Climate 411

Why should you go to a Congressional town hall meeting and stand up for strong action on clean energy?

Because, according to the Wall Street Journal, the American Petroleum Institute, the lobbying group for Big Oil, is organizing their troops to pack town hall meetings.

Apparently, they admired the work of the anti-health insurance reform protesters, so they’re spending some of their billions in profits to make congressmen believe Americans don’t want clean energy.  As we wrote earlier, most Americans DO support clean energy. But that won’t matter if our elected officials don’t hear from our side, too.

So please see where your representatives are holding a town hall meeting, and go stand up for clean energy.

If there isn’t a town hall in your area, you can still weigh in. Call your Senator’s office and tell them how you feel.

Whichever way you speak up, the point is the same — Big Oil is trying to manufacture a picture of Americans that just isn’t true. And we don’t have to let them.

Looks like the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) is one of the most popular kids on the Capitol Hill campus.

In spite of months fear-mongering and outright lying by opponents, a new poll says 71 percent of likely voters favor the bill.

The Zogby poll sampled people across the country and found:

• 71 percent favor the climate bill that was recently passed by the House of Representatives.
• 67 percent think Congress is either “doing the right amount” or “should be doing more” to address global warming.
• 51 percent think that “efforts to reduce global warming and promote clean energy” will lead to new job creation,  and
• another 17 percent think the efforts will not affect American jobs at all — which means less than one-third are worried the bill will cause job losses.
• Favorable views of the bill were high among all age and income groups; ditto for the belief that environmental efforts will create new American jobs.
• Even Republicans aren’t as opposed to the bill as their party leaders might want them to be; 45 percent have a favorable view of ACES. (A whopping 89 percent of Democrats and 73 percent of Independents like the measure)

Says Zogby analyst Sam Rodgers:

Clearly, voters strongly favor the ideas outlined in the bill. Support for action on clean energy and energy efficiency was strong coming out of the election, and it is still strong today.

The moral of the story: Next time you read one of those opposition pieces about how support for ACES is eroding — don’t believe it. Americans see the potential in clean energy.

See the complete methodological statement on the survey.

Sometimes, national security is not just a matter of having a larger army, or superior weapons, or better intelligence. It also means preserving political stability around the world, and spreading economic prosperity as widely as possible.

Instability encourages ideological extremism, and poverty provides a steady supply of terrorist recruits, which can directly affect U.S. security. From Afghanistan to Somalia, we’ve seen how weak states and economic hardship can lay the foundation for political crisis and war.

Many military leaders say global warming poses a grave threat to our security, precisely because it will promote economic instability and political unrest around the world. Former Republican Sen. John Warner, a staunch and highly respected supporter of the U.S. military, strongly supports action on climate change, in part for national security reasons. Read Senator Warner’s recent testimony supporting U.S. leadership in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. [PDF]

Climate change is what military analysts call a “threat multiplier,” meaning it will intensify problems that already threaten us. Here is what a world with an unstable climate might look like:

• We’ll see more crop failures and drought, famine, and disease, leading to mass migrations of people across borders
• Scarcity will cause more frequent wars over natural resources, such as water.
• A sea level rise of three feet – near the low end of predictions for 2100 – would create 100 million environmental refugees around the world.

To make matters worse, much of this will happen in volatile regions already on the brink.

Don’t take our word for it. Here’s what military leaders and experts say:

• In a recent report, eleven retired U.S. admirals and generals cited that growing instability from climate change is leading to greater U.S. military operations abroad. Among them were Gen. Gordon Sullivan, former Chief of Staff of the United States Army, and former Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni. According to Sullivan, “We have to act now [on global climate change] if we are to avoid the worst effects.”
• Likewise, the bipartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has issued a report on the national security impacts of climate change [PDF] predicting that global warming will produce “heightened internal and cross-border tensions caused by large-scale migrations; conflict sparked by resource scarcity, particularly in the weak and failing states of Africa; increased disease proliferation, which will have economic consequences; and some geopolitical reordering as nations adjust to shifts in resources and prevalence of disease.” Among the authors was James Woolsey, former director of the CIA. The board of CSIS includes former National Security Advisors Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Brent Scowcroft.
• Finally, the National Intelligence Council completed the first-ever National Intelligence Assessment of climate change last year. Although the report is classified, the chairman of the Council summarized key findings before a Congressional committee: “We judge global climate change will have wide-ranging implications for U.S. national security interests over the next 20 years.” [PDF]

The climate bill now before Congress will help avert widespread and dangerous environmental changes that would lead to global instability, by cutting greenhouse gas emissions 83 percent by 2050. Another benefit will be reducing our reliance on imported oil. The U.S. has five percent of the world’s oil reserves but consumes 25 percent of the world’s oil. Much of the world’s oil comes from the Mideast, a focal point of political instability and extremism, making reduced dependence on imported oil a national security imperative. By moving the U.S. toward cleaner energy sources like wind and solar, the climate bill will reduce our reliance on fossil fuels like oil.

Many of the nation’s top military leaders and foreign policy experts are calling global warming a national security threat, as well as a critical environmental threat. Congress needs to avert this coming crisis by passing the climate bill.