The big elephant in the world stage is the sharp deterioration of the natural world, especially the heating of the Earth. After decades of dumping gigantic amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmospheres, scientists are warning world leaders the chickens of pollution have come home to roost - with severe consequences for human health, agriculture, forests, water supplies, and wildlife.
Last December in Paris world leaders, including Obama, decided to reduce world warming gas emissions. Obama promised to lead the pack of polluters in tackling climate change with his Clean Power Plan. This meant that coal power plants throughout the country would have to cut their global warming gas emissions by converting to natural gas or produce clean electricity from the Sun and wind.
Polluters immediately attacked Obama's Clean Power Plan. Even agribusiness got into the fray.
In a January 22, 2016 letter to Michael Conaway and Collin Peterson of the House Agriculture Committee, the American Farm Bureau Federation denounced the Clean Power Plan for undermining agriculture.
Not only would this plan cost dearly to farmers, but also it would bring about "an unprecedented expansion of EPA's regulatory reach." This was anathema to agribusiness. Imagine EPA demanding farmers "must use 'sustainable' farming practices."
But before EPA could start regulating farmers and coal energy polluters, the Supreme Court, February 9, 2016, rushed and perhaps crippled this country's doing anything important about deadly global warming. All the Justices appointed by Republican presidents sided with the coal industry.
We don't know what Obama can do to reverse such a deleterious policy. To his credit and my astonishment, he seems he is taking climate change, as a president should: seriously. Perhaps he sees the awesome implications of doing nothing. Maybe he wants to be remembered he did something good for all children, parents and the Earth. That's probably why he finally said no to the Canadian pipeline. It's also possible he resents this bunch of old men in the Supreme Court threatening unprecedented harm. Second, he also must feel upset that he may not be able to keep the promises he made to other world leaders. Those world leaders, of course, may follow the lead of the Supreme Court, in which case we are cooked.
While these implications are potentially real, and bad for America and the world, silence prevails in the politics of America during a noisy and expensive political season. The heat is on.
We are almost daily being entertained by politicians seeking the highest office in the land, that of the presidency of the United States. With the exception of some sentences about global warming by the Democratic presidential candidates, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, the Republican presidential candidates are deathly quiet about the environment.
I have watched all the "debates" among the Republican and Democratic politicians. One side, the Republicans, aim at scary tactics to frighten the American people. They keep talking about wars, terrorism and counterterrorism. Their populism does not wash.
During the New Hampshire Republican debate, February 6, 2016, Marco Rubio's accusation of Obama as that wolf in sheepskin, that Obama, in fact, knew what he was doing. Obama, Rubio said repeatedly, is making America a Third World country convenient for malcontents and Muslims. Such political barking was as much outlandish as it was outrageous.
The other side, the Democrats, bring the discussion down to the anxieties of Americans with a diminishing standard of living: income inequality, the war of Wall Street against the mythical middle class. Sanders is eloquent with his "political revolution" to close the gap between the rich and poor. Hillary Clinton is gentle towards Wall Street.
But I was stunned by the debate of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in Milwaukee, February 11, 2016. My surprise was not with what they said, I had heard it before, but what they failed to say. They ignored the environment probably not because they had nothing to say but because the PBS moderators of the Newshour, Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff, did not ask them a single question about climate change or the environment.
So are we to conclude that PBS Newshour is becoming a sibling of the commercial networks making money out of polluting companies? I find such a prospect very troubling.
How do you expect the American people to be fully engaged and make the right choices when they don't hear the presidential candidates express their opinion about the life and death issues of a warming planet and polluters who cause that dangerous warming?
Even the tragedy of the poisoned water at Flint, Michigan, escaped the PBS hosts. Where have they been?
But even more poignant than the narrow behavior of these two women, is the prospect of misinformed Americans voting only their narrow interests, not the interests of our society and those of our ailing planet.