The "vision thing," as Bush the elder once called it, is still underrated by a lot of politicians who can't see past the next election (some of whom seriously let their country down in the Senate this week). But keeping an eye on the big picture matters if you want to solve big problems, and I'm glad to say that kind of vision wasn't completely absent in D.C. this week. You just had to look a few blocks west of the Capitol to the Ariel Rios building, which houses the EPA.
Earlier this week, the agency issued its comments on the State Department's draft Environmental Impact of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. They probably would have had nicer things to say about The Endangered Species Cookbook. Then again, it's hard to top the kind of disaster that would be guaranteed by encouraging tar-sands strip mines and piping the most toxic and costly fuel in existence across our border.
Once again, Secretary Lisa Jackson and her agency have shown that they're determined to take the Protection part of their initials seriously. Tar-sands oil is bad, unequivocally bad -- short-term, long-term, any term you want to take. It's incredible that we still even have to fight against it. Then again, it's also incredible that anyone ever thought letting BP drill deepwater wells in the Gulf of Mexico carried no risks. Isn't hindsight amazing?
Thanks to the Lisa Jackson's foresight, we might not have to kick ourselves some day for making the same mistake with tar sands that we did with deepwater drilling.
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400 parts per million of carbon has recently been found to be the Arctic Tipping Point, which could conceivably endanger us all. We are approaching 390 ppm and adding 2 ppm each year. As you know, the safe limit is 350 ppm.
According to one scientist, a very thin oil film on the surface of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans that could spread from the Gulf, threatens to raise temperatures toward the catastrophic Tipping Point.
A monumental effort on a wartime scale now seems necessary and with enough public support Congress might pass truly effective legislation to replace the sad bill that died last week.
If the threat is real, renewable energy systems that can be deployed in time should rapidly be produced on a 24/7 basis. The White House, Congress and anyone concerned should check the facts without delay - and if confirmed, do whatever is necessary to make that possible.
See What to Do! at http://www.aesopinstitute.org It outlines: A 5 Step Emergency Program
Little known and hard to fathom breakthroughs involving radically new energy technologies can help to supersede petroleum much more rapidly than might be readily understood or readily believed.
See Moving Beyond Oil on the same Aesop Institute website.
If the threat is confirmed, Congress and the White House must initiate the action needed to prevent catastrophe.
Strong public demand can produce that result - with NRDC leadership!