Warming up to Kerry

A Personal Opinion

By Will Foreman

≥As July [1997] was drawing to a closeäI went on with the rest of my job, asserting that, contrary to the dominant opinion in Congress, global warming was a reality and that we had to cut our greenhouse gas emissionsä≤

U.S. President Bill Clinton in ≥My Life,≤ 2004

≥On climate change, we need to build on Kyotoä≤

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, September 2002

≥Our house is burning down and weπre blind to itäWe cannot say that we did not know! Climate warming is still reversible. Heavy would be the responsibility of those who refused to fight it.≤

French President Jacques Chirac, September 2002

≥Climate change is nothing less than a form of slow death...≤

President of the Federated States of Micronesia, Leo Falcam

How often we have heard the clichÈ: ≥This is the most important election in our nationπs history!≤ Yet the current situation compels me to argue that the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election may actually be the most important election in world history. Why? Because the human race, led by the United States, is in the process of destroying its own life-support system, and if we want to prevent that from happening we do not have one more election cycle to waste.

George W. Bush, by his actions, is waging a war not just against terrorism (a phenomenon that he does not understand). He is waging war against the terra firma itself! Further, he has mounted an assault against science and the information feedback loops upon which democratic societies depend for self-correction. If we have another four years of his shortsighted administration, the damage to civilization and the biosphere may well become irreversible.

Make no mistake: the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election pits the coal-and-oil industries with their political allies, Bush and Cheney, against the rest of us. The coal-and-oil interests that fund the Bush campaign do not want you to know that we, 4.6% of the worldπs people, are producing over 25% of the worldπs greenhouse gases several of which will continue to accumulate in the atmosphere for decades even if we could stop producing them now. They do not want Americans to be aware of the Bush administrationπs actions on the environment.

Nor, for that matter, does the Bush team want us to know about Bushπs incompetence in not preventing 9/11—even after 12 separate warnings by U.S. intelligence agencies. They do not want us to be aware of his frequent distortions of truth or that his arrogance in international affairs, most notably in his canceling of the Kyoto Agreement, is running the United States into the ground even as it boosts the short-term profits of his corporate allies.

The corporate-owned mass media, of course, are the ≥secret≤ weapons of the coal-and-oil cabal. Though mass media throughout the rest of the world carry frequent references to the mounting dangers of global warming, the U.S. media, not wishing to offend their corporate advertisers, fail generally to mention a connection even between the warming waters of the South Atlantic and the increasing frequency and intensity of hurricanes in Florida.

The U.S. mass media remain quite successful in obfuscating the issue of global warming. Though an overwhelming majority of earth scientists supported the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change when it concluded that the earthπs temperature is rising faster than previously thought, the majority of Americans remain in muddled denial about the urgent necessity for solutions—even though they are increasingly aware of the problems.

To the undereducated American public these assertions may well appear radical. By Republican Party standards of Orwellian gobbledygook they are ≥extremist and hate-filled,≤ but I believe that by any reasonable standard the assertions made in this essay are factual, independently verifiable, and supportable by both hard scientific evidence and global public opinion.

On the assertions that human beings are destroying the human habitat and that much of the rest of the world knows it, witness the following paragraph from the ≥World Scientistsπ Warning to Humanity.≤ This warning, incidentally, was signed as long ago as 1993 by more than 1,500 scientists, including 102 Nobel Laureates, from 70 different countries— before studies were done that revealed the extent of overshoot that was already occurring:

≥Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about.≤

The issue that should be foremost in everyone's mind during the 2004 U.S. Presidential Elections is not terrorism. It is the fact that the Earth's carrying capacity, at present material standards of living, is already exceeded by approximately 20 per cent. In other words, it would take about 1.2 Earths to sustain our current lifestyles indefinitely, and that number is getting worse year by year. The implications of this fact, coupled with the tendency for nations, races, and religions to try to out-produce and out-populate one another, are enormous.  

The overexploitation of natural resources and the pollution of the biosphere subsume and exacerbate the problems of terrorism, dictatorship, and corrupted democracy, yet the average American is preoccupied with the media view of "the war on terrorism" as a military contest and remains almost completely unaware of the urgency of the environmental problem.  Action to address climate change, Bush has told us, "would not be good for American business," and the corporate-owned media are only too happy to fall right into line.

On Iraq

Kerryπs position on Iraq is, in my view, the correct one. A coalition of democratic countries supported by the U.N. should have pressed further to disarm Iraq peacefully but ultimately had to go in and remove Saddam from power. Under Bushπs leadership, however, virtually everything was done wrong.

When Bush renounced international treaty after treaty early in his presidency, he created a climate of world opinion that made it highly unlikely that the U.S. would gain support for any aggressive foreign policy. Though 9/11 created instant sympathy for the people of the U.S., it was still difficult for any nation with a rational foreign policy to work with the Bush team. The reasons are clear enough. Bush had withdrawn from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty and from the protocol for strengthening the 1972 Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention. He had opposed the U.N. Agreement to Curb the Flow of Illicit Small Arms, the International Criminal Court Treaty, and the Land Mine Treaty. He had refused to discuss economic espionage issues with the EU. He refused to join 123 other nations in pledging to ban anti-personnel bombs. He had withdrawn from the International Conference on Racism. He had opposed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and onäand onä

On the eve of the Iraq war, then, international support for anything the U.S. might do was at a nadir. Sadly, however, the rise of religious terrorism around the world is not due simply to Bushπs arrogant policies toward other nations any more than the Ghost Dance skirmishes were due solely to the genocidal polices practiced against Native Americans by European Americans. Religious extremism has itπs own internal dynamic that is based on magical thinking and stems from its adherence to ancient texts and old ways of life that are increasingly at odds with the evolution of human societies.

Out of empathy for the Iraqi people and other oppressed people in Arab lands, and out of concern that closed, dictatorial regimes with the material resources to develop weapons of mass destruction represent a grave threat to humanity, I supported the invasion of Iraq—preferably by U.N. forces but regretfully acceptable by the U.S. alone. Putting an end to the extensive Iraqi torture chambers and mass graves, together with the subsequent rehydration of the vast Iraqi marshlands near Basra, was for me a sufficient vindication for military intervention.

I do not, however, support the mismanaged, abusive, and apparently indefinite occupation of Iraq that has now resulted in an estimated 10-20,000 civilian deaths. True, Saddamπs regime was responsible for over a million civilian deaths and, according to Human Rights Watch, was killing its real or imagined opponents at the rate of about a thousand per month, but we are now jointly responsible with the terrorists for the lack of security that has resulted in an explosion of terrorist recruitment and an almost impossible situation for secular, democracy-minded civilians—and especially for women—in Iraq.

Democratization of tyrannous regimes, by force if necessary to prevent torture, genocide, international terrorism, or a buildup of weapons of mass destruction is a worthy goal that supercedes the sanctity of those national boundaries behind which tyrants hide. The global pro-democratic community should support this principle, and it should be implemented only with the support of that community. As I have pointed out in previous essays, and as Kerry has advocated, it must also be done with an overwhelming show of force, thorough planning for all exigencies, a detailed understanding of the culture and mindset of the people, and a considerable amount of advance preparation for a new democratic infrastructure. It must then be followed by the fastest possible exit and little expectation of applause.

The Bush administration, with its anti-democratic ideological tendencies, has failed in all these regards. Sadly, therefore, it is now likely that many lives were wasted in a misguided attempt to introduce ≥democracy≤ to a culture that may no longer be receptive even to authentic democracy, though it may have been before the gross miscalculations of the Bush-league team.

Back at Home

Meanwhile, the corporate-owned mass media focus on election

issues, i.e., on terrorism, in a manner that favors their preferred candidate. That means an overdose of indirect, oversimplified, short-term and/or sensationalized news stories that make their candidate look desirable. Invariably, it will also mean that our attention will be diverted away from much-needed changes such as those that address environmental degradation, inequities in the electoral process itself, or Bushπs shift of the tax burden from his wealthy base to the middle class.

While the Bush campaign team ≥stays on message,≤ i.e., manages the perceptions of millions of Americans, we will hear much about terrorism and little about the importance of the environment. To put these issues in a better perspective, therefore, letπs look at some more facts. The numbers of people around the world who have died from terrorist attacks in the past ten years probably do not exceed 200,000. These deaths are serious, tragic, and ultimately due to a belief by many terrorists in a hereafter that will reward them because they think they are doing ≥what god wants≤ them to do. Despite their ongoing efforts, when compared to the much larger amounts of death and destruction caused by global warming, terrorism is the lesser threat.

I commend to you the following evidence:

In July 1995, a heat wave in Chicago caused 514 heat-related deaths and 3300 excess emergency admissions.

In the summer of 2003, 10,000 people in France alone, and about 35 thousand Europeans altogether, died heat-related deaths.

The United Nations has estimated that climate-related economic costs amounted to about $60 billion that year. They predicted that figure would reach $160 billion per year in the first decade of the third millennium and about $300 billion per year in the decade after that.

The World Health Organization reports that the number of human deaths related to climate change and extreme weather events exceeded 600,000 in each of the last two decades of the 20th century.

They project several hundred million additional people will die if global temperatures rise by 2-3∞C--about the average scenario predicted for this century--but that would just be from malaria alone. Yet the human race is actually doing practically nothing to prevent global warming.

The Bush presidency, with its self-serving energy plans and its irrational attacks against science, has so wrecked U.S. domestic and international policy that a continuous war against terrorism may be his only viable strategy for re-election. That, indeed, is what the Bush policy in Iraq seems designed to produce. Their phony last minute campaign promises to move toward more social equality certainly fail to convince even the most naÔve of citizen participants.

Kerryπs Fight Against Global Warming

In sharp contrast to Bush and his coal-and-oil industry campaign contributors, John Kerry has consistently voted on the side of environmental interests. He first met his wife, Theresa, when they both attended the Rio Earth Summit in 1991. In his 2003 book, A Call to Service: My Vision for a Better America, Kerry urged a strong defense of the environment. His strategy for achieving energy independence begins with ≥a declaration of independence from oil.≤ He then detailed some of the reasons for his frustration with Bushπs policy on the environment:

≥äthe president unilaterally repudiated the Kyoto Protocol, calling it ådead on arrival,π and indicated no interest in an alternative process for reopening negotiations.

≥His remarks were instantly reported by media around the world, their underlying contempt all too clear even when translated into dozens of languages. Their impact came back to haunt us when we tried to build a åcoalition of the willingπ to help us deal with Saddam Hussein. The administration failed to see that Kyoto was not merely a standard diplomatic agreement but an ongoing process that represented the resolve of 160 nations that had worked together for ten years, a group that was convened and led by the United States. It was a good-faith effort that the president simply dismissed, with no effort to mend it, seek compromise, or even discuss it.

≥Shocked as I was at the time, I wasnπt yet aware that the new administration had bought into the right-wing theory that global warming was a hoax perpetrated by radical tree huggers who wanted to use the issue as a way to regulate U.S. businesses and slow growth. As part of its strategy to accommodate the Republican Partyπs conservative base, the administration ignored the increasingly solid scientific consensus that greenhouse gas emissions (especially the carbon dioxide released by power plants and automobiles) were contributing significantly to climate changes that could eventually wreak havoc on our weather, our coastlines, our water and food supplies, and on our general quality of life.

≥At one point after his unilateral abandonment of the Kyoto process, the president announced that he would commission a study by the National Academy of Science to assess the evidence for global climate change and its link to greenhouse gas emissions. When the NAS promptly came back with a study that confirmed what most of us already knew along with an expression of urgency about the need for immediate action, the president publicly rejected their conclusions as the work of ≥the bureaucracy.≤ äInstead, he cast his lot with the know-nothings and the do-nothings whose agendas coincided with the interests of Americaπs and the worldπs worst pollutersä≤

In Sum

There are a good many reasons for independent thinkers to make this election the most important of their lives—and to choose Kerry over Bush. In addition to those mentioned above, Bush has worsened the gap between rich and poor at home and abroad, promoted despicable and self-serving trade policies that have alienated people around the globe, blocked desperately-needed health care reform, appointed fundamentalist and right-wing judges, blocked global progress on population problems and reproductive health, promoted secrecy in government, attempted to control the free flow of scientific knowledge, plundered the nationπs treasury with his self-serving tax reductions combined with wasteful subsidizing of the coal-and-oil industry and other special interests, destroyed generations of progress in environmental and civil rights protections, promoted the spread of automatic firearms in the society that already has the highest murder and mortality rates in the industrialized world, and dangerously blurred the boundaries between the secular functions of government and religion. And on, and on, and onä

What can we do?

Check out the ≥Ten Critical Issues in Modern Democracy≤ section at http://www.cedemocracy.org. You can also read any of the following works, join an organization that has a long-term strategy for progress in environment policy, campaign finance reform, and authentic democratization at local, national, and global levels—and get out the vote for John Kerry!

References

Kerry, John ≥A Call to Service: My Vision for a Better America,≤ Viking Press, 2003.

Meadows, Donella; Randers, Jorgen; and Meadows, Dennis ≥Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update,≤ Chelsea Green Publishing Co., 2004.

Devine, Robert S. ≥Bush Versus the Environment,≤ Anchor Books, 2004.

Pope, Carl and Rauber, Paul ≥Strategic Ignorance: Why the Bush Administration is Recklessly Destroying a Century of Environmental Progress,≤ Sierra Club Books, 2004.

Ehrlich, Paul and Ehrlich, Anne ≥One with Nineveh: Politics, Consumption and the Human Future,≤ Island Press, 2004.

Kennedy, Jr., Robert F. ≥Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy,≤ HarperCollins, 2004.

Gelbspan, Ross ≥Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists, and Activists Have Fueled the Climate Crisis—and What We Can Do to Avert Disaster,≤ Basic Books, 2004.

The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Authorized Edition, W.W. Norton & Co., 2004

NOW with Bill Moyers, National Educational Television, September 10, 2004.