A week ago, I decided to leave this site. But I later decided that I couldn't do that until I knew that I did my absolute best to get our side as charged up as slinkerwink got you all about health care about the clean energy and climate bill that we must pass next year.
Starting right now, I am sounding a clarion call - my mission is to pass this bill, by hook, by crook, whatever it takes. If I have to streak naked through a nursing home, I would do it to pass a climate bill and give us a chance to save this planet, to give our children a chance to inhabit a stable and livable world.
One of the things that I've been hearing a lot about, though, is that the climate bill is dead. Well, if you want to read Politico and take their word for it, I suppose that's your choice, but a climate bill has something that health care never had: a committed GOP supporter in Lindsay Graham.
And unlike health care, the bill has already passed the House! We're already halfway there.
You might think, oh, but climate change isn't something that's going to affect me. Wrong.
It is currently affecting people in Southeast Asia who have dwindling access to water. It is affecting people in Alaska. It is dumping excess methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, directly into our oceans.
This is not a joke. This is not a drill.
The simple fact is, this President has a once in a lifetime opportunity to do something about the climate. The GOP is content to let people die from climate change. Yeah, that's right: die. As long as it's no one they know and as long as their supporters are willfully blind to overwhelming science, they will distract and delay their way into millions in campaign contributions from the polluters that are callously cutting off our future and resisting a transition to a clean economy.
We won't have health care to worry about if we don't have energy, or shelter, or clean water and air. That's the road we're on if we do not act in a few months.
I reject the framing that a climate bill is a jobs bill only. It is an EXISTENCE bill.
It comes down to this: do you want this species to exist in 50-100 years?
Then I suggest you get FIRED. UP. about the climate bill. Climate change is a systemic risk to everything we know and love.
This blog isn't worth the cyberspace it's printed on if it can't summon the same intensity for fighting climate change.
Moving forward, I'm going to get in your face about this with facts, charts, graphs, anything it takes to get you guys active and fighting for this bill.
Like health care, it won't be the best bill. But we must have a bill. We must get a structure in place to cut carbon pollution, or we can kiss our future goodbye.
I sincerely hope to see you all getting fired up about this.