Now, I know that the title of this post probably sounds to some of
you like rank partisan hyperbole. However, I mean it quite literally.
And it's not because Mitt is evil. (Though, it is because he is
Republican.)
Here's the reason. Mitt says this 2012 presidential election is
about the economy. Actually, he says it is only about the
economy. Most Republicans, and many Democrats, are right in sync with
him on that opinion. Unfortunately, they are wrong.
The economy sags like a poorly whipped meringue, and
millions of people fear for the loss of their livelihoods, yet in the
wings of this presidential election, hardly mentioned, sits the issue
that will stomp the meringue to mush, and bankrupt our entire future
on this planet, not to mention half (or more) of all the other
species with whom we share it.
New calculations show us we have a bare 5-10 years to make any
closing argument we care to, in the great narrative of how we
dramatically -- stupefyingly -- affected the climate in the 20th, and
early 21st, century. Natural amplifications of our human
contributions to the planet's Greenhouse Effect are about to kick in.
As it stands, we will send the planet's average temperature soaring
to 6-12º
C above pre-industrial temperatures – a climatic situation Earth
last recreated 30 million years ago. We may even see a condition of
irreversible global warming, which will take us into the climatic
end-game that the planet Venus has demonstrated for us.
In these next 5-10 years, the
world has to not only reach the zenith of its fossil fuel burning,
but severely reduce it as well...and that's just to keep temperatures
within a very uncomfortable, but perhaps endurable, 3-4º
C above pre-industry averages.
Whoever is president for the
next 4-8 years will wield the executive clout to make that final
argument. They will likely command Western Civilization's best hope
at curbing our excesses. At the end of their term, the die will more
or less be cast.
Now, consider Mitt Romney in
this role. Mitt Romney is a dyed-in-the-wool business man. Even
longtime close associates of his family admit that, whereas his
father, Governor George Romney, was a natural leader, Mitt Romney is
more of a manager – and maybe a middle manager at that. Then
there's this: his election campaign is being bankrolled by the likes
of billionaire carbon magnate William Koch (the third Koch brother),
who considers the EPA “hyperaggressive” in going after carbon
pollution. In return for securing him the presidency, Koch expects
Romney to follow through with a personal promise to cripple agency
regulation of greenhouse gases, if not to mortally wound it. How much
access to a Romney presidency would these guys feel entitled to?
Another billionaire funding Romney's campaign put it this way: “I
would expect Mitt Romney to speak to me occasionally.”
Finally, there is Romney's
stated stance on climate change: one of skepticism or denial. Oren
Cass, Romney's domestic policy advisor, said, “[Romney] doesn't
know the extent to which climate change is occurring or that human
activity is causing it." The incredible thing about this is
that, as governor, Mitt Romney was a leader in executive activism on
climate change, and several of his advisors on the subject are now
part of Obama's adminstration, trying to do something about global
warming.
Mitt Romney as president would
use our last years to officially doubt the existence of climate
change, even though he is fully aware of its reality. Unless his
true, liberal self is hiding inside the trojan horse of his new-found
conservatism, Romney will not be our captain through the very
difficult waters we have to navigate these next 5-10 years, if we are
to stand a chance in the future. Unfortunately, Romney really does
seem to believe that the economy – and, particularly, securing the
freedom of every enterprising and somewhat unscrupulous businessman
to get as much money as possible while he can – is the most
important game at play on planet Earth at this moment.
Now consider a continued
presidency of Obama. He is not Al Gore, when it comes to climate
change. On the other hand, he was a community worker; he does have
some firsthand
experience of struggling uphill for a thankless cause. He, also,
would be a second-term president, having “flexibility,” as he
notoriously put it to Vladimir Putin, to “[make] something happen.”
It is possible – especially if he really is the raving nutter
radical that Republican pundits make him out to be – that he would
have the gumption to do something really unprecedented, like declare
martial law and issue an executive order allowing the seizure of
assets from the carbon fuel companies.
So
far, he, too, has been promising to proceed full-tilt into as many
domestic drilling, fracking, mining opportunities as the
under-budgeted EPA will allow. But it is (slightly) more plausible
that Obama is pulling our leg, hiding in plain sight, and when push
comes to shove, he will remember his message of hope, or at least the
future of his daughters' generation, and do what needs to be done.
