I See What You Do Here

OK, so I'm half-asleep, and I notice this little item on Memeorandum this morning, and nearly spit out my coffee:

As President Obama heads to Copenhagen next week for global warming talks, there's one simple step Americans back home can take to help out: Stop "going green." Just stop it. No more compact fluorescent light bulbs. No more green wedding planning. No more organic toothpicks for holiday hors d'oeuvres.

December should be national Green-Free Month.

My first reaction is, "Mike Tidwell must have had a stroke or something," because he's been pretty much at the forefront of the battle over Louisiana wetlands preservation since I can remember. \

 

Plus, and worse, I see that Ann Althouse has linked to this piece, which means that there's a whole shitbag full of ignorance about to pop out of the right-wing blogosphere.

 

Uh oh, says I...another environmental expert has been gotten to, and paid off. This can't be good.

 

Imagine my relief, then, when I read on...

Instead of continuing our faddish and counterproductive emphasis on small, voluntary actions, we should follow the example of Americans during past moral crises and work toward large-scale change. The country's last real moral and social revolution was set in motion by the civil rights movement. And in the 1960s, civil rights activists didn't ask bigoted Southern governors and sheriffs to consider "10 Ways to Go Integrated" at their convenience. [...]

For eight years, George W. Bush promoted voluntary action as the nation's primary response to global warming -- and for eight years, aggregate greenhouse gas emissions remained unchanged. Even today, only 10 percent of our household light bulbs are compact fluorescents. Hybrids account for only 2.5 percent of U.S. auto sales. One can almost imagine the big energy companies secretly applauding each time we distract ourselves from the big picture with a hectoring list of "5 Easy Ways to Green Your Office."

As America joins the rest of the world in finally fighting global warming, we need to bring our battle plan up to scale. If you believe that astronauts have been to the moon and that the world is not flat, then you probably believe the satellite photos showing the Greenland ice sheet in full-on meltdown. Much of Manhattan and the Eastern Shore of Maryland may join the Atlantic Ocean in our lifetimes. Entire Pacific island nations will disappear. Hurricanes will bring untold destruction. Rising sea levels and crippling droughts will decimate crops and cause widespread famine. People will go hungry, and people will die.

*WHEW* THAT'S the Mike Tidwell I've read and learned to respect!

 

And he's right. The problem is big, way too big, to be solved by people making individual choices.

 

They help, to be sure, but unless you're like me and have made an absolute commitment to minimizing your carbon footprint, the sum total will only be large drops in the bucket.

 

And keep in mind, I'm as left as they come without a hammer-and-sickle shoulder patch! And there's still plenty of "carbon fat" that I need to whittle away at in my life.

 

The evidence with respect to climate change is undeniable, despite the last-gasp efforts of the right wing to take what amounts to a first reading of a play as evidence of a conspiracy on the part of climatologists to deny the truth.

 

Tidwell's point about civil rights is even dated and almost obsolete. Hell, we've had government intervention in making a mass exodus to a new technology this. fucking. year. already! No one on the right breathed word one about conspiracies and interventions there, threatening to have the FCC chairmen jailed.

 

If we can do this because the frikkin' broadcast airwaves were effectively polluted and overheated, then we cannot deny, cannot ignore, and cannot delay, government intervention on our own lives. Period. End of discussion.