Today Is Barely In Time

With an atmosphere of muted hysteria prevailing after the death of a few star ‘personalities’, I am more aware than usual of our neglect of the issues that are urgent, and will be eclipsed. Today the congress has the opportunity to make vital decisions on the future of the planet.

The energy bill that is at the forefront gives our legislative branch the opportunity and duty, along with the hazards, of giving life to alternative energy production for our business community.

From the malfeasance of the oil companies to date, we can easily see how poor performance can endanger the entire world. In its attempts to counter scientific observation of climate change with its self-centered created counter-arguments, Big Oil has shown a profit motive set against the value and quality of life. Such juxtaposition is overwhelming in its indifference to life, and its enormity.

The influence of the lobby that promotes an interest in fossil fuels so dangerous to civilization can only be a detriment to negotiations. Sadly, it will be a major influence, particularly on the salacious legislators who have embraced it as their abiding interest. Under the influence of that lobby, some members of Congress will fight for their BFFs against the world and its life forms.

The Waxman-Markey climate change bill is now scheduled for a vote in the House by the end of the week, and online there has been much gnashing of teeth andpressing of keyboards over the last-minute deals Waxman and Markey have cut in hopes of securing passage.

Of course, the last-minute dealing is all Democrat-to-Democrat action. The Republicans see the whole thing as fatally flawed. “Waxman-Markey is a 1201-page economic suicide note,” says Ianin Murray at National Review. “Those Members of the House who vote for it are voting for long-term economic decline and for turning the United States into a second-rate economy.”
(snip)
David Roberts takes a more psychological approach to Waxman-Maxwey acceptance:

The green world is grappling with these unpleasant facts right now, fluctuating between rage (kill it!), dread (we’re screwed), and resignation (it’s better than nothing). Or maybe that’s just me.

Writing at Grist, Roberts says he is “reasonably optimistic, despite the flaws in Waxman-Markey, that history is on our side, and that the arguments happening today in Congress will soon be seen as peculiar and archaic.”

At risk in the influence peddling of everyday legislation happens to be the air we breathe, of course.

The process that subjects matters of such import on the lives of the entire world to grappling for power by deeply flawed individuals, with their constituencies, has seldom been exposed as so dangerous. While it’s a topic that is a bit large to throw into a discussion of energy legislating, the depths of political influence are raw and bleeding when our life on the planet becomes a matter for jostling among moneyed interests and their minions.

Today the White House may be able to get a vote, and that is none too soon.