Dear Friends,
This week: Charles, Kathy and Ed tackle climate, abortion, taxes, education and … woodlice!
Last week, US climate envoy, John Kerry, said, “I am told by scientists that 50% of the reductions we have to make to get to net zero are going to come from technologies that we don’t yet have.”
In other words, if I may paraphrase, “We can’t get too aggressive with our climate response because there’s still a bunch of new stuff we haven’t yet invented.”
In Grinnell, Iowa, on November 11, 2019, Ed Fallon and Kathy Byrnes asked Joe Biden pointblank for a statement opposing the expansion of DAPL. Click the image to watch the exchange.
Predictably, Kerry’s remark irked a few prominent activists and scientists.
Greta Thunberg tweeted, “Great news! I spoke to Harry Potter and he said he will team up with Gandalf, Sherlock Holmes & The Avengers and get started right away!”
Less colorfully, climate scientist Michael Mann lamented what he described as “pernicious technophilia,” which he blames on Bill Gates.
(Good to see Gates getting flack from both sides of the political spectrum — though I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the far right’s assertion that Gates caused the COVID-19 pandemic.)
On the flip side of the scientific community’s response to Kerry’s remark, Jason Bordoff, who heads a Columbia University energy think tank, said people are “way overreacting.” Maybe. I don’t know. I’m not a scientist.
But I am, or at least I was, a politician (now in recovery), and I know a political response when I see one. I’m going with Thunberg and Mann.
I hope I’m wrong, but the Biden administration seems to be backpedaling on aggressive climate action. Perhaps Kerry’s remark is part of an effort to scale back public expectations for the WWII-scale mobilization against climate change that more and more people have come to accept as essential to human survival.
I’m certainly willing to give Biden a little more time to show his true climate colors. But I’m nervous.
Why? Because sometimes you get to see the big picture by studying little things. Not that the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) is small potatoes, but Biden clearly, repeatedly, and emphatically stated his opposition to DAPL during the campaign in 2019.
Yet Biden refuses to stop the proposed expansion of DAPL. Work on DAPL’s pumping station near Cambridge, Iowa, is happening NOW. Once that work is finished, DAPL can double the flow of oil — doubling the damage to our climate and increasing the risk to our land and water.
So, yeah, I’m nervous — and skeptical, because if President Biden was telling the truth in 2019, he should have stepped in by now to stop this expansion. It can still be stopped, but time is running out, and Biden shows no sign of weighing in.
I don’t like being lied to, and from where I stand now, it looks like Joe Biden lied about DAPL. On November 11, 2019, standing just two feet away, Biden said to me and Kathy, “Take my word. I’ve never broken my word. I’ve been opposed to the pipeline to begin with.” Check out the video. Honestly, I have no idea why it’s never gone viral.
Well, it looks like he’s broken his word. A thin window of opportunity remains, but time’s running out — both to stop the DAPL expansion and to stop climate change from reaching the point of no return.
ACTION ALERT: Call, write, or email President Biden today. Remind him of his promise to oppose expansion of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Tell him to shut it down NOW. (Use this link.)
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HERE’S THIS WEEK’S PODCAST and the complete program line-up:
(01:35) Questioning Biden’s commitment to climate action
(13:06) Abortion debate heats up at state and federal level
(26:05) Understanding capital gains taxation
(38:36) Public education under attack
(51:21) Woodlice and loopers and squirrels, oh my!
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Ed Fallon