So It Goes

Do Nothing, Get Nothing

EVEN THOUGH I HAVE NEVER (knowingly) pulled a lever in a voting booth for a Republican candidate, I don't want anyone to think I mean to be partisan when I ask: what the hell does the GOP think it's doing?

I refer to the Republicans' conscious strategy right now to do nothing, in hopes that it will make Democrats look bad and make people like Republicans more -- or some such tortured logic.

Its 'don't-just-do-something, sit-there' approach has been especially apparent for all the months since Congress and the White House have been grappling with health care policy legislation. The sight we've seen of that process has mostly been of Democrats agonizing among themselves, save for one or two moderate Republicans, exceptions who prove the rule.

The strategy, if there is one, seems to be to let the Democrats get their hands dirty and keep Republicans from getting tagged with what will inevitably be a messy process -- and I mean the process leading up to passage of the bill and the implementation after it becomes law (remember all the tumult and confusion around the implementation of the Medicare prescription drug law? This is sure to be as chaotic, but such is profound change.) I have to believe (and, if I took the time, I could probably find polling research to back this up) that Democrats will get credit for trying to do something about what everyone agrees is a broken system, even if the outcome isn't perfect.

Maybe the Congressional Republicans' polling data is beginning to show that they've alienated a lot of potential supporters by coming across as a do-nothing party, because they've finally gotten around to submitting a Republican version of health care reform.

But will this fool anyone? A sneak peek of the Republican bill says it contains a greatest hits of GOP health care provisions (some of which have passed the House but not the Senate in past years) and look like more of a motley patchwork of ideas that may not address the real problems. And won't some people wonder: 1) what took them so long, 2) whether they missed a boat that has long sailed, and 3) if this is any more than a stunt?

Consider also the performance -- or non-performance, really -- of Republicans when the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee met yesterday to mark up that chamber's version of so-called cap-and-trade climate legislation. Except for a brief appearance by Senator George Voinovich of Ohio, Republicans boycotted the proceedings. And all that Voinovich offered was an appeal to subject the provisions of the bill to another EPA analysis that will shed no new light and only delay the deliberations further. Rather than raise their voices rationally against what they clearly see as a flawed bill, they'd rather not show up and try to stall. It's just silly and insulting to the country.

I'll give another example, though, to be fair, this goes back to the previous Congress. I'm talking about the 2007 immigration reform bill, which was done in by Republicans, too. At least in that case, Republicans showed up, though some actually kept a low profile, hoping that by ducking the rage from fervent anti-reformers, it would hit Democrats (and a few courageous Republicans) in the face.

In all three cases, these are issues that every sentient being in the U.S. agrees needs attention. Everyone agrees that our health care system is unsustainable and needs fixing. Most everyone agrees that there is such a thing as climate change and that its effects are already bearing down on us. And everyone, from right to left, agrees that our immigration system doesn't work for anyone and requires an overhaul. Not only is there widespread agreement about all these problems, but that consensus has been with us for a long time. 

It's funny that Congress (and other legislative bodies) are so often the last to acknowledge and seriously address some of the big issues like these. They look out of touch and in denial when many businesses, local and state governments and majorities of Americans are already taking steps that Congress would never touch. Businesses, health providers and states have been talking about the need for health reform for years. There's powerful concern around the country about global warming and lots of businesses and individual citizens are taking serious steps to deal with it. So, too, there are many who are more than ready for sensible, comprehensive immigration reform, even if some of the talk radio screamers aren't.

I'm referring also to issues such as affirmative action -- most companies and universities were way ahead of the national political leaders when it came to acknowledging and addressing the need for it -- and gay rights -- many businesses provide the sort of amenities to same-sex-partner employees that makes their lives easier and shuns discrimination, and local and state governments have begun to see that there's no reasonable argument to be made against same-sex marriage.

I'm not saying there are any perfect and elegant solutions, but doing nothing is not an option. And it's hard to have any confidence that you'll get the outcome you want if you're not part of the process that goes into bill making. In the case of immigration (and to some extent health care), the very opponents of reform are the ones who are crying the loudest about how flawed the system is, as I've written before. 

And I'm not here to give advice to Republicans how to run their business. But, next thing you know, we'll hear their familiar refrain that the Dems froze them out of the process (which, by the way, Republicans really did when they were in charge of Congress a few years ago and which the Dems have been a great pains not to allow now). That sort of cyncism is not becoming.

Again, this is not partisan. It's about how all our leaders -- Democratic, Republican or Independent -- need to show they they're really there to lead, not just to win the next election.But for now, the Republicans really have a problem with this.

Jeff

Well-Meaning Homeowner Surrenders to Convenience, Vanity; Fate of World Hangs in the Balance

ON SUNDAY, MAY 10, 2009, Jeff Weintraub of Silver Spring, Md., finished cutting his grass with a gasoline-powered lawn mower after he lost faith in his non-motorized push mower's ability to do the job.

Nearly two years ago, the starting cord on the power mower broke, and, rather than replace it, Weintraub decided to buy a manual rotary mower. "With such a small patch of grass to cut," he thought at the time, "there's no reason to continue to pollute the air, deplete the ozone layer and pierce the calm of my pastoral neighborhood with a roaring power mower."

Along the way, however, Weintraub began to notice that the manual mower didn't cut the grass evenly and, even worse, it would not cut spindly weeds that cropped up across his sprawling yard. He rationalized this by dismissing the whole enterprise of having and maintaining a perfect lawn as "a bourgeois, unnecessary anachronism."

Lawns, he smugly pointed out, are a throwback to a time when Americans yearned to turn their humble patches of land into something approximating a tradition of English nobility, who planted grass to show that they didn't need to use their land to make a living. Besides, he told neighbors who saw him pushing the non-motorized mower, "It doesn't have to be perfect. I'm not running a golf course here."

But those spindly weeds finally got to him on Sunday, so he fixed the pull cord and went over the yard again with the power mower. And the lawn, helped by abundant spring rains this year, looks pretty good.

This turn of events left Weintraub feeling torn and guilty. He believes in the power of small acts to make a big difference in repairing the world. So if he didn't have the willpower to face a crappy-looking lawn every day or the fortitude and inclination to transform it into a no-maintenance rock garden, how, he asked himself, would he ever make all the other adjustments in life to stave off ecological disaster? What would it take for him to choose contributing to the greater good over expedience?

He considered those rather grandiose and slightly self-indulgent questions, especially when all that's at stake are a few ounces of consumed gasoline every few weeks. And he has even promised himself to use the power mower maybe once every three or four mowings. But what if everybody brushed off such dilemmas? Well, in fact, most people probably do, though perhaps less so than before.

As Weintraub pointed out in a blog post last year, "We Americans have grown so accustomed to many of the conveniences that we enjoy -- conveniences that others around the world seem to do well without." Like carefully coiffed lawns. Or roomy, powerful cars. "While environmental sustainability is something that many more of us are conscious of and acting upon, weaning us off of our conveniences will take some game-changing event -- like, God forbid, a cataclysm, or, better yet, a new technology -- like, hard as this is to conceive, a true non-carbon producing alternative to the internal combustion engine." Or a non-motorized lawn mower that cuts the grass well. 

But, Weintraub reasons today, "'being accustomed to a certain standard of living is not the biggest crime in the world, is it? It's a weakness, one that will be difficult to break. And even if we as a species all decide to ride our bikes to work every day, change to low-energy light bulbs, build smaller, more energy-efficient houses, and, yes, use a power mower, there will always be a cost to human activity and development -- something we humans are prone to."

Weintraub shakes his head as he caresses the velvety turf of his back yard. "We can and we should dial back what we think we need to live a comfortable life," he said. "As long as it's free of those spindly weeds."

Jeff

Environmental Consciousness vs. Convenience

MARC GUNTHER, who writes prolifically about corporate social responsibility and environmental issues for Fortune Magazine and his own blog, just posted an item about how he went about choosing a new car -- all the while trying to do right by his pocketbook and the environment.

What with all the talk these days about global climate change and what each of us must do to slow it down, Marc conducted exhaustive research on the "greener" alternatives. When he calculated the additional cost for most of the hybrid cars against the expected savings he will see by burning less fuel, he figured that, given how relatively little he drives, "it would take, oh, about 28.9 years to pay back the extra cost of the hybrid."

"I couldn’t see spending the extra money for the hybrid," he wrote. "Does this make me less of an environmentalist and more of a cheapskate? I’m afraid it does, but so be it.

"I think my car-buying demonstrates that even 'conscious consumers' can’t be counted on to put environmental or social issues at the top of list when buying stuff...," Gunter adds. "I don’t think we can wait for consumers to drive us closer to a sustainable economy. Companies are likely to lead the way. And (we can hope) governments."

Marc's posting reminds me of my own recent purchase of a new car, about which I ruminated for well over a year (my old car was behaving well during that time, as if it knew how much I hated driving it). Concerned about the environment and the rising cost of fuel, I, too, tried to learn as much as I could about the hybrid choices. If you go to Edmunds.com, a great online source of car information for consumers, you'll see that there are only 22 models of hybrid cars available in the market right now -- really nothing when you consider how vast and diverse the market is.

Those cars range from about $21,000 for the basic Prius, which gets spectacular gas mileage, to about $50,000 for a Chevy Tahoe -- a big, six-cylinder car whose miles-per-gallon rating is still only at about 21 in the city and 28 and the highway. (There is also a $104,000 hybrid made by Lexus, but that's fantasyland for most of us.)

The more affordable of these like the Prius were just too small for me and my family of five, I decided. And the more expensive ones -- like Marc, I just can't bring myself to shell out (even if I could) $30,000 to $40,000 for a car.

So I went with the Honda CR-V. I was very conscious of the mileage, which in the CR-V was supposed to range from the low to mid 20s. I love the car, if one can actually feel love for an inanimate object. But to my disappointment I've only been getting about 17 mpg so far. That's probably because 90 percent of the time I'm doing city driving, but come on. Shouldn't I be doing better? Still, it's a big improvement over my previous car, an old minivan that was probably getting about 10 mpg on a good week. So I guess I'm better than I was.

Marc's right that industry and the government will have to do better than to give us 22 fairly narrow choices of highly fuel-efficient cars. And I suppose he's also right when he says, "I don’t think we can wait for consumers to drive us closer to a sustainable economy."

That's true in part because we Americans have grown so accustomed to many of the conveniences that we enjoy -- conveniences that others around the world seem to do well without. Like big cars. Americans like me feel that it's just not humane to ask three kids to sit in the back seat of a car, hips touching hips -- at least that's the calculation I made when I decided against the Prius. And we like our power, don't we? We don't want to have to feel like we're just barely making it up hills on the strength of a 4-cylinder engine.

But Europeans, whose standard of living in most other ways looks like ours and who also tend to drive smaller cars than we, seem to get along just fine without the power and the leg room.

Consumers here could be a major agent of change, but we're naturally afraid of backsliding, of giving up a good thing for fear we will never get it back.

With gas at record prices, we're starting to see that change in consumer behavior. We hear that sales of big cars are flagging and that some people are even taking the step of moving closer to their places of work. But, I'm with Marc: I don't yet feel that we've reached the tipping point of profound change.

Most people, like me, will only be taking incremental steps, like going from 10 mpg to 17, and maybe driving a bit less.

Or, like last year, when my gas-powered lawn mower broke, I bought a non-motorized "reel" mower -- you know, the old-fashioned kind with the double-helix blade and a rolling in the back. I've truly enjoyed it, even though it doesn't make my grass look as nice at the power mower (but I'm not running a golf course), and it frustratingly jams every time it catches a twig -- which is like every 30 seconds. 

No doubt, I've given up some of the conveniences I've become accustomed to, but I've noticed other benefits. It's not noisy, there's less maintenance, no fuel costs, and I feel a little, shall we say, closer to the land than I did, as hokey as that sounds. And I'm saving gas -- though, lest I start sounding smug, it's surely not nearly as much as I would have saved had I bought the Prius. 

So while environmental sustainability is something that many more of us are conscious of and acting upon, weaning us off of our conveniences will take some game changing event -- like, God forbid, a cataclysm -- or a new technology -- like, hard as this is to conceive, a true non-carbon producing alternative to the internal combustion engine.

Most of us, myself included, like the idea of making such environmentally conscious choices, but the reality is much different.

Jeff

Is “An Inconvenient Truth” Political? And So What If It Is?

WHEN I RAN INTO SOME FRIENDS on the street just after I saw "An Inconvenient Truth" tonight, one of them, who hadn’t seen the documentary, asked if I thought this Al Gore’s first step in his rebid for the presidency. “It sort of feels that way, yes,” I said.

The film, which is little more than a slide presentation and lecture by former Vice President Al Gore about global warming, contains a lot of cutaways to aspects of his personal life. He recounts his boyhood, establishing himself as a person who (legitimately) had a lot of firsthand interaction with the land and agriculture. He talks about his son’s near-death accident, which seems to have no reason for being there other than to pull some heart strings, and he boasts a bit too much about his indefatigable efforts to bring the issue of global warming to the attention of the world (even saying that he ran for president in 1988 strictly to get the word out about this issue).

None of this is exaggerated, as far as I can tell, but it does have a touch of the qualities of “A Man From Hope,” the evocative campaign documentary about Bill Clinton, which quite effectively carved out the mythology of the man that finally got him elected to the presidency in 1992. And Gore still has that smarty-pants delivery -– though he’s toned it down a lot and sounds more laid back than he did when he ran in 2000. That must be driving the Republicans and other Gore haters wild.

Also, Gore takes some pretty well-reasoned and well-deserved shots at the Republicans and, more specifically, the current White House, which has repeatedly claimed that we need more time to study whether global warming is real, censured government scientists to play down the problem of climate change in official reports and backed the U.S. out of the Kyoto Treaty.

And I’m saying this as someone who really likes the guy and thinks he’d make an excellent president. In fact, I don’t care that he’s gained weight since 2000 (so have I), can put someone to sleep with his speeches (so can I), once boasted about inventing the Internet, or any number of the other things people use as an excuse for not taking him seriously.

So is “An Inconvenient Truth” a vehicle to launch Gore’s next attempt to occupy the White House? Could be, though Gore has been evasive when asked this question in interviews around the release of the film. And, more plausibly, the film may only be a product of the fact that he has made this cause his life’s work and that he calculated (correctly) that featuring himself in the movie would draw more attention to global warming.

But even if it is truly a higher-class and better-researched equivalent of those vapid books about leadership or democracy or courage that presidential aspirants seem to crank out just before they announce their candidacy, so what?

So what if he has ulterior motives? The film is full of so much compelling evidence that, one, there is such a thing as global warming and, two, it’s bearing down on us rapidly. In fact, it’s pretty depressing and leaves you with an unmistakable feeling that we're falling uncontrollably into the abyss.

Gore’s explanation of complex scientific findings is breathtakingly accessible, and he has a fluid command of the facts. He really knows his stuff. He’s not just propping himself up in front of a few charts that some aides prepared for him and appearing to know what he’s talking about. That’s what a real candidate would do.

His extensive evidence of significant melting of the ice caps at the North and South Poles and of the near disappearance of many glaciers and major lakes around the world is, no pun intended, chilling. His charts of the close correlation between the rising level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and steadily increasing average temperatures is impossible to ignore.

Gore even explained how the melting of Greenland, which is showing signs of the sort of first-stage thawing that has ravaged whole ice shelves along the poles, could eventually shut off the network of “conveyor” systems, whose circulation of water throughout the world’s oceans helps regulate surface temperatures. If that conveyor shuts down, Gore says, it could almost immediately (within a decade) bring about a full-blown ice age in Europe or North America.

He also made a convincing case that we are seeing more and more incidences of severe weather and that they are almost certainly the result of global warming. 

In many ways this is a political movie, in that the solutions will invariably depend upon proper decisions made in the public policy arena, which will inevitably involve politics. Nothing wrong with that.

Somehow, Gore’s critics, seeing that he’s on to something and that they can’t effectively discredit his facts, will surely discredit him –- a classic political technique.

As they do, they will only discredit themselves. There appears now to be a rising tide of people from across the political spectrum who are capable of discrediting them. Because the case against global warming and for taking steps to turn it back is just melting away under the harsh, hot light of truth.

Jeff

P.S. It does seem odd that the film contains many shots of him traveling in big cars and on planes. What's Gore doing to conserve?

P.P.S. The environmental movement should thank its lucky stars that its Gore, not Moore (as in Michael Moore), who made this movie. If he had done this, Michael Moore, America's other popular "documentarian," could have single-handedly set back the efforts to convince the world of the reality of global warming with his usual intellectually dishonest polemic that would only destroy the credibility of the movement.