President Obama is in Alaska, doing what he does best. Giving a damned good speech.
I’ve heard President Obama say the things I wanted to hear about keeping the planet healthy for our children’s children’s children more than a few times already. And he seems to be moving in the right direction. One step up.
And back. This morning on the show, I read Bill McKibben’s extraordinary post that clearly articulated my confusion and frustration.
President Obama is visiting Alaska this week — a territory changing as rapidly as any on earth thanks to global warming. He’s talking constantly about the danger that climate change poses to the planet (a welcome development given that he managed to go through virtually the entire 2012 election without even mentioning it). And everything he’s saying is right: we are a nation, and a planet, beset by fire, flood, drought. It’s the hottest year in earth’s recorded history. July was the hottest month ever measured on planet earth.
But of course the alarm he’s sounding is muffled by the fact that earlier this year he gave Shell Oil a permit to go drill in the Arctic, potentially opening up a giant new pool of oil.
It’s as if the health teacher giving the anti-smoking talk to junior-high assembly had a Marlboro dangling from her lip.
He explained that, when dealing with climate change, we can’t negotiate using compromise as an effective way forward because physics! You have to read it, or listen to today’s show (or both).
Gaius Publius joined in with his thoughts on why President Obama would move in two opposite directions at the same time. His wise words included “legacy-library and foundation-funding behavior,” though obviously there was a lot more than that.
Hour two on Tuesday mornings are usually spent with GottaLaff, but we’ve been Laffy-less for the last two weeks. She’s back today, and we talk about everything from her trip to Vancouver, BC, to my experience on Twitter yesterday with actor turned rwnj James Woods.
Sorry, you’ll just have to listen to get the dirt on that one…
I’ll be back tomorrow with Deborah Newell Tornello for another edition of Oy FloriDUH, and Lisa Graves (really this time) to tell us more about the Kochs… see you then, radio or not!
