Some day in the future I will no longer feel the need to write daily letters on climate change. Perhaps the Arcturans or Betelguesians will arrive with magic CO2 sponges, or perhaps some mild-mannered nerd in a basement somewhere will invent a tiny nanodevice that pulls carbon out of the atmosphere and turns it into diamonds, which are collected by another device so they don't fall to earth and hurt people. Perhaps.
Meanwhile...the Business-As-Usual Complex keeps on destroying the planet, and their handmaidens in the media keep looking the other way. So I keep writing my letters.
On May 27 I sat down to write my letter for the following day.
I had been planning to do something based on FishOutOfWater's mind-bendingly scary diary that day, and that's what I had in mind, and what motivated me to sit down.
Then I followed a few links to a New York Times article from May 26, where I read that:
In the hours before the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded last month in the Gulf of Mexico, there were strong warning signs that something was terribly wrong with the well, according to a Congressional committee that was briefed on the accident by executives from BP.
In other words, they knew something bad was happening, but they just couldn't be bothered to do anything about it. My vituperation vesuviated, and I decided I'd be better off doing further development on my favorite new meme: "Oil and Coal Reward Evil, Stupidity and Irresponsibility."
A couple of days earlier I'd gotten a really good head of steam going, and wrote a letter that no mainstream publication would touch with a ten-foot pole. So I sent it to The Nation; we'll see if it sees the light of day over there:
Looking at the smug arrogance of oil and coal executives, one is convinced that a fossil fuel economy is inherently biased to reward the nasty and stupid. Don Blankenship, whose Massey Coal Company has never met a regulatory corner it couldn’t cut? Tony Hayward, who reassuringly tells us that the environmental impact of Deepwater Horizon will be insignificant? Exxon? Chevron? Leaving aside the likely impact of catastrophic global climate change, the huge costs of post-disaster cleanups, and the multiple other factors that make fossil fuels our most expensive energy source in the long term, the behavior of these companies and the individuals who head them is reprehensible at best and stunningly vile at worst. That fact alone should motivate us to move to a new energy economy. If corporations are worthy of personhood, we must ask, "What kind of person threatens the lives of others without thought of the consequences?" Oil and coal reward criminal sociopathy. Which is yet another reason that the world needs to stop rewarding Oil and Coal.
WarrenS
The New York Times article got me going on the same idea: fossil fuels reward people for not caring about the consequences of their actions. Fossil fuels make stupid sociopaths into rich, stupid sociopaths. I tempered my language, and this is what the Grey Lady got:
We learn once again that there were warning signs of the impending disaster on the Deepwater Horizon, but that they were ignored. This should surprise no one; the oil and coal industries have had a lot of experience ignoring the signs of impending disasters.
The siren call of quick profit drowns out the voices of caution, care and conscience, leaving our nation's energy economy under the control of forces motivated entirely by profit, unhindered by any sense of responsibility to the greater good.
British Petroleum's behavior has been shameful, yes — but the entire fossil energy sector has a history of rewarding shameful, callous and irresponsible behavior. If ecocidal oil spills, coal mine explosions, and terrifying increases in world temperature levels can't persuade us to kick our fossil fuel addiction, then we too are ignoring the signs of a planetary emergency that will make the Gulf spill seem small.
WarrenS
The next day I got a call from the Letters Editor, and an email with the edited version of my letter, which I reproduce below. Note the differences between my original and the version the Times printed:
We learn that there were warning signs of impending disaster on the Deepwater Horizon rig, but they were ignored. This should surprise no one; the oil and coal industries have had a lot of experience ignoring signs of impending disasters.
The siren call of quick profit drowns out the voices of caution, care and conscience, leaving our nation’s energy economy under the control of forces motivated entirely by profit, unhindered by any sense of responsibility to the greater good.
British Petroleum’s behavior has been shameful, yes — but the entire fossil energy sector has a history of rewarding shameful, callous and irresponsible behavior. If ecocidal oil spills, coal mine explosions and terrifying increases in world temperature levels can’t persuade us to kick our fossil fuel addiction, then we, too, are ignoring the signs of a planetary emergency that will make the Gulf of Mexico spill seem small.
WarrenS
That's right. They left off the italics on the phrase "the entire fossil energy sector." The entire letter was printed verbatim.
This is the second time this year that the Times has printed one of my letters. I wrote about the first time here.
Now, let me conclude by saying this:
I write a letter a day, and they all go up on my blog. Which, needless to say, I hope you'll visit.
While you're there, steal some of my letters. Reverse the clauses, change the tenses, bung in a couple of synonyms, retool a few analogies, sign your name to it, and send it to someone — a politician, a newspaper, a tool of the system. We've got to keep the pressure on.
My letters are almost always based on the work of a Daily Kos diarist who has more knowledge of the issues than I. I wrote about the process of converting a DK diary into a Letter to the Editor in a diary I published a few days ago called Stealing the Work of a Better Diarist and Calling It My Own. I do this kind of conversion work every night...and you can, too. I'd be very happy if I could multiply the impact significantly.
Thanks for reading.