The Patriot Act says au contraire. We are capable of remarkably fast running when we’re scared. (usually in the direction of daddy’s strong arms, aka authoritarianism, but we can work on that. National therapy and a wise leader saying the right things to people who feel victimized by liberal policies will help. If only we could elect a wise leader…)

I share your unexpressed desires for a rational, reality-driven electorate, but fear you are giving too much credit to the public, without much evidence as far as I can see. Unfortunately, because people are not very well educated and have extremely short memories and Attention Deficit Disorder triggered by TV and tabloids, Republican lies usually work. The vast majority of people will forget or minimize that Republicans/ corporations/ denialists worked against climate action because they will constantly be told something else. (I can’t wait to find out exactly what bizarre lies they will find that work.) Diabolically brilliant conservatives like Rove and Atwater using advertising and radio/TV talk shows will make it seem like the climate bill was their idea, or that the answer to climate change is nuclear, military and maybe, yes, a few bird-killing windmills, (the production and deployment of which, once they are controlled at a few chokepoints by Shell, BP and Exxon-Mobil, will suddenly and strangely not be the cause of bird deaths anymore and there will be a massive and effective PR campaign to say so. And oddly, it will probably never once mention bird deaths.) Corporate and neocon desires are not likely to change; they will still probably be interested in delaying and minimizing real climate/ ecology action and even more interested in controlling it, profiting from it and keeping it from threatening privatized corporate-crony capitalism—of the disaster capitalism variety among others.

Just an aside: “Pearl Harbor” is a metaphor and I include in it the likelihood that it will not be a single event but multiple ones. Neither was Pearl Harbor a single event; it was years of actions and opinions and news reports about Hitler and Germany and Italy as well as Japan. It was racism and impulses toward democracy and FDR’s years of preparation and propaganda, decades of built-up piled up fears, hatreds, sympathies and many other things. All things are multidetermined, that is, everything that happens has many causes. If it doesn’t have many causes (as well as enabling factors and a relative lack of preventing factors) it doesn’t happen. The Republicans have been brilliant at using that (unconsciously maybe but that’s not important). We have to get good at it—using the liberal equivalents of Terry Schiavo and gay marriage to win the Lakoffian struggle for the imagination of the US public. Making pleas for muddy compromises doesn’t do that. Standing up for principles and expressing our values and getting our symbols out does. The momentarily defeated but unbowed hero who in the end turns out to be right is a much more powerful force than the foot soldier who went along with the army but never got a chance to fire his rifle. We need to branch out, win that struggle in all other fields and then we can, with our majority of true (as opposed to blue dog) allies take rapid, bold and effective action to avoid the worst effects of climate catastrophe.

[JR: Probably just the upgrade.]

Hate to have to correct your correction, (well OK that’s not true I’m really rather enjoying it) but if I understand correctly, you’re saying it should be if it was. If it was something in the past it would be if it was but as it is, it ain’t. So it shouldn’t be was it should be were. As it were. Or rather, as it was.

Clear?

If you look up conditional tenses, it will be fascinating reading. And if you WERE to look up conditional tenses, it would be also. See?

The remark about grammar-checking was just a sad joke given the present state of blog comment software.

I’m looking forward to reading this book. Here’s an excerpt from a review:

Synopsis

In 1979, in an effort to right our national malaise, Jimmy Carter delivered a speech that risked his reputation and the future of the Democratic Party, changing the course of American politics for the next twenty-five years.
At a critical moment in Jimmy Carter’s presidency, he gave a speech that should have changed the country. Instead it led to his downfall and ushered in the rise of the conservative movement in America. In “What the Heck Are You Up To, Mr. President?” Kevin Mattson gives us a behind-the-scenes look at the weeks leading up to Carter’s “malaise” speech, a period of great upheaval in the United States: the energy crisis had resulted in mile-long gas lines, inciting suburban riots and violence…”

SUBURBAN RIOTS AND VIOLENCE

This was over having to wait in line for gas. It is truly scary to think what is going to happen when Americans have to wait in line for food, and water is rationed. Does anyone think that is going to be calm and peaceful?

I don’t know exactly what to think but I would really rather not wait for Pearl Harbor to happen before we support our Congress to vote yes for a climate policy.

[JR: ???]

A key example of this is the Clean Water Act ocean acidification rulemaking process, which will allow the administration to go after carbon emitters with hot tongs regardless of any Clean Air Act provision.

Another example relates to the bilateral agreements that the administration is currently pursuing. What if, e.g., a technology development and sharing agreement were struck with the Chinese that committed them to an accelerated schedule of emission reductions based on the availability and roll-out (in both countries) of advanced alternative energy technologies? In principle, it seems to me that Congress would have a hard time saying no to such a thing, especially of it were extended to pick up India, the EU and Russia. (And yeah, there would be a side-benefit of enhanced credibility at summits, but what’s not to like?)

Of course neither of these guarantee anything about the future, and as Bush taught us a serious implementation of even something as limited as W-M requires a willing administration. With such an administration, much more is possible, noting that it’s extremely unlikely that Obama hired Chu, Holdren and Lubchenco just to piss them off to the point of quitting.

[JR: If you are actively devoting a significant amount of your time and resources to killing this bill -- or plan to do so if it is not significantly strengthened -- then you are on the side of the conservatives and Breakthrough Institute. If you don't like the bill, I'd suggest focusing your efforts on state or local efforts aimed at climate action, rather than trying to stop those who are working to do what is possible at a national level.]

The deal with China is exactly what I assume people mean when they say ‘credibility in climate summits’ which I’ve read twice today alone. Not sure where but if I can find it again I’ll post it. The memory isn’t what it used to be, and it used to be mediocre. When China says ‘we’re the world’s leader in alternative energy’ and we say ‘well, we’re far richer than you, have produced far more GHG, aren’t so strong on solar, are destroying our own soil and forests all over the world (as they are, too, yes) and won’t let the EPA regulate pollution,’ what kind of deal can we drive them to? The way we will get such a deal without a moral stance shining like the city on the hill is by giving them concessions. Sort of like the EPA, offset and Ag concessions for ACES.

What I’d expect without a bill is exactly what I’d expect with one—more work, more education, more political action, and once Pearl Harbor happens, rapid action of the primed public. With this bill, once the Pearl Harbor event comes, Republicans can simply say ‘We’re on top of it. See, we already passed this dandy bill that takes care of everything. We don’t need to do any more.’

[JR: Uhh, no. If we have a bill passed and we have spent the years necessary to put in place regulations, oversight bodies, and the like -- then if we get multiple Pearl Harbors over a short period of time (one event won't do it) -- then we can strengthen the bill, which of coarse is precisely what happened with the Montréal protocol. Republicans can say whatever lies they want -- nobody is going to listen to them because they voted against the bill and will have been exposed as utterly wrong on the science. But if we don't have the bill and the framework in place "rapid action" is impossible. So I'm afraid your argument against the bill is in fact an argument for it.]

They can and will say that because I don’t think it’s the deniers who have the upper hand. They are, as polls show, a tiny percentage of the population. Yes, those of us who blog run into them everywhere, but I think that’s just a Random Denier-Argument Machine that spits out comments translated from various obscure languages onto many websites. That’s why there are so many that make so little sense. Congress is not stopped by deniers from doing more; it’s stopped by corporations who are given cover by (and give cover and money to) deniers; that gives cover to neocons, and they give cover to Democrats who can then be near-far right wing and still appear reasonable to most people.

I realize that because of all that there weren’t votes for a stronger bill now. That’s why I’m saying we have to wait, work, educate, vote people out of office, make this THE priority. What do you say to the hamstringing of the EPA? What do you say to Al Gore’s comment on soil carbon, intimately linked to organic matter in soil, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/ tol/ news/ environment/ article6658915.ece in the light of the Ag concession and the attacks (including Waxman’s other bill, 2749) on organic agriculture and homestead food production that will make it that much harder to turn land use around in the US and begin putting organic matter back into the soil?

I’m saying what I’ve been saying to deaf ears for years, that as long as progressives and people who understand the implications of climate catastrophe go meekly along with the Republican-Democrat consenses (?) on militarism, corporate hegemony and weak human rights protections there will be BAU. Only when progressives withdraw their consent from the Democratic party’s ever-increasing corporate rightism will we have a chance to change things. Will it work? I don’t know. I only know that what we’ve been doing isn’t working and hasn’t worked—for decades.

George Lakoff’s work is relevant here. Marie Louise von Franz’s Projection and Re-Collection in Jungian Psychology is, too. To change a people’s belief in a system it’s necessary to offer a strong opposition and a clear alternative. in addition to being ot enough in so-called ‘practical’ terms, ACES is too much of the same to do that. If we want to send messages to other countries maybe a series of good smaller bills would do it better than one bad omnibus. One on solar and wind, one on organics, etc. We could take tips from the Republicans. Name it right, make it seem unpatriotic to oppose it, bury the effective language details in the mountains of paper, say that because of the crisis there’s no time to read it, and then let it worm its way into the institutions it undermines. The Patriot Act I and II, No Child’s Behind Left, ‘Clear’ Skies, ‘Healthy’ Forests, Tort Deform, etc. can be our models.

The arguments I hear for the bill are absurd. ‘To give us “credibility” at summits’, is one example, as if half measures, vast concessions, near surrender and demonstrations of exactly how little say corporations and corporate-owned government will allow us child-like (in their view) tree huggers will do anything but destroy what little credibility the US could have had. After waking up from a terrible nightmare and beginning to put reality back in our lives we need to do better. Obama did almost nothing to help pass this: no education; no prime time address to the nation on a crisis more dire than any in history… we all know all this. I have come to be resigned to people being so depressed and despairing that they are unable and unwilling to ask for, demand and work for what we all need. But to criticize the few courageous and principled politicians who consistently stand up for what they believe is unacceptable.

We still must all work for stronger action, whether working, as I am, to get this bill voted down in the Senate (unless huge and unlikely improvements are made) or working for it in the hope that–I don’t know…What is it exactly you’re hoping will happen next? Will fairies appear and make it all OK with magic dust? Or will most people sit back believing the climate problem, which they don’t really understand to begin with, is taken care of while industry lawyers and lobbyists go to work weakening, avoiding and taking advantage of its mediocre provisions while institutionalizing its worst aspects and setting its limits (on EPA, for example) in concrete?

At the very least, understand and apologize to Kucinich, Stark and DeFazio, who you singled out for being better on your issues than you are.

[JR: No apology. They ain't bloggers. They have to make the real tough choices the rest of us don't. There is no plan B, as Gore said. If this bill dies, then with it dies any chance whatsoever of the nation and the world taking serious action on climate for a long time -- long enough to prove fatal to the necessary efforts to avert catastrophe.

The question is what are YOU expecting after the U.S. political system shows it is incapable of doing even this much, after the deniers show they have they upper hand?]
]

It is bizarre that so few people seem to care about climate. I think for many, it is just too frightening to confront.