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Getting our bearings toward making things better

Posted on January 28, 2010 by Staff

Sammy Slade

After the failure of the U.N. Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen, actions to resolve climate change in the U.S. are in reverse. Factors contributing to this lack of positive action include congress’ reluctance, before the mid-term elections, to engage in another battle, which is likely to be as drawn-out as the health care reform process has been. Now with the loss of a filibuster-proof Democrat Senate last week along with the Supreme Court’s decision striking restrictions on corporate influence in politics, the outlook is even starker for climate change legislation (and much else!).

And if that isn’t bad enough, the regulatory power to reign in greenhouse gas emissions that the executive branch currently DOES have via the EPA and the Clean Air Act is under threat of getting stripped by Congress. Last week, while so much else was happening, Republican Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski introduced an obscure “resolution of disapproval,” which, if not petitioned against by at least 30 senators before it gets put on the Senate calendar, will gut the only real existing power the president already has to regulate CO2! This regulatory power is, at its minimum, a tool to prod for significant legislative action.

Considering the emergency that climate change puts us in, and the lack of significant action from higher scales of governance, the Carrboro Board of Alderman voted unanimously in early December 2009 to adopt “A Resolution to Take Responsibility in a Socially Just Manner for Carrboro’s Portion of CO2 in the Atmosphere; Toward Getting the Atmosphere Back to a Safe Level Below 350 Parts per Million.”

In line with what is being called for by the scientific consensus for the industrialized world, this resolution commits Carrboro to a 20 percent reduction of 1990 levels of CO2 in the atmosphere by 2020.

On Feb. 1, the Carrboro, Chapel Hill and UNC communities will have an invaluable opportunity to see one of the world’s most eminent climate-change scientists. James Hansen will be giving a presentation titled “Global Climate Change: What Must We Do Now?” This UNC-hosted and sponsored event, free and open to the public, will be at Memorial Hall. (The event is at 7 p.m., though if you would like a seat, the doors open at 6:30.)

Please go to this event! It is imperative that we understand the degree of action called for if we are to mitigate the worst of what scientists are describing.

Fortunately for us in the Triangle, we still have the apparent luxury and potential of enacting changes that are derived from abstract understanding and not tangible calamity. Without the community’s understanding, there will not be the necessary movement required to assure that we implement action of the quality and degree required before irreversible catastrophe worsens and is felt locally.

Stay tuned to the Transition Carrboro-Chapel Hill “unleashing” that will happen on May 15. This will be the “big bang” community effort to bring together all the individuals and organizations within the community to coordinate our efforts in imagining and enacting a positive future. In the meantime … go see Hansen on Feb. 1!

If we could all understand the significance of our times, taking real action would be harder to deny … and things could only get better.

Sammy Slade is a member of the Carrboro Board of Aldermen.

3 thoughts on “Getting our bearings toward making things better”

  1. Neil Craig says:
    January 29, 2010 at 5:27 am

    I have asked journalists, politicians & alarmist lobbyists now totalling in the thousands to name 2 prominent scientists, not funded by government or an alarmist lobby who have said that we are seeing a catastrophic degree of warming & none of them have yet been able to do so. I extend this same invitation here.

    There is not & never was a genuine scientific consensus on this, though scientists seeking government funds have been understandably reluctant to speak. If there were anything approaching a consensus it would, with over 31,000 scientists having signed the Oregon petition saying it is bunk, it would be easy to find a similar number of independent scientists saying it was true, let alone 2. The whole thing depends on a very small number of people & a massive government publicity machine, both very well funded by the innocent taxpayer.

  2. Liane Salgado says:
    January 29, 2010 at 9:30 am

    It is always worth mentioning, that even if anthropogenic climate change is bunk, even if we’re being duped by a leftist conspiracy, there are pressing and incontrovertible reasons to lower carbon emmissions. Because it’s not just carbon dioxide we are manufacturing, it’s pollution and environmental degradation.

    Public health: Cleaner air, cleaner water, better soil all lead to better public health and ecosystem services on our crowded planet.

    Public safety: Less mudslides, desertification, environmental refugees, wildfires, dead zones in rivers and oceans, fish kills, wars over access to petroleum.

    Jobs, better economy: Cleaning up our manufacturing processes and reducing consumption of polluting technologies by creating alternative economies to provide our food, energy, transportation, entertainment and housing create jobs and local resilience.

    We can’t keep fouling our nest with alien chemicals the way we are now, even if we take the climate out of the equation.

  3. Neil Craig says:
    January 30, 2010 at 5:22 am

    The claim we need to cut CO2 even without catastrophic warming is very easily “contravertable”. CO2 helps plants grow, hence increasing it is a significant factor in cutting hunger worldwide – which would be a good thing.

    It is not a pollutant & does not harm “public health”.

    The “mudslides” etc claim depends on it actually producing the discredited catastrophic warming.

    Real jobs are not created by subsidy. Indeed since subsidies ultimately have to be paid out of taxes coming from real jobs they destroy about 2.5 jobs for every one they “create”.

    It still is not a pollutant & does not harm “public health”.

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