Letter from Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) About Climate Change & Legislation

 Below is the email that I received from the office of Colorado Senator Michael Bennet on 24 February 2022: 

Dear Mr. Greenleaf,

Thank you for writing me regarding climate change. I appreciate hearing from you on this important issue.

Climate change is an urgent threat to our health, environment, national security, and economy. As extreme events and natural disasters like wildfires and drought become more frequent and severe, so do the effects that climate change has on our daily lives. Putting in place policies to cut climate pollution and increase resilience is not only critical to protecting Coloradans today, but for safeguarding our environment for future generations and capturing the economic opportunities of a 21^st century clean energy economy.

In 2019, I joined 10 of my Democratic colleagues to establish and serve on the Senate Special Committee on the Climate Crisis. After dozens of meetings and public hearings with experts, labor unions, mayors, environmental justice communities, and tribal and native leaders, the Committee issued its main report in August 2020 titled The Case for Climate Action: Building a Clean Economy for the American People. This report calls for action to reduce emissions to achieve 100% global net-zero emissions no later than 2050; stimulate economic growth by increasing federal spending on climate action; and create at least 10 million new jobs. For more information about the Committee’s report, click here. In November 2019, I also joined the Senate Climate Solutions Caucus, a bipartisan group of Senators committed to crafting and advancing bipartisan solutions to climate change. I believe that this is an essential step in creating durable solutions to climate change in the Senate.     

As your Senator, I have championed efforts to reduce climate pollution, promote renewable energy and energy efficiency, and protect against the impacts of climate change. This year, I reintroduced the Oil and Gas Bonding Reform and Orphaned Well Remediation Act and the PEOPLE Act to put people to work cleaning up abandoned oil and gas wells, strengthen bonding protections, and expand opportunities for local input into lease sales on public lands. I also reintroduced the CORE Act to bolster our outdoor recreation economy and protect over 400,000 acres of public lands in Colorado, as well as reintroducing legislation to restore protections to the Arctic Refuge Coastal Plain and prevent oil and gas exploration and development activities. Last Congress, I led a bipartisan bill to provide a tax credit to help families and businesses make investments that will make their homes and businesses safer and more resilient in the face of natural disasters like wildfires and flooding. I also support efforts to set a national goal of conserving 30% of U.S. lands and oceans by 2030. This ambitious plan is an important roadmap to protecting our wildlife and addressing the climate crisis. In the 2018 Senate Farm Bill, the Agriculture Committee included several of my amendments addressing conservation and soil health, forest management, and supporting rural clean energy. For a complete list of my priorities that were included in the 2018 Farm Bill, click here.

I am eager to work with the Biden Administration to rectify the previous Administration’s harmful actions to weaken and eliminate U.S. initiatives to combat climate change and to work together on new policies to cut climate pollution, increase resilience, and create jobs and economic opportunities, especially in communities where it is needed most. Shortly after taking office, President Biden advanced a number of important executive actions to tackle the climate crisis at home and abroad. This included rejoining the landmark Paris Climate Agreement, assembling world leaders at an international climate summit where he pledged to cut climate pollution in half by 2030 on a path to net-zero emissions by 2050, and establishing Interagency Working Groups focused on key issues like economic revitalization in coal communities. He has also begun working to restore scientific integrity and transparency at federal agencies, and advancing policies to build the infrastructure needed for a clean energy future, while creating good paying union jobs and prioritizing equity and environmental justice. Following the President’s executive actions, I joined my colleagues in a letter to the Administration to emphasize the importance of accurately evaluating the cost of carbon pollution to strengthen our interagency response to the climate crisis. In February 2021, I released a discussion draft of legislation to mitigate the effects of threats to our public health that climate change poses. In April, I joined my Senate colleagues to reverse the Trump Administration’s harmful rollback of rules to limit powerful methane emissions from the oil and gas industry. I spoke on the Senate floor about the need to sensible [sic] methane policy that will protect our health and environment, while creating jobs and spurring innovation.  

If you have any further questions or need assistance finding accurate information, my offices are here to help.

For more information about my priorities as a U.S. Senator, I invite you to visit my website at http://bennet.senate.gov/. Again, thank you for contacting me.

Sincerely,

Michael F. Bennet
United States Senator

My only gripe with this letter: he doesn't endorse a carbon fee & dividend scheme, which he's spoken of favorably on several occasions. I suspect that this has something to do with the political consequences associated with gas prices that have risen recently, & more particularly, further possible increases arising from the Russian war against Ukraine. But I remain cautiously optimistic. 

David Brooks on the Weakness of the Democracies

 

NYTIMES.COM

Opinion | The Dark Century

Why our era has grown so ugly.

This piece by David Brooks goes into the “must-read” category. I'm not sure that he nails it thoroughly, but it's an NYT editorial page piece, not a full-blown essay or book. I agree that he's on the right track or at least one of the right tracks. Here's the prime takeaway:

The events of the past few weeks have been fortifying. Joe Biden and the other world leaders have done an impressive job of rallying their collective resolve and pushing to keep Putin within his borders. But the problems of democracy and the liberal order can’t be solved from the top down. Today, across left and right, millions of Americans see U.S. efforts abroad as little more than imperialism, “endless wars” and domination. They don’t believe in the postwar project and refuse to provide popular support for it.

The real problem is in the seedbeds of democracy, the institutions that are supposed to mold a citizenry and make us qualified to practice democracy. To restore those seedbeds, we first have to relearn the wisdom of the founders: We are not as virtuous as we think we are. Americans are no better than anyone else. Democracy is not natural; it is an artificial accomplishment that takes enormous work.

Then we need to fortify the institutions that are supposed to teach the democratic skills: how to weigh evidence and commit to truth; how to correct for your own partisan blinders and learn to doubt your own opinions; how to respect people you disagree with; how to avoid catastrophism, conspiracy and apocalyptic thinking; how to avoid supporting demagogues; how to craft complex compromises.

Democrats are not born; they are made. If the 21st century is to get brighter as it goes along, we have to get a lot better at making them. We don’t only have to worry about the people tearing down democracy. We have to worry about who is building it up.

"Breaking Boundaries: The Science of Our Planet" (2021): My Reflections

YOUTUBE.COM

Breaking Boundaries: The Science of Our Planet | Official Trailer | Netflix

Watch this movie and share your reaction. Are you scared? Indifferent? Angry? Baffled? This documentary doesn't intend to crush hope, not by any means. But we humans have infected our planet with a severe cancer. We are the agents, the source of the disease. Yet, we, too, can act as physicians. We can heal ourselves. But why don't we? Why are we as a species so irrational? Why are we so myopic (short-sighted)? It's not from ignorance, except perhaps to the extent that we can rightfully label our ignorance as self-deception. The question is no longer what is happening, or what will happen (within broad parameters), but what are we going to do about it? Action, meaningful action, requires political action at every level, from the local to the planetary. So far, we've done a poor job of it. We think that we as a species are immortal, that our way of life can't collapse.

Me? I'm baffled and angry. Baffled that we're so irrational, both actively (lying to ourselves & others) and passively in the sense that we're letting our ourselves be governed by demons of our own making. And I'm angry at those who perpetuate the lies, the ignorance, and the irrationality.

Can someone based on sound evidence and arguments point me in another direction? If so, please do. I'd like to think more highly of my species.

Thoughts 14 Feb. 2022

 

Apologies to the Grandchildren

William Ophuls

Would a panel of the wise—Confucius, Gautama Buddha, Jesus of Nazareth, Lao Tzu, Rumi, and Socrates—conceivably approve of our current way of life?

Apologies to the Grandchildren

William Ophuls

[W]e have a wide latitude of choice within the limits set by the flow of solar energy. It is possible in principle to create an agricultural civilization founded on yeoman farmers instead of exploited peasants or slaves—that is, the kind of small-hold, egalitarian, salt-of-the-earth farming society that Thomas Jefferson envisioned for the United States. I have imagined such an agrarian civilization, which I call “Bali with electronics.” In short, we can have benign and culturally rich societies without energy slavery. True, these societies may not offer the kinds of permissive freedoms that many enjoy today; individuals will have to find their freedom within the prevailing moral framework, not apart from it. But in return they will get back the autonomy, agency, and integrity that were lost in societies given over to distraction and consumption.

The Matter With Things

Iain McGilchrist

‘But aren’t you dichotomising?’ I have not invented that hateful thing, a dichotomy. Some people are just against what they call ‘dichotomising’, feeling it is ‘simplistic’. But such a view is itself simplistic. There are, after all, different types of dichotomies. Some are inevitable, such as between plants and animals – even though there exist microscopic life forms that defy such categorisation. Some are entirely spurious. Elsewhere I have quoted whoever it was who said that ‘there are two types of people in this world: those who divide the world into two types of people, and those who don’t’. Dichotomising has its problems.

Shutdown

Adam Tooze

Given the scale of the fiscal interventions in 2020, if the political will had been there, it would not have been unreasonable to talk about a new or at least a renewed social contract. There were elements in the giant flow of money that were undoubtedly novel.

Encyclical on Climate Change and Inequality

Pope Francis

For “to commit a crime against the natural world is a sin against ourselves and a sin against God.”

The Wedge

Scott Carney

The three main building blocks of human experience are time, emotion and sensation. The brain must account for all three factors in order to encode information from the outside world.

William Walker Atkinson Premium 7 Book Collection

WILLIAM WALKER ATKINSON

The muscles, bones, ligaments, feet, hands and nerves, etc., are agents for carrying out the mandates of the mind.

Powerful Hypnosis - Revealing Confessions of a  Rogue Hypnotist

The Rogue Hypnotist

If someone firmly believes ‘I am a smoker,’ they will not be able to stop smoking. If they lack self-belief that they can stop smoking, they may or may not succeed in the long term.

Thoughts 11 Feb. 2022

 

The Matter With Things

Iain McGilchrist

[T]here are emergent phenomena from the whole interconnected system at the hemisphere level, and neuroscience increasingly recognises that we should think in terms of complex widespread networks.

The Matter With Things

Iain McGilchrist

The hemispheres are massively more intraconnected within themselves than they are connected to one another. So, as in life, science needs both narrow focus and broad vision.

The Matter With Things

Iain McGilchrist

This book is about what goes on at a higher level than that of intrahemispheric regions alone – though a very significant intrahemispheric distinction that will emerge regards the inhibitory effect of the frontal region of each hemisphere on its own posterior cortex. Nonetheless, this should not be thought of in purely antagonistic terms, but in dialectical terms, whereby something new is brought about through their joint action.

Apologies to the Grandchildren

William Ophuls

[T]oday’s world population of 7.6 billion is far too large to be supported by the flow of solar energy, so a benign future depends upon a radical reduction in numbers. In addition, agrarian civilizations are no paradise.

Apologies to the Grandchildren

William Ophuls

Jean-Jacques Rousseau pinpointed the fundamental contradiction of a life devoted to consumption by saying, ”For the impulse of appetite alone is slavery, and obedience to the law one has prescribed for oneself is freedom.”

Doom

Niall Ferguson

The disaster [Chernobyl] had both active and latent causes, some of which were undoubtedly of a uniquely Soviet nature. The reactor’s operators took excessive risks in a way that exemplified the “We can do it no matter what” mentality instilled by Soviet propaganda since 1917, and especially in the late Stalin and Khrushchev eras, the formative years of the key actors. The design flaws of the reactor itself, and the operators’ unawareness of its potential instability, were also consequences of the peculiar political economy of the planned economy. Yet in some respects, as we shall see, Chernobyl could have happened anywhere.

Evolutionaries

Carter Phipps

Too much chaos doesn’t lead to higher order, just more chaos and disorder.

The Life of the Mind

Hannah Arendt 

If, as I suggested before, the ability to tell right from wrong should turn out to have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to “demand” its exercise from every sane person, no matter how erudite or ignorant, intelligent or stupid, he may happen to be.

Thoughts 11 Feb. 2022

 

Apologies to the Grandchildren

William Ophuls

We are hurtling toward a day of ecological reckoning. We should have acted many years ago to contain the damage and build a bridge to a different kind of civilization. Now we are faced with an increased population, worse pollution, dwindling resources, progressive biological destruction, much greater complexity, compounding debt, and enormous inertia in the system—a nexus of problems that have no separate solutions, only an aggregate solution requiring a total revolution in our way of life.

Apologies to the Grandchildren

William Ophuls

As generals have learned, even the best war plans rarely survive first contact with the enemy, but having planned is essential, because it forces you to imagine different scenarios and to prepare for the worst. In other words, planning is an inoculation against stupefaction and panic, so when things do not go according to plan, you are less likely to lose your head and quicker to make the necessary adjustments.

Immoderate Greatness

William Ophuls

Gibbon: it was “the loss of freedom, of virtue, and of honour,” not the barbarian invasions, that doomed the [Roman] empire of the West.

The Matter With Things

Iain McGilchrist

I frequently emphasise that both hemispheres are involved in absolutely everything we do. It cannot, however, be an argument against hemisphere differences.

The Matter With Things

Iain McGilchrist

[T]here are emergent phenomena from the whole interconnected system at the hemisphere level, and neuroscience increasingly recognises that we should think in terms of complex widespread networks.

Evolutionaries

Carter Phipps

[James] Fowler’s work examines religion, in the broadest sense of that complex term, as the way in which we think about and relate to the ultimate nature of existence. Under that definition, even many forms of modern atheism and naturalism are really better classified as modernist forms of religious expression (Stage Four in Fowler’s construction). After all, they often represent strong conclusions about the ultimate nature of being upon which whole systems of cultural rules, norms, and ethics are constructed.

Last Best Hope

George Packer

It will be a long time before we know whether the protests of 2020 can come anywhere close to fulfilling their ambitions—not just to change policing and criminal justice in America, but also to bring full equality to Black Americans. Because structures of oppression are much too big for any one of us to budge, in a sense white people are, as usual, off the hook. Systemic criticism produces gestural politics. During the pandemic the San Francisco Board of Education took on the project of changing the names of Abraham Lincoln High School, Franklin D. Roosevelt Middle School, and dozens of other “problematically” named schools, while keeping isolated and demoralized children out of all schools, whatever their names. Mastheads and tables of contents changed, pictures and statues were taken down, glass ceilings shattered, but no one honestly expected to do much about the material conditions of misery.

Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954

Hannah Arendt

Before Montesquieu’s discovery, the only principle of change connected with forms of government was change for the worse, the perversion that would transform an aristocracy (the government of the best) into an oligarchy (the government of a clique for the interest of the clique), or overturn a democracy that had degenerated into ochlocracy (mob rule) into tyranny.

Science and the Modern World

Alfred North Whitehead

The doctrine which I am maintaining is that the whole concept of materialism only applies to very abstract entities, the products of logical discernment. The concrete enduring entities are organisms, so that the plan of the whole influences the very characters of the various subordinate organisms which enter into it.

The Great Leveler

Walter Scheidel

Four different kinds of violent ruptures have flattened inequality: mass mobilization warfare, transformative revolution, state failure, and lethal pandemics.