Environmental War – The Climate Will Show No Mercy

With my grandchildren here, I’ve been slower getting my reading done, but they are also central to what we need to deal with. The entire NY Times Magazine of Sunday, August 5, was devoted to the story of climate change, when we knew it, what it would do, and our failure to stop it. Some of us have known for a long time without knowing how to ring the alarm bell. But there is no more time.

Within two decades the earth’s temperature will have risen enough to force a large portion of the earth, with its homes and cities under water. Don’t think you’re affected? A rise of 10-20 feet in the height of the oceans will swamp large portions of our coast – and forget about rebuilding like before. If you live above the sea line, it may not matter because much of the coastal infrastructure will be swamped. Roads, bridges, subways, pipelines and much more will become unusable. Our towns and cities won’t function like what brought us there.

Think it’s just the coasts? Actually, a large portion of the Midwest will be submerged. And a large portion of the Southwest will be a dust bowl, equally unusable. Worried about refugees? Much of our country will be refugees from the rising waters and the droughts caused by climate change. Feel secure in your property rights? Think about Sutter’s mill in California when gold was discovered. Large movements of people can swamp settled practices.

Where will your food come from? Rising, warming oceans threaten coral reefs and with them much of the global maritime food supply. Droughts and submerged land will reduce much earthbound food supplies. Still think this is a story about someone else? That you can pass on to your children and grandchildren the rising standard of living that is supposed to be the American dream?

Can we still stop it? Not if we fiddle while Rome burns or tweet while America disappears under water. This is a national and international crisis and it’s way more than politics. Yes, other nations have to get on board and many have but it destroys their efforts, achievements and resolve if America continues irresponsibly pumping CO2 and methane into the atmosphere. The battle against environmental devastation must be waged on a war footing, with everything at our disposal.

What will it take? More than your SUVs. Americans have been responding to cleaner power by buying more gas-guzzling cars and tools. At the very minimum we’ll have to accept a steep carbon tax, so that we can stanch the growing flood of energy use, even if we lower other taxes. We can’t keep fracking and building pipelines or mining coal – I understand the concern about jobs but we have to put our labor where it helps, not where it hurts. Global changes require global solutions that cut energy use and eliminate greenhouse gasses.

Retail suggestions can make some dents – like solar panels, green roofs, white roof tiles and white roads and drives. Cities are much more efficient than sprawling development, and multi-family homes are much more efficient than single-family dwellings because they insulate each other. Some building and zoning changes could push people to use passive solar to make the most of the sun’s heat in the winter and shield us from as much as possible in the summer. We have to start using our collective heads.

And we have to address this problem like an emergency that will require effort and sacrifice from all of us. Patriotism requires no less. Our families, children, grandchildren and everyone we hold dear require no less. This is a war for a livable environment. Losing it means losing everything, our country, our families, our homes and lives. Fussing about issues of heritage and color are the work of fools. Sweating about how much damage will take place by 2035 or whether catastrophe will take a few more years just makes it inescapable. We have serious work to do.

— This commentary was broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, August 21, 2018.

 

 

Freedom for the Boss; Drudgery for the Rest of Us

I keep looking for ways to talk with supporters of the Administration. President Carter started the deregulation frenzy. That has become half of the Republican cut-and-deregulate refrain ever since, consistently repeated by the current White House and the Republicans in Congress. I’d like to focus on the things that will affect those of us who are, financially speaking, ordinary, middle-class Americans.

Here are changes the Administration and congressional Republicans are considering that affect working conditions:

• The White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs has been postponing and considering cutting down a Labor Department rule that limits “workers’ exposure [to] toxic material, which can cause a deadly lung disease.”
• The same White House Office is also “considering a proposal to roll back protections for workers in construction and shipbuilding.”
  • Those rules allow our employers to save cash by risking our health.

• “The Working Families Flexibility Act … would give employees a choice between taking time off or being paid time-and-a-half when they work more than 40 hours in a week.”
• Either way, Republicans oppose changing overtime rules to raise eligibility for overtime above the current $23,660 per year.
  • Those rules allow our employers to save cash by shortchanging us.

Here are some that affect the health of financially ordinary Americans:

• The Administraton has already taken steps to “roll back healthy school lunch standards”
• The new head of the FDA “has invested in or consulted for dozens of healthcare companies” which suggests that the Food and Drug Administration won’t be much help in preventing unnecessary complications and expenses.
• The House health care bill would eliminate Obamacare requirements that insurance plans cover prescriptions drugs and mental healthcare. Like all insurance, drug and mental health care coverage are intended to protect people from unplanned changes in the costs of survival.
• Senate Republicans narrowly lost an effort to roll back a regulation that “limit[s] methane emissions from oil and natural gas drilling.” Methane is even more damaging to the climate than carbon.
  • Those rules risk our health for the sake of other people’s profits.

On savings for retirement:

• “Trump’s Labor Department delayed the so-called fiduciary rule, ordering financial advisers to act in … [your] best interest[s] … [if you] are saving for retirement.”
• The CHOICE Act would allow the banks that brought us the crash of 2008 to opt out of regulations adopted after the crash and intended to prevent another. And the bill renames the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and “reduces its power to enforce pre-existing consumer protection laws.”
  • Those rules risk our financial security for the sake of other people’s profits.

Meanwhile, Republicans on the Supreme Court show little respect for working men and women.

• With Breyer’s help they have blessed “Professional debt collectors … [who] built a business out of buying stale debt, filing claims in bankruptcy proceedings to collect it, and hoping that no one notices that the debt is too old to be enforced by the courts.”
• The Court continues to apply a 1925 statute intended for interstate business transactions to consumer contracts and the Court bars state regulation entirely.

What Republicans continue to give us is freedom for the boss and drudgery for the rest of us. As the old folk song has it, “same song, second verse, could get better but it’s gonna get worse.”

— This commentary was broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, May 16, 2017.

Investing in the Environment

The White House isn’t explaining government’s environmental options.

The environment is the crux of emerging industry. It doesn’t just enable us to breathe better and protect our children’s lives. It is a growing industry which America could dominate if we tried. It is and will be crucial to housing materials, and protecting existing investments of all kinds. Places and countries that don’t protect their environments will not attract entrepreneurs, workers or investments. Their infrastructure will clog along with people’s lungs.

And as it becomes cheaper solar and wind make other industries possible – sun and wind don’t charge by the hour. Falling behind in environmental infrastructure means disaster, abandoned communities if they don’t first fall into the sea.

As simple a gesture as writing land-planning rules so that new construction has the best orientation to the sun cuts expenses forever. Supporting science, instead of taking scientific findings off government websites, will lead to other helpful steps America could take. Plus everything we do for the environment will depend on putting people to work to get it done.

Yes I know, there are shifts in world temperatures that are not man made. New York was once covered with a huge sheet of ice. Nevertheless, we also know, independently, that carbon and methane are driving global warming. Even if natural processes affect the temperature of our world, mankind is making it much worse. We could take action to bring that down unless we put our heads firmly in the sand. Fighting to minimize climate change is good for the economy. Losing that fight isn’t. It means rescuing people, pulling them away from the coasts, crowding them into smaller less productive areas. More than that, it means that many of the places we live will become uninhabitable. Only the mortuaries will do well.

I once chatted with an engineer about the effects of climate change. I knew that his house is in New York City, only 8 feet above sea level and not far from the coast. So I suggested he move to higher ground. He responded that if the sea rose 8 feet, New York City would be unlivable. The infrastructure of the city wouldn’t work. Roads and streets would be submerged or collapse. It wouldn’t be worth staying even on higher ground. So I suggested moving up here – the Hudson may be at sea level but most of us are much higher than that. His response was chilling but one would be a fool to assume he was wrong. He said that none of us would be safe if 8 million New Yorkers, or more from the metropolitan area or the East Coast, became refugees. Wow. His point is that if large numbers of us become desperate, and remember that most Americans live near the coasts, then all bets are off.

Remember the resistance in Congress to repairing the damage from Sandy. That doesn’t even compare to the costs of a rising sea.

So fighting climate change is good for jobs, protects us from economic collapse, and gives our children and grandchildren something to live for. That’s a heck of a worthwhile investment, and a collective, patriotic goal.

— This commentary was broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, Feb. 21, 2017.