Global Warming, Terrorism & Inconvenient Truths

In late September 2015 your blog host had the privilege to receive the benefit of three days of training in Miami sponsored by the Climate Reality Project, of which former Vice-President Al Gore is the Chairman.  The training created another core grouping of those who would earn the title of Climate Reality Leader.

The purpose of the Climate Reality Project is to raise awareness of the effects and consequences of climate change occasioned by the phenomenon of global warming.  The purpose is also to educate ordinary citizens as to what we can do to stem the tide, mitigate the processes and reverse the destructive momentum.

The training effectively empowers Climate Reality Leaders to present a slide show which updates information initially brought to light in Al Gore’s 2006 Academy Award winning (2007) documentary film, An Inconvenient Truth.  In making the film, Mr. Gore was the subject of an Intergovernmental Panel on climate change of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

The fact is that the global climate has begun to warm appreciably, especially over the past 150 years coinciding with the onset of the Industrial Revolution.  While it may be true that the sun heats the earth, it is also true that carbon heats man.  Hence, the term “carbon man” enters the vernacular.  Coal had been the preferred fossil fuel, prior to oil, and its use is widely still prevalent at the nation’s large electricity generating power plants.  The phenomenon of fossil fuel burning on such a mass scale (coal burning in combination with oil) is what scientists attribute to the concept of global warming.

Scientists are in near unanimous agreement (97%) that climate change is the result of carbon-based fossil fuel emissions as a by-product of energy production mainly from oil, coal and naturally gas.  The film makes the powerful case that stewardship of the environment is not merely a convenience but, rather, a moral issue.

The statistics are sobering.  The US comprises less than 5% of the world’s population, yet consumes about 25% of the world’s energy.  Each and every ordinary American citizen uses about 3 gallons of oil per day, twice as much as people in other industrialized nations.  America is a throw away society, with dismal recycling rates, producing roughly twice as much garbage as Europe.  Until most recently, perhaps, the political parties have seemed content to put the idea of economic growth on one side of the spectrum and environmental protection on the other, as if the two are somehow mutually exclusive.

But the wild card today remains oil.  The US consumes approximately 21 million barrels of oil per day, about 65% imported.  It is not an exaggeration then to say that US dependence on imported oil is a greater threat to national security than any threat from terrorism, real or perceived.  Perhaps at no time since the pre-Civil War South’s economic dependence on slavery can it again be said that the US reliance on oil is so acute as to constitute a life or death economic dependency.  The need is so alarming, so encompassing, and so pervasive, that any moral issue that may come up along the way, including human rights and/or the environment, can also be dismissed as secondary.  Which begs the question: Once the problem of terrorism is theoretically dispensed with, are we then “free” to heat the planet into oblivion?

The slide show presentation challenges audiences to ask themselves three basic yet provocative questions.  First, must we change?  Second, can we change?  And third, will we change?  As President Obama has stated, “We’re the first generation to feel the effects of climate change … and the last generation who will be able to do anything about it.”  As leaders get set to gather next week in Paris, France to attend the long awaited gathering on climate change, the stakes for our way of life --- including the survival of our planet as we know it --- can hardly seem greater.

-Michael D’Angelo

Our Great Unfinished Business

As civilizations become more inter-connected through the amazing technologies of the early 21^st century, the third great crisis in our nation’s history celebrates a significant birthday.  The great crisis of wealth disparity as a result of unequal access to the field of opportunity --- first identified by Theodore Roosevelt in 1910 --- is now unfortunately more than 100-years-old!

For the ordinary citizen, the American Dream is at risk like at no other time in American history.  In response, many ordinary citizens are reaching for the pull chord and the alarm bell to stop the train.  Many others, however, believe that such matters lie in the natural order of things --- as a necessary byproduct of an every man for himself mentality of Social Darwinism --- and that everything will work itself out in the end.

The sympathies of President Obama appear to rest in part with the former group.  On August 28, 2013 the president gave a speech on the 50^th anniversary of Dr. King’s march on Washington.  Almost five years into his presidential term, he reminded the ordinary citizen that his eye remains on the ball, as he strives to mold America to a purpose he boldly envisions:

In some ways, though, the securing of civil rights, voting rights, the eradication of legalized discrimination --- the very significance of these victories may have obscured a second goal of the march, for the men and women who gathered 50 years ago were not there in search of some abstract idea. They were there seeking jobs as well as justice -- not just the absence of oppression but the presence of economic opportunity. For what does it profit a man, Dr. King would ask, to sit at an integrated lunch counter if he can’t afford the meal?

This idea that --- that one’s liberty is linked to one’s livelihood, that the pursuit of happiness requires the dignity of work, the skills to find work, decent pay, some measure of material security -- this idea was not new.
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Dr. King explained that the goals of African-Americans were identical to working people of all races: decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old age security, health and welfare measures -- conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in the community.

What King was describing has been the dream of every American. It’s what’s lured for centuries new arrivals to our shores. And it’s along this second dimension of economic opportunity, the chance through honest toil to advance one’s station in life, that the goals of 50 years ago have fallen most short.

The president continued:

... the measure of progress for those who marched 50 years ago was not merely how many blacks had joined the ranks of millionaires; it was whether this country would admit all people who were willing to work hard, regardless of race, into the ranks of a middle-class life. The test was not and never has been whether the doors of opportunity are cracked a bit wider for a few. It was whether our economic system provides a fair shot for the many ... . To win that battle, to answer that call -- this remains our great unfinished business.

Why does our great unfinished business hearken back the name of Benjamin Franklin?  When he returned home after participating in the secret deliberations to draft the US Constitution, Franklin was said to have had an inquisitive exchange with a Philadelphia woman:

“What have you made for us, Dr. Franklin?” the woman had wanted to know.

“A republic, madam, if you can keep it,” was his infamous reply.
 

Franklin understood that democracy was not forever assured --- that active, informed citizenship would be required not only to keep but also to help it evolve.  As the jurist Louis Brandeis once observed, “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.”

The challenge of ordinary citizenship, then, is to promote progressive ideas towards the improvement of our democratic ideal, regardless of the politics, regardless of the political party.  That means solving the crisis of achieving meaningful equality of opportunity for all citizens --- and completing our nation's great unfinished business --- once and for all.

-Michael D’Angelo