Your friendly neighborhood Greenius has been waiting for awhile now to see which of the candidates for Henry Waxman’s 33rd District seat was going to step up environmentally. Today that person turned out to be Wendy Greuel.
My good friend, Dency Nelson, tells me Ted Lieu was already that guy and that Ted’s strong record speaks for itself. And it’s true that Ted has come out against fracking and is signing on to Holly Mitchell’s strong anti-fracking bill and reportedly has called “climate change” his number one priority. And yet…
I’m just not feeling Ted Lieu. I never have in the 21 years I’ve lived in Torrance, which is where Ted is from and started on his road to higher and higher office. I’ve never personally witnessed any passion out of Ted or felt that he had the fire in his belly on the environment or was any kind of climate action hero.
Maybe I’m wrong about Ted, like I was several years ago about then Manhattan Beach City Council Candidate, Wayne Powell, who I didn’t think was much of an environmentalist the first time I met him, but who has turned out to be the most reliable and thoughtful issue guy on the Manhattan Beach City Council.
Congressman Henry Waxman receiving environmental award at 2013 Earth Day Celebration, Manhattan Beach (c) Joe Galliani
When the one guy in all of Congress who understands the latest science on climate change best, the guy who has the most experience and knowledge of the environment and how to get life-changing legislation passed like the clean air act, the clean water act, the laws that forced our government to acknowledge AIDS, not to mention having kicked the tobacco industry’s ass – when that guy announces he’s sticking a fork in it and he’s done – then you have to ask yourself this question –
What does Henry Waxman know about what’s coming next and what our government intends to do about it that made him throw in the towel and quit?
If he thought he had passed the carbon tax or climate bill torch to someone else he was confident would bring it across the finish line he would have said so.
If he thought we were already in great shape and had the plans in place to prevent or respond to the worst of what’s coming he would have mentioned that too.
I don’t think it’s any coincidence at all that Waxman’s announcement came during the same week as the President’s decidedly weak on climate SOTU or the same week the State Department’s report on the XL pipeline’s impact on climate was released. There are no coincidences when a 20 term Congressmen picks his adios announcement day.
Congressman Waxman with 66 District Assemblyman Al Muratuschi, in a Tesla Roadster, contemplating how fast he could drive away from DC in one of these EVs. (c) Joe Galliani
I think Henry called “No mas!” because he knows the politics has terminally trumped the science and that there will be no adequate response on climate from our United States government – either from the Congress or from the White House which gave lip service to Waxman but not the kind of support he needed – the kind Obama is happy to approve if it means killing Osama Bin Laden, but not if it means killing his relationship with the fossil fuel industry.
Waxman knows that the Canadian tar sands are game over for the climate. He knows that fracking California just helps put the unneeded nail in the coffin and that our current national orgy of oil production is the climate’s Sodom and Gomorrah.
Waxman knows that the White House isn’t listening to Michael Mann or James Hanson – let alone Al Gore or Bill McKibben. The same way they wouldn’t listen to Steven Chu after they picked him to be their energy expert.
How many times do they have to piss on your leg while telling you it’s raining before you get it?
I think Henry got it and now he won’t be taking it any more.
If I’m wrong then you’ll see Waxman take the lead in the climate hawk community and come out swinging on climate the day his term ends. If that happens I’ll welcome it and work side by side with him. 350.org would be a good place for him to land. Plenty of heavy lifting left to do, Henry.
But personally I think at age 74 Henry’s had it. He doesn’t see any signs that we’re going to go Fossil Free and 100% Renewable Energy in time to prevent a 2+ degree rise in global temperatures and the destiny that brings with it. And that absence of hope comes from a career in DC and being able to smell the crazy juice being guzzled down by the corporate right and their shameless suckups and sycophants.
Fair enough, Henry. Go in peace. But your friendly neighborhood Greenuis still has plenty of juju and mojo to keep me going for whatever comes next. I’m in it till I see how it all ends.
Today is Earth Day 2012, a day filled with celebrations of the environment and all the things being done to try and improve it and make it more sustainable . You can go to events where you recycle your old paper tax records, your motor oil, your cellphone, computers and other electronics.
You can go to festivals and visit the booths of green nonprofits and solar energy companies, take part in composting workshops, learn about wildlife protectors and electric car companies. You might even get the chance to hug a person wearing a polar bear costume.
You can participate in beach cleanups, ride your bicycle with large groups in parades or march in protests against coal-fired power plants, polluters and planet-pummeling profiteers. You can even watch NBC-Universal TV and see how they turned their logo green and laugh at their funny PSAs about cutting your energy use or carbon footprint.
But what you cannot do at any Earth Day event – or any other day’s events – is change the sense of urgency of the U.S. government or the majority of our population about taking the immediate and dramatic steps necessary to avoid runaway climate change or the hell and high water that’s coming with it.
You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet. That’s What Happens When YOU’RE the Jackass driving 140 Miles An Hour Totally Toasted
Good old now dead Jackass, Ryan Dunn, never provided me with a single ounce of entertainment, but he has handily provided me with an apt metaphor for all his fellow Jackasses who keep talking smack and moron-level nonsense about global warming and climate change being a hoax.
So he’s got that going for him now.
If we’re not the climate equivalent of a Jackass who already has 23 tickets and still gets drunk off his ass and drives 140 miles an hour and crashes and burns well then, I don’t know who is.
According to court records, Dunn had at least 23 driving infractions over the last 13 years from six different counties, among them citations for speeding and careless driving, driving an unregistered vehicle, driving without a license, two parking-related transgressions and a criminal mischief-damage to property citation.
I took an unexpected trip in the WABAC Machine last week while I was on vacation with the lovely and talented Debra just outside Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Park here in America’s most beautiful state, California.
We like to rent a house in the town of Three Rivers when we go up there and we’ve always found different, very cool places to stay on Vacation Rental By Owner (vrbo.com). The house we stayed in this trip was perfect. It was a craftsman-built one-bedroom with every amenity. Private. Quiet. On 13 acres and just a 15 minute drive from the Park’s southern entrance.
There was a nice selection of books, especially guides to the flora and fauna of the High Sierras. We also found magazines (Utne Reader anyone?) CDs and Blueray DVD movies and documentaries.
I pulled an old issue of Sierra (the magazine of the Sierra Club) from July/August 1997. It was there because the cover story was “Among the Ancients, Giant Sequoias of the Sierra” Another article headline that made the cover, “Is Al Gore Our Great Green Hope?”
Wow… 14 years ago doesn’t seem like a million years ago, but damn if it wasn’t.
Vice President, Al Gore, talking about the need to take immediate action on global warming and failing to convince the President or any Republicans that he knew what the hell he was talking about.
Indeed as it turned out he knew far more than the President or any member of Congress did on the subject but none of them cared because Gore’s personality and persona didn’t work on TV. I’ve always said that it’s a curse to be truly intelligent in the USA and nobody in American politics ever fails when they attack the smartest person in the room for having too damn much intelligence and not enough common man “I want to have a beer with that dude” appeal.
Al Gore is one reason I like to believe in my own favorite version of the String Theory of particle physics – multiple alternative universes occurring simultaneously is the way I like to grok it.
If you’re worried about leaving our kids and grand kids a great big fat bill they’re going to have to pay for because of our multi-trillion dollar federal budget deficit, then stop worrying. Those numbers don’t mean squat and they won’t be a problem for our future generations. During my 53 years on the planet we’ve had deficits and we’ve had surpluses and it hasn’t meant a damn bit of difference to the kids or their parents.
It’s only made a difference to professional politicians who regularly wave the bloody shirt of deficits to try and scare the public and get them to spend less money on the poor, the sick, the disenfranchised and especially the environment while we simultaneously splurge like drunks in Vegas on phony wars, shameless subsidies for the dirty fossil fuel industries and tax breaks for rich people and big business.
But what do you expect from people in the political field whose business model is to constantly have their begging hand out while they ceaselessly hit you up for “campaign donations” so they can get elected and re-elected and then have their staff people do all the work while they themselves keep on fundraising. If you want to take financial advice from people of that ilk then you deserve to get conned and jacked.
But if you’d like a simple explanation of why you should just laugh at the fear of deficits then read on after the break for today’s enlightenment, courtesy of a commenter on Gawker.com
When I quit the Democratic party last summer the last straw for me was their total FAIL to take a stand and do anything about climate change. Watching their spineless jellyfish routine in the face of the unified madman approach the Republicans employed was cringe worthy to say the least.
The piss poor performance of California’s Assembly and Senate Democrats to deal with our state’s budget issues only made me feel more certain of my decision. And my personal experience working with certain Democrats at the local level helped convince me that they weren’t worthy of my loyalty or support any longer. They probably never were.
I was a registered Democrat from the time I turned 18 in 1975 until the summer of 2010. It was always an easy choice because the Republicans were so clearly the party of phonies, hypocrites and mean-spirited, self-centered, big business boot-licking, environment-hating pollution-lovers.
According to yesterday’s Environment and Energy Daily (subscription required): “Senator John Barrasso continued his campaign yesterday to stop the Obama administration from incorporating climate change into federal plans and policies, taking aim at an interagency report released in October that proposed ways for the federal government to respond to increased frequency of severe weather events and other effects of global warming.”
Barrasso, a rightwing whack job from Wyoming, introduced a bill (S. 228) that would bar the federal government from implementing any law or regulation related to climate change, whether it has to do with cutting industrial greenhouse gas emissions or not.
That might make some Bizarro Planet sense if Barrasso was just an ignorant dolt who didn’t have any education and knew nothing about science – but he can’t cop to that. Dude was a physician before becoming the Senator from one of America’s dirtiest coal producing states.
What kind of doctor looks at the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence of rapidly accelerating global warming and then decides we should pass a law keeping the feds from doing anything about it? I’m betting the kind who had his fingers crossed when he took the pledge to “first do no harm.” The kind who still probably recommends cigarette smoking to his patients to help them calm their nerves and improve their health.
The kind who doesn’t have the balls to just come out and say, “Look, my state is the number one coal producing state in the USA and I am not going to do anything to stop the world’s #1 source of climate changing greenhouse gases from doing whatever the hell they want to in order to keep their profits and payoffs spewing. If we’ve got to sacrifice the future generations to make that happen then so be it.”
The entire 2nd half of 2010 found the Greenius in a Mystery Spot where the rules of nature no longer applied....
Wow, March First already. Time do fly, don’t it? It has definitely been been awhile, hasn’t it? How you been?
Your beloved Greenius has been M.I.A. from this URL for all of 2011 – until now. Maybe you noticed, maybe you didn’t. Either way, I’m back and I’m returning with a new attitude, recharged energy and a fresh direction. I can only imagine how thrilled you must be.
After playing a more subdued, measured and politically correct role locally for the past two years I am soooo over that. I’m taking the gloves back off and cracking my knuckles. Consider me now unshackled, uncensored and unafraid. The perfect positioning for our What the Fuck? era.
I’d say “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” but hell I’m such an inherently nice guy at heart that no one would believe that… well, except maybe the gasholes who I’ll be metaphorically skewering like a razor sharp steel spike through a marinated lamb shish-kabob over burning hot coals. Doesn’t that sound like fun?
I put up with a lot of crap last year and some of it shook me to my core. I’ll be the first to admit it, I lost my mojo as 2010 wore on and it wasn’t pretty. Ennui and despair are a bitter and ugly cocktail to swallow, but that’s what was being served at the Green Bar for the last six months of 0h-ten and I drank enough to suffer a long hangover.
But I’m not hungover any more. And I’ve not only got my mojo back, I’m ready to have me some laughs. Seriously.
The Hermosa Beach Chamber of Commerce quietly parted ways with its executive director last week, telling local reporters only that it wanted to embark on “a new direction” that would include “more community outreach and more collaboration with local businesses and city government.”
Well I’ve got just the new direction the Chamber is looking for.
Your friendly neighborhood Greenius has been waiting for awhile now to see which of the candidates for Henry Waxman’s 33rd District seat was going to step up environmentally. Today that person turned out to be Wendy Greuel.
I’m just not feeling Ted Lieu. I never have in the 21 years I’ve lived in Torrance, which is where Ted is from and started on his road to higher and higher office. I’ve never personally witnessed any passion out of Ted or felt that he had the fire in his belly on the environment or was any kind of climate action hero. 
Creative Greenius 