Now that Christmas is over and a new year is around the corner, it’s time to get the crud and cobwebs out of Congress. Lately I’ve been thinking through this idea of adopting Nancy Pelosi on January 29th to help her skirt the dirty energy bad-boys in Congress, and it’s really getting me jazzed up. Not just me either, I’ve got some friends in far places who heard about the idea and are making the necessary preparations to adopt their own Congress-people and Senators during the Climate Week of Action.
In fact, as of this morning, people at 150 different schools have signed up to host a global warming film screening, adopt a congressperson, or do some other feisty climate activities locally between January 29th and February 2nd.
BE A LITTLE BLUE TENNIS RACKET! REGISTER FOR ACTION!
For me, this adoption project idea became clearer after reading a sweet Bill McKibben article back in September about how the recent momentum shift in the US global warming debate means a big federal plan on global warming might be at our doorstep and what that means. If a plan is passed, it could be years before an opportunity of that size comes up again. Bill reminds us that years is one thing we don’t have with global warming. Hence, it’s now that we need to steer the debate toward an aggressive, just, and comprehensive policy now, in 2007.
Maybe I’m delusional, but I say screw this 2009 hooey and the new president. If we don’t stick our hands in dirty politics and start to de-gunk the politicians in 2007, we’re playing Russian Roulette with our future.
If you aren’t convinced that Congress needs some serious help addressing global warming, consider two facts.
* In 1988 Congress had it’s first hearings on global warming with Dr. James Hansen warning of the dangers of greenhouse gas emissions for the global climate.
* In 2006 not a single piece of climate legislation been passed through either the House or the Senate.
We can’t forget that the oil, gas, coal, and nuclear industries are more entrenched and more powerful than almost any other throughout our society. While you may have heard from some companies that they want to change or that they are changing, they are doing everything in their power to ensure that they, not politicians, citizens, or communities determine how and when we shift our energy systems. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t give me a warm fuzzy feeling on the inside. What does? Big, saucy, diverse, creative, powerful, humorous, strategic, youth action! That and eating my first meal of the day before 4pm. Damn, I gotta go deal with that.
great post! can’t wait for the week of action- it’ll be Epic!
I think the most effective method of plumbing is to encourage members of Congress to establish a conservation and renewable energy fund from lost royalty revenues on oil and gas leases in the Gulf that the Democrats plan to reclaim in the “first 100 hours.”
The danger here is that more publicly popular issues like raising the minimum wage will shift aside the energy issue for the first part of the 110th Congress. Even if the royalties are reclaimed, there is still a possible danger that those revenues will go without specific ties to conservation and renewable energy and just go into the general fund. On the flip side, having such restrictions on where the money goes does create incentives to shifts funds in other parts of the budget related to conservation and renewable energy elsewhere to maintain a consistent budgetary commitment to c/re. Tough call, but we need to tell lawmakers that putting money where our clean energy mouth is = important.
See this article from The Hill for reference:
http://www.hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/010307/oil.html