Saturday, August 30, 2014

The Florida Public Service Commission: with November around the corner, a chance to redress indignities for Florida voters … by gimleteye

I was reminded of a Tom Friedman OPED recently, having read about this week's meeting at Miami International Airport Hotel where the nominating committee for the Public Service Commission convened in a room adjacent to a protest by climate change activists including a leading UM scientist, Dr. Harold Wanless, who had met with Gov. Rick Scott only a week earlier to attempt to educate Scott on climate change.

Friedman wrote, "Of the many things being said about climate change lately, none was more eloquent than the point made by Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington State in the Showtime series “Years of Living Dangerously,” when he observed: “We’re the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it."

While Dr. Wanless spoke to the activists about the urgency of reforming energy policies to drastically reduce carbon emissions, from the next room laughter could be heard from the gathering of those responsible to set the state's energy policies. One meeting participant said, "it sounded like happy hour".

This blog noted the sheer incongruence of former State House Representative Jimmy Patronis (R-Panama City) being nominated to the PSC. Patronis' credentials include his role as anti-environmental leader in the state legislature. In other words, he fits right in with the crowd of insiders who run the shadow government in Tallahassee.

Anyone who doesn't believe this is shocking ought to spend a few minutes with ProPublica's outstanding report on Louisiana sinking, where scientists now say, "… the greatest environmental and economic disasters in the nation’s history is rushing toward a catastrophic conclusion over the next 50 years, so far unabated and largely unnoticed."

Friedman's editorial ended, "Let’s act so the next generation will want to honor us with a Memorial Day, the way we honor the sacrifice of previous generations." From Florida's Public Service Commission, you can hear the tinkle of cocktail glasses and guffaws.

The nation's voters will have a chance to redress these indignities in November.

(for Friedman's OPED "Memorial Day 2050, click 'read more')


Memorial Day 2050
MAY 24, 2014
Thomas L. Friedman


OF the many things being said about climate change lately, none was more eloquent than the point made by Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington State in the Showtime series “Years of Living Dangerously,” when he observed: “We’re the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it.”

The question is how do we motivate people to do something about it at the scale required, when many remain skeptical or preoccupied with the demands of daily life — and when climate scientists themselves caution that it is impossible to attribute any single weather event to climate change, even if recent weather extremes fit their models of exactly how things will play out as the planet warms.

Andrew Sullivan’s Dish blog last week linked to a very novel approach offered by Thomas Wells, a Dutch philosopher: Since climate change and environmental degradation pit the present against the future, our generation versus those unborn, we should start by giving the future a voice in our present politics.

“Even if we can’t know what future citizens will actually value and believe in, we can still consider their interests, on the reasonable assumption that they will somewhat resemble our own (everybody needs breathable air, for example),” wrote Wells in Aeon Magazine. Since “our ethical values point one way, towards intergenerational responsibility, but our political system points another, towards the short-term horizon of the next election,” we “should consider introducing agents who can vote in a far-seeing and impartial way.”

Wells suggests creating a public “trusteeship” of nongovernmental civic and charitable foundations, environmental groups and nonpartisan think tanks “and give them each equal shares of a block of votes adding up to, say, 10 percent of the electorate,” so they can represent issues like “de-carbonizing the economy” and “guaranteeing pension entitlements” for the unborn generation that will be deeply impacted but has no vote.

Unrealistic, I know, but the need to incorporate longer time scales into our societal choices is very real — and right in the lap of our generation. Andy Revkin, who blogs at Dot Earth for The Times’s Opinion section, put it well: “We are coming of age on a finite planet and only just now recognizing that it is finite. So how we manage infinite aspirations of a species that’s been on this explosive trajectory, not just of population growth but of consumptive appetite — how can we make a transition to a stabilized and still prosperous relationship with the Earth and each other — is the story of our time.”

One way to get us to act with an intergenerational perspective is to enlarge the problem beyond climate — to make people understand that this is our generation’s freedom struggle. The abiding strategy of our parents’ generation was “containment” of communism in order to be free. The abiding strategy of our generation has to be “resilience.” We will only be free to live the lives we want if we make our cities, country and planet more resilient.

Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main story
Even if we can’t attribute any particular storm to climate change, by continually pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere we are “loading the dice” in ways that climate scientists are convinced will continue to raise average temperatures, melt more ice, raise sea levels, warm oceans and make “normal” droughts drier, heat waves hotter, rainstorms more violent and the most disruptive storms even more disruptive. It is crazy to keep loading those dice and making ourselves more vulnerable to disruptions that will make us less free to live the lives we want. How free will we be when paying the exorbitant cleanup costs of endless weather extremes?

Moreover, acting today as if climate change requires an urgent response — like replacing income and corporate taxes with a carbon tax, introducing a national renewable portfolio standard to constantly stimulate more renewable energy and raising the efficiency standards for every home, building and vehicle — actually makes us healthier, more prosperous and more resilient, even if climate change turns out to be overblown. We would end up with cleaner air and a tax structure that rewards more of what we want (work and investment) and disincentivizes what we don’t want (carbon pollution). We would be taking money away from the worst enemies of freedom on the planet, the world’s petro-dictators; and we would be incentivizing our industries to take the lead in manufacturing clean air, water and power systems, which will be in huge demand on a planet going from 7 billion to 9 billion people by 2050.

In short, by taking the climate threat seriously now, we’d make ourselves so much more economically, physically, environmentally and geopolitically resilient — and, therefore, more free.

What containment was for our parents’ generation — their strategy to fight for freedom against the biggest threat of their day — resiliency will be for our generation against the multiple threats of our day: climate change, petro-dictatorship and destruction of our environment and biodiversity. Let’s act so the next generation will want to honor us with a Memorial Day, the way we honor the sacrifice of previous generations.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"and we would be incentivizing our industries to take the lead in manufacturing clean air, water and power systems, which will be in huge demand on a planet going from 7 billion to 9 billion people by 2050."

This is the fly in the soup. Why stop at: from 7 to 9 billions. What about 9 to 12 or 15 billions?

When I arrived in Miami in the 70thies, West Kendall was the hot new place to live in the sticks. Today there is a continuous City from Palm Beach to Homestead, Atlantic to Everglades. Traveling in India in 1970 I experienced an incredible crowded country of about 480 Million. Today its rivaling China.
Besides curtailing and changing our consumptive and work ways, reproduction of the human species needs to be seriously addressed like yesterday.
Other wise people will be the new global invasive species, like pepper and malaluka tree's in Florida.

To bad the leaders and founders of the US did not incorporate the wisdom of the indigenous tribes in to law of the new Republic.
Like the concept that you can not "own" Air Water or Land, only be a caretaker of it!
Or the political consensus principal.
I don't know how humanity can be made to change. All I see is a gargantuan task ahead that should have been incubated 50 Years ago.

Anonymous said...

You would have to be absolutely nuts to vote for Scott or Crist. Why vote between 2 known liars? Florida, we are fortunate enough not to
be stuck picking one liar or the other this time. We actually have an
alternative. Take advantage of the opportunity. Adrian Wyllie deserves
my vote. He is a honest average Floridian just as you and I , that is
willing to stand up and do something for the interest of all of us here
in Florida. The other candidates both Republican and Democrat are owned
and controlled by special interest, like puppets and will lie to your
face to gain your vote, then continue the same old agenda that we
complain about year after year. Time to get off this merry-go-round,
election after election, thinking it will be any different. Take a
stand, vote for the candidate that loves this state and is willing to
take time out of his life, effort and money to SERVE the people of
Florida and stop voting for these ‘paid for’ career politicians that are
only out for money and fame and have zero interest in us Floridians.
Even if it’s just for honesty alone, vote for Adrian Wyllie instead of
the other two (Scott/Crist) which are proven liars. The choice is yours
and yours alone, if you want the same old corruption and slap in the
face, go ahead and vote for one of the two puppets (Scott/Crist) OR do
what is right for our (yours and your children’s) future and vote for
Adrian Wyllie. Support him by donating to his campaign, spreading the
word and contribute to the super brochure program which I think is very
powerful. Visit his website today.