Before You Sink It, You Have to Drink It

George Kerr swimming in Burlington Bay, 1975

Today's post might seem a bit more convoluted than usual, but stick with me and let's see if I can make it make sense to you.

I've experienced several "convergences" lately: readings and meetings and thoughts and memories all intersecting, and I'm trying to focus in on that point of intersection ... is there a message waiting there for me?

First, I started reading Joseph Romm's Language Intelligence: Lessons on Persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga. It's a fascinating look at rhetoric, "the art of influencing both the hearts and the minds of listeners" and "the art of being pithy and profound." And besides being quite a readable book, it's also explaining the mysteries of American politics to me, a Canadian.

I've discovered that without knowing it, I often use rhetorical "figures of speech" in my writing. (Irony is one of them, and isn't it ironic that I use figures of speech in my writing?) 

But rhetoric, which was first honed by the ancient Greeks, and then studied intensively by the likes of Shakespeare and the King James translators of the Bible, was meant for listening audiences; widespread literacy is a fairly recent phenomenon. Indeed, there's this line on the title page of the 1611 edition of the King James Bible: "Appointed to be read in churches.") 

I sense that it's going to be rather fun and intriguing to use rhetoric more consciously and deliberately, and hence more effectively. (And that is another figure: foreshadowing.)

Second, we had a lovely visit with our youngest son yesterday. He's a thinker, that one! He reminded us that the only way enviros are going to win the day is to join in the economic fray. In other words, we haven't beat 'em, so we need to join 'em. 

Money makes the world go around, he reiterated. Young people with mortgages to pay and kids to feed will only pay attention if we can say, "Here's a secure job with good pay in the renewable energy field — and it happens to be much better for the environment." And older people whose investments are propping up the fossil fuel industries will only make the switch when we can say, "Here's a secure investment with good payback in the renewable energy field — and it happens to be much better for the environment." 

Yup, our son says, it's our job to make that transition to clean jobs and investments happen — and then to effectively communicate the opportunity.

Third, I've been horrified by the gigantuan (a mixture of gigantic and gargantuan ... doesn't get any bigger than that) backwards step we're taking with our move into fracking to satisfy our addiction to cheap energy. Punish them, Father, for they know what they do. 

I don't know who these people are (I guess I just don't hang out with frackers), though they're certainly being supported by governments at all levels who are salivatingly rubbing their hands together at the thought of LNG (liquefied natural gas) royalties bringing all sorts of wealth to their jurisdictions. ("Environmental assessment? We don't need no environmental assessment. Besides, didn't we lay those assessor guys off?") 

But I do know this: it is the height of stupidity, brainlessness (fossil fuel emissions are neurotoxins, after all) and immorality to allow fracking when we know its devastating consequences — to human and ecosystem health, to the climate, to the future. 

And finally, my horror at what fracking is doing to fresh water reserves* reminded me of something that happened in my hometown when I was growing up. We lived in Burlington, Ontario, next to the Pittsburgh of Canada: Hamilton, aka Steeltown. 

Burlington Bay was becoming terribly polluted and our provincial environment minister at the time, George Kerr, pledged in 1970 that the bay would be clean enough to swim in within five years. Well, Mr. Kerr took the plunge in 1975, bless him! He later admitted that the water wasn't clean enough to swim in, but he wanted to keep his promise (in a fishy sort of way). 

And so ... I've come up with a way to ensure that frackers don't get away with slow murder. If they want to make money from fracking, if they want to use the fresh water that belongs to all living things, and if they want to steal from the commons for their own profit, they should have to purify their fracking waste water — AND THEN DRINK IT. 

"Take a cup and drink it up" says an old nursery rhyme. Yup, if these folks want to put our health, our agricultural food security, and our future right to fresh water at risk, then they ought to take on some of the risk themselves. No? 

(One commenter on a blog post about the health risks of fracking goes one step further: "It would serve the fracking bastards right to have to live immersed in the crap they expect us to swallow while they reap the profits.")

So here's my dilemma. You've heard the Republican refrain Drill, Baby, Drill. How do we create a slogan just as short and pithy that will help the public "get" the dangers of fracking? I've been working on this for hours, and here's all I've come up with. 

Fracking water

What's that stink?

Fill your cup

And take a drink!

But it should be even shorter and pithier than that. 

Before you sink it,

You have to drink it.

No, that's not specific enough. Help!!! All you wordcrafters and rhetoricians, please sharpen your pencils and give me a hand. This ought to be one no-brainer fight we can win.

*from The Columbus [Ohio] Dispatch: "In the fracking process, millions of gallons of water, with some sand and a secret mix of chemicals mixed in, are blasted into shale formations deep underground to break up the rock and release the oil and gas trapped in it. About 15 to 25 percent of that tainted water comes back up. After oil and gas production begins, another liquid is produced. It is briny and often laced with metals, including radium, that occur naturally deep underground."

The Compassionates — and What We're Up Against

"Our side" doesn't have a name, does it? Joseph Romm calls us climate science realists. That doesn't resonate in my heart, though. But since the easiest way to get across what we're doing is to use the term "the precautionary principle" (yup, you just have to know the very basic physics that more CO2 = more heat in the atmosphere, and ask yourself if we want to take chances like that with our children's future), then maybe we should call ourselves The Compassionates. It certainly stands us apart. 

Even though we "Compassionates" spend much of our time, money and energy working to help protect life on this planet and safeguard the future, we just don't have the arsenal of strategies that the other side gets to use. 

A wonderful young activist friend of ours said it recently. "It's not fair. Everything we say, we have to back up with all the latest scientific research. We always have to be so careful and scrupulous and up-to-date in what we say. But the other side gets to distort the truth, cherry pick and tell outright lies — and they always get away with it. How can we ever win?"

I just don't get why there even are two sides to this. Why wouldn't ALL human beings want to ensure a climate-safe and healthy future for their children? Why can't ALL human beings look around and see what's happening? Why do ANY human beings choose money over life?

I just don't get it. It's so discouraging. 

Not only that, but have you noticed that they seem to have a cheat sheet? It's like there's some secret club and they all have to spout the same BS to be part of the club. Even in a raggy local newspaper, the "denialists" and skeptics, contrarians and delayers (and all the others who have an obvious hate on for their grandchildren) rant on and on, using the same old tired stuff that a quick online trip to RealClimate.org would explain, refute or rectify. But everyone seems too blinkin' lazy to go beyond their cheat sheet, to do their own thinking or research synthesis. So they trot out years-old lies, misrepresented "facts" and malicious created misconceptions. They quote research from only a dozen or so notoriously slanted scientists (if they quote research at all). And then quite often they'll throw in a little defamation or ad hominem attack (while accusing us of doing that after we've made sure we didn't do that). 

Like I said, I just don't get it. It's so discouraging. But I do know one thing. Global warming and climate change? Caused by these guys. Without all their delay tactics, we'd be well on our way to that safer, cleaner, healthier, more equitable and more peaceful world of perpetual energy some of us can picture.

146 Days - Why Joe Romm Needs to Get Some Perspective

Climate change blogger Joseph Romm (a good guy who's on our side) is slamming Dr. James Hansen in the blogosphere these days.

First, I should mention that anybody who messes with Hansen messes with me! (Just so we're clear where I stand on this.)

I don't want to go into details. In fact, I don't even want to send you to the original postings and the spinoffs.

I just want to say this. James Hansen understands the climate change emergency far better than almost anyone else on Earth, and certainly (it is now obvious) better than Joe Romm, who (I will grant him) deeply understands American political responses to climate change.

I've written about this before — we enviros seem to have a penchant for critiquing our own, even those who know more than we do. So, when James Hansen says we desperately need a carbon tax, Joe, don't disagree with the man. When he says that the new Waxman-Markey climate change bill in the USA isn't enough, don't disagree with the man.

When you say, "I have previously explained why W-M takes us sharply off of the BAU [business as usual] emissions path over the next decade, probably reducing coal use more than 25% by 2020," please understand that cutting coal use 100% by 2020 is one of the few ways we've got to save the future.

We must get all our fossil fuel emissions down to zero. Say it with me. ZERO. Z-E-R-O. That's zed (zee to you Americans), ee, ar, oh.

Not "42% emissions reduction by 2030." Not "an 83% reduction by 2050." We must reach zero fossil fuel emissions fast, or we risk losing it all. (And I'm talking that really big ALL!) Indeed, any target that isn't zero is not a serious target.

The perspective that Joe Romm is missing is the global perspective. He's so caught up in the American scene that he's forgetting Hansen's global view. And it's not pretty.

So please, sure, be proud of your Waxman-Markey legislation, but don't go braggin' all over that it's going to save the world. It just isn't, because it doesn't talk about getting to zero fast.

It doesn't consider all the people all over the world already impacted by climate chaos. And it does not come from that place of compassion that asks, "What do we really need to do to safeguard the future, for all the children, of all species?"