership in increasing our social activism and changing our destructive lifestyles, we will encourage them to practice these principles in their affairs as well.

Common Carbon Sins

- Driving a gas guzzler
- Taking unnecessary personal car trips
- Failing to car pool
- Failing to take mass transit
- Using too much heat or air conditioning
- Buying a house that is too large
- Failing to us a programmable thermostat
- Overconsumption of clothes and footwear, when you already have plenty to wear
- Leaving lights on all over the house
- Using the dryer when you could use a clothesline
- Using disposable paper OR plastic bags, when you could have used a reusable canvas bag
- Printing large documents on only one side of the paper
- Using virgin paper when you could have used recycled paper
- Flying or driving a long way to meetings where little or nothing is accomplished
- Throwing away recyclables
- Using incandescent bulbs when you could use compact fluorescent bulbs

Confess Your Carbon Sins - CarbonConfession.org

Saturday, February 12, 2011