http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/why-arent-politicians-listening-to-joe-romm-about-climate-change/263432/
Loving's comment: I'm sorry. Yes, that congress is not listening to 1 man, this is such a
break with US and world history history of massive change! Remember
how they listened to 1 woman and gave women the right to vote? Remember
how they listened to 1 man and passed civil rights legislation?
Remember how it was the voice of 1 man that ended the Vietnam War?
Remember how the voice of 1 man got rid of Mubarak in Egypt? Remember?
Oh. Never mind.
Romm is like Captain Ahab with this maniacal
quest to bring congress to heal, single handedly. Tragedy. He, and the
rest of the intelligencia on the left are vastly more valuable to the
fossil fuel industry than the industry's own lobbyists. The oil shills
deny the science. Romm and the the rest of the climate club deny not
one, but three things:
1. The true human suffering already underway
and impending. Oh, they write ad-nauseum of the impending horrors, but
you can see from their personal non-commitment, non-risk... that it is
all abstract for them, remote, removed, academic; with the possible
exception of Hansen who has put skin in the game. The rest of the
climate club, their own kids will be 'fine,' and you can see that in the
seemingly infinite lipservice spit-balls they hurl for decades now at
an industry after $20-80 trillion in fossil fuel reserves.
2. They
deny that there are only two means of bringing mass change - violence
and unviolent action, and that the core, the very stuff of unviolent
action is voluntary personal suffering. Oh yes, he, McKibben, and the
rest of the climate club say, NO, we can do this on the cheap; Few if
any need to suffer. As I said, the deniers on the right deny the Truth
of Science; the deniers on the left deny the Truth of unviolent
historical change. Gandhi, MLK Jr faced and embraced the essence of
unviolent action. Romm, McKibben, et al, make a tidy, self-righteous
living, denying it.
3. Romm and the rest of the climate club deny personal responsibility to meaningfully act.
Unlike
the fossil fuel lobby, Romm flies under the radar of well intended
folks, confuses the well intended as the right could never do, and costs
the fossil fuel industry not a cent.
That Romm's complicity is something he is in psychological denial about makes it no less deadly.
Hmmm.
Einstein too was a physicist. 'The test of insanity is doing the same
thing over and over [frenetic blogging, blaming of Washington,
free-lunch 'demonstrations' in Romm's case for decades now]
and
expecting different results.'
