So Sleepy

Falling asleep the other day, I thought about a headline that I had read earlier. 

Basically, the powers that be are going after the Endangered Species Act. Again. Why? It's in the way of drilling for oil. 

I imagined debating with someone about why this news bothered me so much.

They might say -- so what, why should I care about species and the environment?

I could say that biodiversity is important. It’s like a hidden strength in the natural world that benefits people and nature alike.

I could say because extinct is gone forever. How does anyone think it’s ok for man to eliminate an entire species?

I could say it's just wrong. It shouts out one of the worst qualities in people: greed. 

To extract those natural resources so a few billion dollar companies can make more money is an affront to basic decency. So a handful of shareholders can become even wealthier? That does not sound right.

There’s a reason we’ve been warned about greed throughout civilization. Why it's in every religions' moral code. It's easily a top threat to humanity.

If that doesn't register, my counterpoint person just shrugs for example, then I could say well, then let the companies that are doing the extraction and extinctions bear the external costs. Let's speak to what motivates them. 

When the Exxon Mobil's suck out their oil, Earth gets hit with a trifecta. Extraction requires destroying habitat and the animals that live there; refining sends pollution into the air; and burning the refined product sends carbon into air already overstuffed with carbon.

All of these things are costs for people. If the companies paid for these costs on society, clean energy would be fully embraced, and be monetized as a billion dollar business faster than a NY minute.

The kicker is we have the ways and means to do better. We do not need to pull more oil out of the ground to continue to live happy and productive lives. There are other ways to do this thing called modern life without destroying the planet. 

We’re smart enough to figure out these solutions and even put them in place all over the world, but often too exhausted to fight the relentless engine of greed that tells us that pollution isn't bad and that we cannot afford to stop using their dirty energy. 

My eyes were still closed as I meandered through these points and grew sleepier. 

This is when whomever I’m talking to might roll their eyes and call me a tree hugger.

Hopefully then I'd respond with what's so bad about hugging trees? 

Good night! 

Scott Pruitt is the Face of America's Biggest Problem

"The puzzle here is not how Scott Pruitt could attempt to get away with these things; it is why America's days are filled with dealing with "public servants" like Pruitt — and, of course, Donald Trump, for that matter. They are cheaters, self-dealers, corner-cutters, and liars for personal or professional gain. Why does our political system fail so badly to screen them out? Why, in short, does the swamp spread so relentlessly?

The answer, of course, is that the Pruitts, the Trumps (and the Tom Prices and on and on) are people who serve interests far more powerful and nefarious than they are. Big money has taken over the political system, and hired people like Pruitt to run it on their behalf.

In 2010, the Supreme Court, in its ineffable wisdom, declared that corporations could spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections — that their contributions were free speech and thus beyond limitation. What could possibly go wrong?

Even now, all is not lost. The rich may have the money but the people still have the votes. Yet time is short. November is our best hope to reclaim our democracy from the likes of Pruitt and Trump." 

This was written by Jeffrey Sachs and published by CNN.  Jeffrey Sachs runs Columbia University's Earth Institute among other things. 

Plain and simple how big money is ruining this country via lackeys like Pruitt.  The takeaway: People need to vote for things they care about, including clean air and clean water. Celebrate this great country by voting.  

Full article pasted here: 

The federal government's top ethics official has asked the Environmental Protection Agency to take "appropriate actions to address any violations" rising from the behavior of the agency's administrator, Scott Pruitt.

These include a $50 a night room rental agreement with a lobbyist whose husband's firm lobbies the EPA, salary raises Pruitt gave to favored aides and other employees, frequent taxpayer-funded trips back home to Oklahoma — with security entourage -- and reports in The New York Times that Pruitt took punitive action against agency staff after they raised concerns about his actions.

The puzzle here is not how Scott Pruitt could attempt to get away with these things; it is why America's days are filled with dealing with "public servants" like Pruitt — and, of course, Donald Trump, for that matter. They are cheaters, self-dealers, corner-cutters, and liars for personal or professional gain. Why does our political system fail so badly to screen them out? Why, in short, does the swamp spread so relentlessly?

The answer, of course, is that the Pruitts, the Trumps (and the Tom Prices and on and on) are people who serve interests far more powerful and nefarious than they are. Big money has taken over the political system, and hired people like Pruitt to run it on their behalf.

And the big money will triumph as long as the young, the poor, and working class do not register and vote in far greater numbers. That is why our democracy depends so urgently on voters — in the upcoming elections and again in 2020 -- beating back the billionaires who manipulate our politics for their own gain.

The current state of our politics would be risible if the stakes were not so terrifyingly high. Pruitt has made a career of trying to gut any and all environmental protection. Trump is an unprincipled hothead real estate developer and reality TV persona who lost all access to serious capital long ago and so has largely relied on foreign money to keep afloat, as even his sons have reportedly affirmed.

Yet Pruitt is now in charge of dismantling every barrier between us and environmental ruin, and Trump has the nuclear codes that could end life on the planet.

They both work for larger financial interests. Our country today, and indeed much of the world, is run by and for billionaires actively manipulating the political process. They have the means, power, influence and muscle to get their way.

Trump was elected with the backing of several, including Sheldon Adelson, Carl Icahn, Robert Mercer, John Paulson, T. Boone Pickens and Peter Thiel. And Trump has delivered for them, most importantly by signing into law last December a budget-busting $1.5 trillion tax cut that largely benefits the rich.

Scott Pruitt was backed for his post as EPA administrator by the titans of Big Oil, including billionaires David Koch and Charles Koch, and Pruitt's backer for years, Harold Hamm, chief executive of Continental Resources, an Oklahoma oil and gas company. In return, Pruitt has been systematically attempting to gut every regulatory limit on greenhouse gas emissions and leading the effort to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement (making the United Stats the only country out of 193 to declare the intention to withdraw).

As another sure sign of who has the real sway in this country, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman chose to meet at last 10 billionaires on his recent whirlwind US trip: Donald Trump, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Mike Bloomberg, Stephen Schwarzman, Oprah Winfrey, Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Peter Thiel, among others. If you don't have a net worth of at least a couple billion dollars, you shouldn't be surprised that you weren't on the crown prince's dance card.

Why do the wealthy hire the likes of Pruitt to do their bidding? The main reason is that only individuals lacking a moral compass will carry out the whims and anti-social policies of the plutocrats who seek to manipulate the political and regulatory systems to their will. Suppose you had to tell mega-lies every day, such as that global warming is untrue and that air pollution is not dangerous to public health. Anyone of talent or honesty would recoil from the job. Only an ambitious toady would accept such an ugly assignment.

David and Charles Koch ($60 billion net worth each, according to Forbes) effectively control the Republican Party. Republican incumbents have the choice to take money from the extended Koch network or to face a primary opponent funded by the Koch network.

The party begs financial largesse from the Koch brothers and parrots the idiocies of climate denial on their behalf -- despite record heatwaves, forest fires, hurricanes and this season's loopy winter weather, which scientists say is linked to an overheated Arctic. Money can't turn back the tides, but it can cause adults who know better to deny them.

The United States is not alone in this big-money corruption but perhaps has become its world leader. Democracy around the world is being undermined not by a working-class backlash or resurgent nationalism but by money, a lot of it. With the world's politics awash in money, several world leaders are currently charged with corruption, most recently France's Nicolas Sarkozy, Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, and South Africa's Jacob Zuma, with two more recently convicted: Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and South Korea's Park Geun-Hye.

In 2010, the Supreme Court, in its ineffable wisdom, declared that corporations could spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections — that their contributions were free speech and thus beyond limitation. What could possibly go wrong?

Even now, all is not lost. The rich may have the money but the people still have the votes. Yet time is short. November is our best hope to reclaim our democracy from the likes of Pruitt and Trump.//


See the original: https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/09/opinions/pruitt-sums-up-americas-biggest-challenge-sachs/index.html

Apoplectic

Pruitt Don't Give a Damn 

It's very difficult to watch wholesale greed and animosity running this country.  Right into the ground.

It just keeps coming.  The depth of it knows no limits.  I thought I was surprised in the past.  Now I'm just incredulous, and bitter.

The latest is the Republican tax bill stands to seriously damage the solar and wind industry by undermining or eliminating effective incentives. 

It's a fast growing industry that generates millions of jobs and great innovation.  It’s finally upgrading something that hasn't changed in 90 years -- how we make electricity, which is the juice that runs our world.

The tax bill shoved through by grinning thugs will take that away and make steadily more affordable renewable energy unaffordable.

It's almost out of spite at this point.  The fossil fuel industry has 96% of the market share of power plants' fuel yet they still rag like the hypocrites they are about fair markets.

I wonder, did Standard Oil get tax breaks to get the industry going?  Did Ford Motor Co. get support from the government to get that industry going?  Of course they did.

The fossil fuel industry already receives over $564 billion in subsidies annually and untold influence -- the U.S. Secretary of State is the former CEO of Exxon-Mobil -- and they want to kill renewable energy.  Really?

And Pruitt EPA head snake says without a hint of sarcasm but full bore disingenuousness, “I’d let them (renewable energy) stand on their own and compete against coal and natural gas.”

They're killing this country.  We used to be a country that could build things, create new industries, jobs, prosperity, and overcome huge challenges.  We used to do great things like send a man to the moon.  Now we are forced to accept the status quo, shoved down our throats.

All because a few companies and a few shareholders want to continue to make billions the rest of the people and the climate be damned.  Greed is not good Gordon Gekko, after all.

The Politicians get paid, egos stroked, coffers stuffed, and we go hurtling toward the end of a once great nation, and an eventually uninhabitable planet. 

Also, the tax bill opens up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.  That’s just dirty.  Kicking you when you're already down.  Remember when we had to fight that?  We just fell back decades.  We know better.  Leave it in the ground.

This is a disaster.  The Trump Republican bomb has gone off and it's a dirty bomb, designed to rot us out slowly.  Money is the only thing that matters. 

The Kochs, Mobil-Exxon, Peabody Coal, and more must be giddy.  This is an oligarch run by sociopaths.  They don't care.  They don't care one wit about this country or the beautiful masses that make it great.

Hell, when the shit hits the fan they can go live in their gated communities and gaudy towers.  That's probably what they're thinking.  I'm hoping for the day they are pulled out of those places and strung up by their ankles.

An Actual Price of Carbon

We've been talking about the cost of carbon on society for a long time.  Turns out it's $36 a ton, according to scientists and economists.

Unfortunately, the Trump administration has already hinted at ignoring that number.  It would be disastrous.  It's vital that the cost is realized.

By the way -- how many tons do humans pump into the air every year?  Forty billion tons.  That's billion with a B.

How much are healthy oceans and ecosystems worth? Priceless.

Don't take my word of it.  A recent op-ed by Michael Greenstone and Cass Susstein talks about the importance of keeping that number in the regulations and solutions to climate change. 

Excerpt:

New scientific and economic evidence suggests that climate change probably poses an even greater risk than the $36 figure reflects. 

For example, the West Antarctica ice sheet appears to be retreating faster than we thought, raising the specter of multimeter sea level rise in the next century. 

Recent research also found that climate change will lead to shorter and sicker lives, primarily because of the harmful effect of more extremely hot days on health. Extreme heat is also projected to reduce worker productivity and increase energy consumption, while changes in temperature and precipitation globally are expected to increase food prices and violence. Thus, there is a strong case that if anything, the government’s estimate of the social cost of carbon should be higher than it is.

To be sure, the exact number is uncertain, and the Trump administration will make its own judgment. But a credible assessment must be based on the best science and economics, not politics. And there is no justification for a chilling investigation of civil servants who are just doing their jobs.

Ultimately, the social cost of carbon provides a necessary guidepost in decisions about how to balance costs to our economy today with the coming climate damages. Wishing that we did not face this trade-off will not make it go away.

Read the whole piece here.

No Surrender Despite the Times

Dear Editor,

What a disappointing article “What Would You Do?” by Tatiana Schlossberg in the New York Times. 

The takeaway adds to people's sense of helplessness and encourages inaction -- that climate change is so big and "complicated" that even if you choose the most earth-friendly answers, "the climate will keep changing no matter what" and that “there is no way to stop climate change.”

You read that and you may as well wave the newspaper over your head like a white flag of surrender.

I say no surrender despite the times. There is hope. There are many things everyone can and should do to stop climate change.

Citizen

Bonaire Swim

In Bonaire, Netherlands Antilles 

Today I entered the easy shore break on the leeward side of a windswept island in the southern Caribbean sea.  Mask and snorkel is all I needed.

I saw a smallish Hawksbill sea turtle swimming just below.  It swam ever so slowly through the clear water.  It was as if time underwater really moves as different as it feels.

Followed it for quite awhile.  An unusual treat for undersea wildlife, often just a fleeting glimpse.  I admired the colorful shell made of greens and red-browns in an Aztec-like pattern.

As the turtle passed over the undersea cliff edge, his shell and whole body was vibrant against the black-blue of the drop off into the darker depths.

But the flounder, the simple flat fish, I saw on my way back to the beach really stole my imagination.  So delighted to watch it flutter like paper in the wind, a beige white fabric on the beige sand.

When it stopped moving and bits of sand settled back around it, I could barely discern the creature from the Earth.  For a moment, it was one with its surroundings, easily something we've all tried to be at least once in our terrestrial lives.

At the end of a day buzzing with beauty, I've figured it out -- the tremendous draw here of Bonaire.

Everyday, the bright warm sun, the turquoise water, fantastic sights in the meditative, soundless underwater world -- it's like living on the edge of a wonderful dream that you can easily step into and out of.

How to be Heard

 Remember this line? 

"I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." 

This is a good read.  It's a very practical and nonpartisan "how to" guide written by former staff of members of congress.  It will tell you how to make sure your member of congress knows where you stand on issues/votes, Republican or Democrat.

If you don't have time to read it, the summary is:
 
Calling the offices of your two Senators and congressperson is the most effective way to be heard -- aside from visiting their offices and telling them in person.  And yes, you can actually call them, you'll probably get a staffer but he/she will take your message/statement.

Try to call them when there is some way they can take action or are about to take action -- "I want you to vote yes on xxx"
 
Members of Congress are not really interested in your opinion of the policies or your logic for why you feel this way -- they just want to know where you stand.

And believe it or not, they care what you think -- Republican or Democrat -- because you are one of their constituents.  You're a voter.  And members of congress are always, consistently, to the "point of obsession", focused on re election.

The telephone numbers of your members of congress are easily found online. 

The Indivisible Guide is here: https://www.indivisibleguide.com/

Sing for the Unsung Hero

The world needs more people like Joe Browder.  He was instrumental in saving acres of the Everglades.  Here he is taking a stroll in his cathedral.  Rest in peace.

A quote from his experience:

“Look at it this way, Louise,” she recalled Mr. Browder telling her. “Would you rather have some influence over deciding where the airport will be located, or would you rather decide where to plant the trees and grass around the parking lots?”

He loved nature no doubt.  Read his obit here.

Exxon Tries to Move the Spotlight

Classic corporate move -- Exxon is investigating the investigators.

State officials in Texas -- where else -- are investigating District Attorneys in other states who are trying to determine if Exxon Mobil knew more about climate change's causes and harms than it has said it knew.

They've got a political lap dog, a Republican from Texas named Lamar, a veritable gauntlet of lawyers, and a chorus of communications professionals without conscious.  Greed runs wide and deep and long.

If they can say that the people investigating them are under investigation, they've won another small victory in the obfuscation of climate change and their culpability.

This is because Exxon Mobil is one of the dirtiest companies the world has ever seen, and they will use every angle or strategy to continue to make billions of dollars at the expense of human health and the health of the planet.

Once again, Greenpeace says it like it is:

Annie Leonard, its executive director, said “America’s least respected politicians have now courageously stepped up to defend one of America’s most hated corporations from scrutiny.”

The 13 signers of the Smith letter (investigating the DAs), she noted, “have been paid millions in campaign contributions from coal, oil and gas companies, so this letter is more proof that the system works — for corporations.”

Here's an article about it from the New York Times:

Sun Hugger

The greatest thing about solar power systems is that they make sense in the grand scheme of things.

The sun brings life to this planet.  Nearly every living thing exists because the sun provides energy that creates food -- like plants and phytoplantkon -- which in turn is eaten by all sorts of critters which are in turn are eaten by all sorts of other critters.

Only in caves and two miles under the ocean, where the sun does not penetrate, does life succeed without sunlight.  But those are rare instances.

Taking solar energy from the sun in the form of excited electrons in glass and silica to energize human lives has an elegance to it.  I'd go as far as to say it nudges us closer to the natural world.

It sure beats the heck out of burning something we dug up and over-stuffing the atmosphere with dirty gasses.

Too Tranquilo

Too Tranquilo in Guatemala

Chocolate-black sand
on this stretch of Pacific Beach
off the vast volcanic slope
that is southern Guatemala.
Spotted a bright white egret in the mangroves so far.
A lone tern wandering up and down the coast
flying just overhead while I bobbed in the swells.
And a long and curious line of pelicans,
like a wandering, dotted pencil drawing.
They gathered in one spot in the sky,
and then flew overhead single file
same distance apart one from the other, quietly organized.

Basura is on the sand and in the brush
and burning on the step-away streets.
Industrial smell of smoldering plastic.
Up in smoke may be better than in the tern's belly.
Two massive dark objects on the horizon.
Boxy, obvious right angles of man,
three distinct smoke stacks.
clear, even from my distance.
Staking a terrible claim to rake the ocean,
processing the catch on board into frozen ingots of lost wilds.

Shrimp is everywhere on the local menu,
because nearly all of the mangroves in the area
have been turned into shrimp farms.
Manatees and cranes and juvenile fish
become homeless overnight.
I can't eat the shrimp knowing this.
My silent boycott about as significant as a grain of sand.
The sole tourist boat
must charge $200 U.S. a head,
to buy gas to get out far enough,
to see big marine life.
Not sure if that's a product of anything or if it's always been that way.
But I imagine there was a time when you
could sit on the beach and see
whales and bottlenose dolphin, and maybe even a manta.

Vaunted turtle sanctuary in the ramshackle town,
just past Johnny's Saloon,
has empty pools with dry black sand in the bottom.
But also flat sand beds protected and marked off
as if growing tomatoes but nothing has sprouted yet,
not the tiny paws
or the small snout of a newborn sea turtle.
Life is brave the turtle says,
life is delicate and brief, but resilient,
to a point.
The turtles hatch and are corralled into mesh cylinders,
later they are set off into the ocean,
like seeds in a brisk wind.
Stuff whatever money I have in my pocket
into their donation box.
Someone is trying.
Lizards, birds, insects, marine life, mangroves?
All quiet. Too tranquilo. 

Our Natural Selection Moment

The current renewable energy revolution lead by solar power emerges less as a technological revolution and more as human evolution.  Call it our next species, where we finally shake the mantle of our caveman selves.

It is the natural selection moment that may save us. Our fifteen minutes of genetic fame.  Not elongated toes to support walking upright or more expansive skulls this time.  This time it's cerebral.

We have the power to reason that we must change something fundamental in order to save ourselves.  It is no less real than using tools for the first time so that we can improve our diet and grow our survival.

The crux is plain as day -- early man burned things to create heat and light, and we’re still doing that.  It has been an amazing 400,000 year run, from the warm glow of coals in a chilly cavern on an ancient winter's night to coal-fired plants running a fantastic metropolis.  Outstanding, really, but it's still burning things.  Time to move on.

As most evolutions, it is required and necessary for a species to undertake or the species goes away.

This fits exactly in with moving – evolving – away from fossil fuel systems and toward renewable energy systems, especially solar, while the ravages of climate change begin to fray the edges of humanity and modern civilization.

We've all heard the dire predictions.  It does not bode well for us this enormous challenge called climate change.  But if we continue to adopt more and more solar power, we will be reining in climate change and thereby preserving our own species.

We will be embracing the next evolution.  We will have evolved as a necessity of survival.  It’s not a revolution as much as it’s an evolution, to a better species, a smarter species.

Help Horseshoe Crabs

Happy to be chosen as a guest blogger at The Safina Center, happier still that more people will get the word about horseshoe crabs and hopefully sign the save the horseshoe crab petition.

As it is, someone with a license in New York can take up to 500 crabs per day. That’s the kind of limit that represents no limit, says Carl Safina in The View from Lazy Point.

“There is something in man that hates natural abundance, and something that clings to excess,” wrote Dr. Safina.

In the Northeast, horseshoe crabs are declining and current catch levels are unsustainable.  Give them a chance.

Check out the post: Help Horseshoe Crabs Live Another Million Years 

God's Green Earth

Q: Is climate change a global challenge to humanity?

A: Is the Pope Catholic?

Yes, he is and apparently there are 1.2 billion Catholics in the world.  Many of them look to him for guidance.

The Pope says it's humanity's responsibility to be good stewards of the Earth.  It's a moral obligation.

That's why I'm ecstatic.  Even though it was a month ago, I'm still buzzing.  There's so much bad news out there around the health of ecosystems, it's sometimes hard to believe the good news.

The pontiff didn't mince words, either.  "The Earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth," Francis said.  He called for a "revolution" and he called out fossil fuels.

Can I get a Hallelujah?  How about an Amen?

The great news is that the Pope is not the only revered religious leader who says we should take care of God's green Earth.  In January 2013, the head of the Christian Orthodox church went as far as to call pollution a sin.  The Dalai Lama himself has asked for an ethical approach to environmental protection.

Amen!

Doubt Meets a Mean Upper Cut

I just found my latest heroine in Naomi Oreskes.  She is not a female boxer in the traditional sense.

Trained as a geologist and obviously smart as a whip, she has become the staunch challenger to the scientific community's career naysayers and deniers.  But she does it on their terms, with research and solid data, and that's probably what makes them so incensed.

Dr. Fred Singer and the staff scientists of the George C Marshall Institute are some of the most vocal.  They call her many things including a lightening rod.  Her response is: "But remember, the whole purpose of a lightning rod is to keep people safe.”

Her book Merchants of Doubt is a must read.  She calls out the very small part of the scientific community that has strategically sowed doubt about some of the biggest issues.  We're talking not only climate change but also the health impacts of tobacco and the effects of acid rain. 

With her climate change work, she shows that about 97 percent of working climate scientists accept that global warming is happening, that humans are largely responsible, and that the situation poses long-term risks.  She places the small minority of deniers on the wrong side of science and history. 

The plot twist that gets me is that while the tobacco companies and the fossil fuel companies are motivated by greed, the merchants of doubt are in it for a different reason.  Oreskes says they oppose these major findings and the necessary sea changes that follow for "a deep ideological reason: contempt for government regulation," according to the New York Times.

In the world of communicating the science of climate change and fighting the deniers, that's an eye opener.  Knowing the motivation, the end game, of your enemy is half the battle to overcoming them.  Course it always helps to have a Naomi in your corner. 

Celebrate World Oceans Day

Today is a great day to celebrate the majesty and the life-giving power of the ocean.

One way to celebrate is to remember that climate change hits the ocean, too.  It doesn't sound like much of a celebration but people save what they love, and the ocean needs saving.

So support clean energy to stem two game-changing ocean ills caused by climate change -- warming seas and ocean acidification.

Another way to celebrate is to get in the water or on the water or even near the water if you're lucky enough.  But you knew that.  Happy World Oceans Day.

The Constant Spill

I knew it was too good to be true.  For awhile there, it really seemed that the Obama administration was serious about protecting the Arctic from offshore drilling.

Even most recently optimism flickered as Secretary of State Kerry spoke in support of clean energy at the Arctic Council.

"My friends, clean energy is the solution to climate change.  If we got the whole world to embrace clean energy choices rapidly, we can meet our two-degree target.  But the window’s closing.  The extraordinary thing is all of the technologies we need – whether it’s wind or solar or hydro or whatever, they’re all there," said Kerry.

But it is not to be.  The Obama administration just agreed to allow Shell to drill in the Arctic.

An oil spill directly into the Arctic would be horrible and that's reason enough to object to this decision.  But it's bigger than that.

Every single minute of every single day we are spilling carbon and other greenhouse gases into our atmosphere.  It's the constant spill.

The main objection to drilling in the Arctic should be that it's just more of the same -- drill, burn, repeat.  It's what got us here in the first pace.

And now we know better.  But we're still doing it.

Based on the rules of evolution, technically, we should be selected out.  Maybe that's what climate change is.  We cannot adapt ourselves to a clean energy future so climate change will take care of it.  Even a mouse can learn to protect itself -- if it touches this thing, it gets shocked.  So what does it do?  The mouse stops touching it.

If we burn this thing, we ruin nature.  Let's keep burning it anyway.

The move to renewable and clean power is too slow, and that's exactly what the fossil fuel industry wants.  They fought (and are still fighting) the science and reality of climate change, but they've got so many other ways to hold onto their status quo.

Transition is one of those terms they've fed us.  Obama even used it in his recent announcement that we can expect more of the same, even drilling in the Arctic.  That we need to transition to clean fuels.  It sounds so nice and calm.  It really just means more time for the fossil fuel industry to make a killing while they're killing the planet.

I thought we had a moment of real inspiration, a chance for one of the biggest hogs on the planet, the U.S., to be a leader in clean energy.

"Rather than being a leader, however, the U.S. is simply following in the footsteps of Russia and Norway – two countries that have already begun or are making progress towards Arctic offshore drilling.  The decision in favor of Shell’s plans also puts Alaska on the pathway of dependency on oil extraction for many more years to come instead of turning it into a leader in more cutting-edge industries like clean energy," according to Cryopolitics.

Pale leadership, missed opportunities and the constant spill continues while the fat cats pop the champagne.

Don't Even Speak Of It

The ultimate form of denial: don't even speak of it.

The Florida office charged with protecting the state's natural resources -- from manatees to the buccaneer palm, from elkhorn coral to gators -- was muzzled by the state's highest officials.

"Though it was not a written rule, we were told not to use the terms 'climate change,' 'global warming' or 'sustainability'. That message was communicated to me and my colleagues by our superiors," said Christopher Byrd, a former attorney with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection's Office of General Counsel, according to USA Today.

What could Florida officials possibly be protecting by such a mandate?  Unfortunately, it's unsurprising in a state where renewable energy is illegal.

What really boggles the mind is that Florida is almost entirely at or barely above sea level.  Right now, flooding occurs with nearly every high tide in places that never flooded before including many of its famous beaches, which generate over $65 billion in tourism revenue annually.

The blatant disregard for the future of Floridians and Florida's economy by its own government is nothing short of breathtaking.

Tea Party Blasts Koch Brothers

Who do you think said this? 

"Americans for Prosperity (Koch brothers' nonprofit) is supposed to espouse free-market principles, but they're trying to prevent Floridians from engaging in commerce in a free-market manner.  They are resorting to outright lies." 

Nope, not a tree hugging environmentalist.  Not some big time liberal.  Not even a left-leaning journalist. 

Debbie Dooley said that.  She's a Georgia-based tea party leader and founder of Conservatives For Energy Freedom. 

She was speaking about Americans for Prosperity, the Koch brothers leading mouthpiece and purveyor of doubt and denial. 

In Florida, Americans for Prosperity is butting heads with the Tea Party.  The Tea Party supports solar in the state, also known as the sunshine state by the way.  Renewable energy is currently illegal in Florida. 

Meanwhile, Americans for Prosperity make it their mission to give no quarter to renewable sources of power because that threatens the profits of their corporate patrons. They want clean energy to remain illegal in Florida. 

This conservative scuffle is a stunning example of the Koch brothers' machine at work, mowing down everything in its path,  even fellow conservatives. 

"Proponents of the ballot measure (to make renewables legal in Florida) argue there aren't any subsidies or mandates in the measure -- just legal changes that would make it easier for people in the state to get solar if they want. 

Dooley -- the Tea Party leader -- has accused Americans for Prosperity of 'hypocrisy'. Dooley accused the group of kowtowing to its corporate benefactors (Koch Brothers) rather than the will of the people," according to the Huffington Post.  

'You don’t throw your principles out the window to benefit your corporate benefactors,' she said. 

That's her mistake right there -- she assumes Americans for Prosperity and the Koch Brothers have principles or anything resembling standards.  

They seem to be willing to say anything despite how truthful it is.  There is no place for reason in their money-fueled animosity.  It's all to keep their status quo of making billions while the world burns, literally. 

Let's not even get into the fact that renewables are illegal in Florida.  What is wrong with people? 

Petition: Remove the Koch Brothers

Just say no to Koch brothers. No place for fake science and denial while the world burns -- sign the petitions to remove the Koch brothers from the boards of public television and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and the American Museum of Natural History.

Petition:  "Remove David Koch from WGBH’s board of trustees and ensure that public broadcasting remains independent from the influence of radical climate change denial." Over 20,000 signatures so far.

Petition: "It's time to get science deniers out of science museums. Two of our most celebrated natural history museums have a serious Koch problem.

David Koch sits on the board and is a major donor for both the Smithsonian and the American Museum of Natural History. This from one of the two Koch brothers, Kansas billionaires who have sent $79 million since 1997 to groups denying the science of climate change."

Thank you Greenpeace and MoveOn.