If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace. – Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine, an American political activist, philosopher, and revolutionary, wrote The American Crisis in 1776. Paine, one of America’s Founding Fathers, today would be called a Climate Warrior.
Last week was a red alert for everyone. Words can’t describe the devastation from rising sea temperatures. Massive flooding is the main super storm hazard. Hurricane Florence in the Carolinas forced vast evacuations. As of Monday, toxic waste lagoons from North Carolina pig and chicken factories are contaminating rising waters. Typhoon Mangkhut flooding Singapore, Tokyo and China, can’t be ignored. More than three million people have been moved to safety in southern China alone.
How did you feel knowing people and wildlife were drowning and dying? How would you and your family deal with a similar tragedy? What would you do to protect your community and help others?
Climate wreckers
On July 13, 2017, Trump told reporters, “We’ve got underneath us more oil than anybody, and nobody knew it until five years ago. And I want to use it. And I don’t want that taken away by the Paris Accord. I don’t want them to say all of that wealth that the United States has under its feet, but that China doesn’t have and that other countries don’t have, we can’t use. So now we no longer have the advantage. We have a tremendous advantage. We have more natural resources under our feet than any other country. That’s a pretty big statement. Ten years ago, five years ago even, you couldn’t make that statement. We’re blessed. I don’t want to give it up. I don’t want to say oh, okay, we won’t use it.”
Trump was explaining his decision to withdraw from the UN Paris Climate Agreement to continue fracking oil and gas. To get it done, Trump eliminated essential environmental protections, trading public health for fuel and money. Ignoring the mandate to protect public lands, Trump sold National Monuments for drilling and mining, and deep water leases for off-shore drilling. Trump is an American traitor. Trump is destroying our economy and international free trade agreements.
Fracking for oil and gas has three main problems. Depletion, pollution and negative cash flow. Unlike conventional oil fields, fracking wells have a short-life and high-cost. Top shale production wells are used to sell empty holes. The carbon footprint from clean water, sand mines, crude oil storage farms, leaking pipelines, and house fires from high pressure gas lines is a chain of pollution and permanent destruction.
The truth about fracking is in the news: “Frackers burn cash to sustain US oil boom” – “Wall Street tells frackers: stop counting barrels, start making profits,” and “How America’s most reckless billionaire created the fracking boom.” Trump did not create the fracking boom, but like a serial arsonist, Trump added fuel to the fire.
FEMA’s leadership is unreliable, $10 million from FEMA was transferred to Homeland Security for ICE. FEMA’s abandonment of Puerto Rico will not be forgotten.
Climate cowards
Why would the Republican Congress, governors, and public officials let Trump do as he pleases? With lies, intimidation and flattery, Trump has destroyed our environment and taken public and indigenous sacred lands. Let’s hold the GOP responsible, or throw them out. Trump is not the genius he claims to be. He ignores expert advice and does not care for the truth. Trump is incapable to lead the climate crisis recovery.
Climate Warriors
States, cities, and companies are taking the lead. Last week in San Francisco, Gov. Jerry Brown and more than 100 leaders presented ways to deal with the climate crisis at the Global Climate Action Summit. By 2045 California will eliminate all carbon emissions and by 2050 will become carbon negative.
Harrison Ford said, “Stop, for God’s sake, the denigration of science. Stop giving power to people who don’t believe in science or worse than that, pretend they don’t believe in science for their own self-interest. They know who they are, we know who they are!”
Be a Climate Warrior, join the Climate Crisis Recovery!
Dr. Luis Contreras
Ponds used to store excrement at pig factories, coal ash ponds near rivers at coal-fired power plants, and all other toxic and radioactive storage sites make extreme floods an environmental and public health catastrophe.
These are predictable and preventable events. Waiting and hoping FEMA will save the day is unacceptable.
The C&H pig factory on the Buffalo River, and the Arkansas coal-fired power plants, must be shut down.
======= Here is what happened in the Carolinas from Florence flooding ================
On Friday, Duke Energy shut down a power plant near Wilmington after a dam breach between 100 and 200 feet wide, at the south end of Sutton Lake, allowed floodwaters to swamp two basins containing huge stockpiles of arsenic-laced ash.
Duke’s L.V. Sutton facility has been a focus of increasing concern for environmentalists and regulators since last week, when rains from Hurricane Florence caused a coal ash landfill at the site to erode, spilling waste onto a local roadway.
Coal ash is the powdery substance that remains after burning coal. The Environmental Protection Agency links the substances that it contains — including heavy metals like arsenic and lead — to nervous-system problems, reproductive issues, and cancer.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/21/climate/florences-floodwaters-breach-defenses-at-power-plant-prompting-shutdown.html
Juliana v US
Monday, October 29, 2018, the US Court will hear the 21 Climate Kids demanding climate recovery action:
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“Exercising my ‘reasoned judgment,’ I have no doubt that the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and ordered society.” – U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken
Youth filed their constitutional climate lawsuit, called Juliana v. U.S., against the U.S. government in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon in 2015. Earth Guardians is also an organizational plaintiff in the case.
Their complaint asserts that, through the government’s affirmative actions that cause climate change, it has violated the youngest generation’s constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property, as well as failed to protect essential public trust resources.
https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org
Trump understands Florence is very wet – one more hurricane unrelated to the Climate Crisis. He uses flatery to make everyone feel good … without an idea of what or why
“I just want to thank all of the incredible men and women who have done such a great job in helping with Florence,” he said in the video. “This is a tough hurricane, one of the wettest we’ve ever seen, from the standpoint of water.”
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/407333-trump-praises-florence-response-one-of-the-wettest-storms-weve-ever