Thought for Food

An open letter to all people and organizations working to combat global warming

From 1Sky’s Board of Directors. (I learned about the organization when I went on a retreat with Michael Silberman (@silbatron) in 2008).

A very sophisticated, thoughtful post; the comments are particularly interesting.

As we find ourselves surrounded by the tatters of the climate debate in the U.S. Congress, it seems fitting to take a moment to step back and ponder where we go from here. While the blogosphere is buzzing with assignments of blame for the failure of the Senate to act, we are much more concerned about how we move forward with urgency and clarity of purpose. Unfortunately, we do not have the luxury to pack our bags and go home as the Senate did only moments ago. We just staggered through the hottest six months in recorded history worldwide. People everywhere are being impacted by the damage we have done through decades of carbon loading, and it is clear that our ailing planet will not sit idly by as our political leaders have done. […]

A few points I found compelling:

Our president is leading a deeply divided country and Congress, and while he undoubtedly “gets it” when it comes to the imperative to take action, he was surrounded by strategists who doubted the wisdom or the feasibility of winning on this issue. We simply never made a strong enough public case to change their minds, and as a result we did not get the leadership demonstrated by the White House in the health-care and regulatory-reform debates.

[…]

During the course of the last three years, as organizations adopted an empahsis on the clean energy economy, we saw our opponents make steady headway in their ongoing and deliberate disinformation campaign to suggest that there is credible debate about the science of global warming. We left the science-of-global-warming flank largely undefended, and we are paying the price as polls suggest decreases in the percentage of Americans who are convinced that global warming is an urgent problem that we must address. We have to reclaim the debate on the science, clearly and with conviction, before it is too late. At the same time, we have to redouble our efforts to explain and demonstrate why an investment in a clean energy economy is critical to our future. We need to make real federal investments in energy research and development to help drive down the price of alternatives.

[…]

Companies wield the dominant influence on U.S. politics, and controlled the debate on energy reform. Coal, oil, gas, agriculture, and utility-company lobbyists are literally swarming Capitol Hill.