The Assault on Christmas

The week before Halloween, I walked into Home Depot and almost walked out in protest. I was assaulted by Christmas decorations. When talking with an employee about my disgust, I was quickly told, “People are buying a lot already.”

It’s Christmas for goodness sakes – time to save the economy! On Thanksgiving Day, let’s give thanks for the opportunity to go shopping at midnight. The “holiday season” now starts with acclaims for “Black Friday” and the race to revive retail.

Apologies to my non-Christian friends who have to endure the endless clang of Christmas carols everywhere they go. Actually, it amazes me that anyone would want to sing anything on Christmas Eve after being bombarded with carols every waking moment for nearly two months. How has it come to this? This hijacking of Christmas.

The way I survive it is reading Watch for the Light, Readings for Advent and Christmas.

With a different writer every day, November 24 to January 7, the daily reminder of what this season is all about calms me and unsettles me all at the same time. Some are easier to read like “Black Rook in Rainy Weather” by Sylvia Path. Others, unnerving: “The Shaking Reality of Advent” written by Father Alfred Delp, a Jesuit priest, condemned as a traitor and writing from his prison cell before he was hanged.

Yesterday, from Loretta Ross-Gotta, “The intensity and strain that many of us bring to Christmas must suggest to some onlookers that, on the whole, Christians do not seem to have gotten the point.”

And from Henri Nouwen, he writes about the cultural reality that binds us: “Waiting is not a very popular attitude… For many people, waiting is an awful desert between where they are and where they want to go. And people do not like such a place.”

Peter Kingsley in an interview in Parabola recognizes this same malady Nouwen writes about when he says, “We are obsessed with keeping everything going: with asking what do we do next? But what if that’ s not the right question? What if we actually have to do nothing: just go deeper and wait?

Jump off the Wheel

When I left "an inside job" in the fall of 2009, I knew that my excitement and drive to reinvigorate the consulting business I had run for seven years would keep me busy. Soon my best friend was saying, "Whoah.. slow down." Her advice: "Jump off the wheel. Give yourself a break. You’ll be back on the wheel soon enough. Try a sabbatical. " She was so right. Just about this time last year, I jumped off.

It’s not surprising that my last post here was Aprjl 25, 2010. On April 15, I started a new job, after taking that sabbatical, and I've been pretty much head down ever since.

Now, as I take a deep breath the day after Thanksgiving, I give thanks for jumping off the wheel for several months in the winter of 2009/2010. It was the best gift I’ve ever given myself. And I know that without it, I probably would not have been ready to take the plunge I did in April (another "inside job" much to my surprise).

Taking sabbaticals is a lost art, except perhaps in academia, although usually a “to do” list goes along with the deal. A rarity in the corporate world. Only 19 companies on this list.

Taking that deep dive into a place of nonattachment to work was full of wonder and creativity. I loved it. I wrote poetry. And more poetry. I sat in silence. I spent time with my extended family. I enjoyed the highest snow fall on record. I stayed alone, for days at a time in a small cabin in the woods in the heart of winter. No sense of time. No agenda to meet. I rested and healed wounds I had found a way to hide. Mediation and Merton ("we cannot be happy if we expect to live all the time in the highest peak of intensity. Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony) were my guides. I listened hard to what I had long ago denied.

Sabbaticals are not for the cautious. It takes a degree of boldness to let go. To let go of the fear that your “place” won’t be there when you get back. To be willing to let go and find, maybe, a new place to be. It takes courage.

I think about my fellow comrades in the environmental community – now might be the time to consider jumping off the wheel. No chance of climate change legislation passing (That’s for another post). More gridlock to come for sure. So why not? Why not jump off the wheel. You just might be surprised about what you’ll learn about yourself, your job, what you may have hidden along the way.

For now, I’ll let Henri J.M.M. Nouwen close it out:

Without solitude there can be no real people. The more you discover what a person is, and experience what a human relationship requires in order to remain profound, fruitful, and a source of growth and development, the more you discover that you are alone – and that the measure of your solitude is the measure of your capacity for communion.

Irony of Reid's Move: Latinos Want Climate Action

Seems like Senator Reid can’t manage more than one issue at a time. He’s decided to push the bipartisan effort on climate and energy legislation to the back burner and instead focus on immigration reform. If you smell a rough re-election campaign, you’re on the right track. Ironically, Senator Reid is missing a big opportunity to address something that Latinos care a lot about – and that’s climate change.

On the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, the National Latino Coalition on Climate Change (NLCCC) released a study on the attitudes of Latino voters on climate change in three key states –Colorado, Florida AND Nevada. The findings? Latino voters want global warming action.

What’s more – the overwhelming majorities of Latino voters in Florida (80%), Nevada (67%) and Colorado (58%) say they are more likely to vote for a U.S. Senate candidate that supports proposals for fighting global warming. And 8 out of 10 voters reject the idea that fighting global warming will hurt the economy. In Nevada, 72% of those polled said that focusing on clean energy will create jobs.

NLCCC’s Vice-Chair Lillian Rodriguez-Lobez tells us why: “Latino Americans are on the front lines of climate change. We live where we feel the biggest impacts of droughts and hurricanes. We suffer disproportionately from asthma and air pollution, which will get worse under global warming. And, in huge numbers, we work in agriculture – of all industries the one likely to be hardest hit by climate change. The fact is that Latino Americans have every reason to call for an Earth Day revolution.”

Looks like Senator Reid is now saying, you can’t have it all. You can’t live freely in America and at the same time, be safe from the impacts of global warming.

Of course, let’s not just point the finger at Senator Reid. If there were more than one Republican Senator willing to do the work of protecting all of us from the impacts of global warming, then we wouldn’t be in the middle of this mess. In the absence of leadership, we all lose.

Leadership: What Matters Most

I doubt if there will ever be enough written (and certainly learned) about what makes a successful leader. In the category of leadership, we have all experienced the good, the bad and the ugly.

An inspiring article about the first woman president of Chile tells us that Michele Bachelet while mocked for her “overt emotion and talk of intuition,” ended her historic presidency with a 87% approval rating. Now, according to the article, “those who criticized her supposed sentimentalism are taking classes in emotional intelligence, while Chile's politicians must all pass the "Bachelet test" -- that is, having "heart" and being close to the people.”

A timely article to read after recently devouring Leadership and Self Deception. The book’s message: successful leaders treat people like people, not objects. Yes, in 2010 there’s plenty of “leaders” that still need to learn this lesson. The book also does a brilliant job of calling out the habits of self deception and self betrayal as the root of most conflict.

Truly great leaders, Ben Horowitz notes in his recent post on leadership, “create an environment where the employees feel that the CEO cares much more about the employees than she cares about herself.”

Horowitz also lays out three key traits a leader needs to have:

· The ability to articulate the vision

· The right kind of ambition

· The ability to achieve the vision

Horowitz understands that these are traits that every real leader needs to continually work on. Being committed to life-time learning, enhancing your emotional intelligence, and I would add, seeking out feedback from those you lead separates the true leaders from the wannabes.

Back in 2001, Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzi and Annie McKee wrote about “Primal Leadership” and the impact a leader’s “emotional maturity” has on the organization. Their research demonstrated that when leaders exhibit emotional intelligence, they ”create environments where information sharing, trust, healthy risk-taking, and learning flourish. “ They note in Primal Leadership, The Hidden Driver of Great Performance, that “tense or terrified employees can be very productive in the short term, their organizations may post good results, but they never last.”

There’s still far too many organizations filed with “tense or terrified employees.” Employees who are terrified to tell the truth about what they see, how they are treated and where leadership is failing. Far too many leaders continue to fly under the radar screen, lacking any measure of evaluation and feedback – from the people they lead. This lack of evaluation is now at epidemic levels – in financial markets, in Congress, in organizations and board rooms all over the country. To Horowitz’s list above I’d add a fourth trait of leadership: “The willingness to seek out and listen to feedback. “

Heart and Head

One of my standard slides in presentations to groups on how to talk about climate change is a picture of a brain and a picture of a heart. Another favorite, is a picture of the Wicked Witch of the West, with the caption, Cursed with the Curse of Knowledge – borrowed from the Heath brothers who first coined the term, Curse of Knowledge in their book, Made to Stick.

My point to groups of policy wonks trying to get the public engaged in climate change is that the data can only take you so far. For example, skip the “by 2100” and go straight to “in the lifetime of a child born today.” Give me something I can see and feel.

Thankfully the Heath brothers are back with a new book that delves even further into this integral balance between the rational and the emotional. It’s called Switch: How to Change Things when Change is Hard.

Kevin Huffman, the enviable winner of the Washington Post’s Next Great Pundit contest nailed it today when he wrote about how the lessons of Switch can be applied to the current health care debate.

Change comes, as Huffman aptly notes, “only when we appeal to both logic and emotion.” Getting that balance right is an art. And we haven’t found it … not with health care. And it’s going to be an even tougher challenge with climate and energy legislation (see my previous post, Climate Change and Change Management).

Opponents of action on climate change have done a masterful job at using emotion and logic to scare people. Scared about the economy? Scared about keeping your job? Well then you better be scared of this monster thing called cap and trade. Environmentalists have tried to scare people with the unfortunate facts of what global warming will do – in the future. Logic takes over and the here and now of the economy makes more sense than future predictions of doom “at the end of the century” or melting glaciers in a place they can't even find on a map.

While climate change realists have gotten better about moving away from the policy wonk trap of “cap and trade” and toward emphasizing what action on climate change can do for American leadership in the clean energy economy and job creation, we’re not balancing that logical message about leadership with the emotional message about what what kind of planet we’ll leave our kids. We’re not in alignment on both the logic and the emotion.

It’s that alignment, the Heath brothers advise us that will be essential to changing things when change is hard. And there’s nothing going to be harder than getting strong climate and energy legislation passed.

Fit to be Outside

Last week I had the enormous pleasure of spending time with my 10-year old nephew at our cabin in the woods in Garrett County, Maryland. When checking in with his parents on his return, I told them that almost all of his clothes were coming back clean. This kid went from his PJs to long underwear and snow suit every day. Exhausted from the day’s adventure, he’d be back in his PJs for the evening. No “street clothes” for this kid.

We found ourselves whispering as we explored the woods by snowshoes and cross-country skiis, respectful of the immense silence that surrounded us. My nephew was in his element, with words like “amazing” and “beautiful” and “wonderful” filling his sentences.

As an outdoor kid, he’s fit to take on the kind of adventures his aunt and uncle always have planned for him. Yet, unfortunately, he’s more of a rarity among his peers. Kids these days spend close to 8 hours a day in front of some kind of screen – tv, computer, video. One out of three kids is obese. And for the first time in our history, kids are growing up with the probability they will be less healthy than their parents.

And that’s a really scary idea given the current health of Americans. Kevin Huffman lets us know that Americans have won the Couch Potato Olympic Gold thanks to a statistics compiled by the Daily Beast. He gives kudos to Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” initiative, and notes how the right-wingers don’ t like progressives messing with their right to be fat.

I welcome the First Lady’s efforts while encouraging her to insist that ‘moving” needs to also be about unstructured play outside rather than just orchestrated play inside or on a soccer field.

Let’s not give up so easily on getting kids to get outside to just play. They need it. We need it.

Let’s get moving -- outside! Recognizing that there are too many kids living in unsafe neighborhoods, let’s be sure that being outside becomes part of their educational experience and after school activities that promote a green hour. Being outside needs to be part of the fitness and education equation.

Big Coal and Big Tobacco: Best of Buddies

Gotta love Garrett County and The Republican – the aptly named weekly newspaper of this very Republican county (69% McCain, 29% Obama, with congressional district election a mirror image). The paper takes just about every letter to the editor and folks write in on national issues, on local issues and on anything that comes to mind...

Hats off to Steve Putnam of Grantsville who dared to write about the similarities between Big Coal and Big Tobacco. A few excerpts from his letter:

“I see a parallel between the coal industry and the tobacco industry. They have a strong lobby group that works real hard at keeping our good neighbors addicted to their not so high-paying jobs. Their byproducts are bad for our health, the health of their workers, and the environment. They expect subsidies and buyouts like the Coal Tax Credit to artificially support their failing business model.”

Then he challenges his elected officials with this admonition: “Think and plan beyond your elected term in office. You are paid to be smart, and not to do what everyone before you has done, just because it’s the legacy of the past. What will you do to pave the way for a sustainable future for western Maryland? "

"One thing is for sure, attracting young workers to a dying coal industry is no different than inviting the Marlboro Man to show up for career day at the local high school!"

Well done Steve!

Budgets

All the coverage about budgets this week reminds me of that popular saying from years ago: “It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the air force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.”

On the same day the President’s 2011 budget is released, I read about the budget crunch in Fairfax Country, Virginia. To fill a $176 million budget deficit, talk of eliminating foreign language program, full day kindergarten, the entire elementary school band and string program. From a sixth grader we’re told, “If these programs go, then we can’t play the music coming from our hearts.”

And what about the “President’s budget?” Let’s get real. This is the country’s budget – the budget that we all have taken a hand in creating over many, many years.

Frank Rich’s recent column included an observation by Alan Brinkley … that we are entering the fourth decade where Congress and therefore government as a whole — has failed to deal with any major national problem, from infrastructure to education.

The 2011 budget carries the baggage of what Rich referred to in his column as a leadership deficit. One of the biggest areas of this leadership deficit has been in moving our country to a clean energy future.

In the Washington Post coverage, we see a tiny notation that “other” spending includes $3 billion for “potential disaster costs.” That could easily be a drop in the bucket when you consider that the costs of the record breaking hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Wilma and Dennis totaled $57.3 billion in damages.

The cost of inaction on global warming will only get higher the longer we wait – as high as 3.6 percent of GDP, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. Concerned about the national debt? Add to it $1.9 trillion annually by the end of the century if we continue to ignore the science.

Thankfully, President Obama is trying to move the country toward the transition we must make, by including $2.4 billion for the clean tech sector. While commendable, it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the taxpayer subsidies oil companies still horde. Thankfully, the President has called for the elimination of tax breaks big oil continues to be entitled to – $36.5 billion from 2011 to 2020, according to Dan Weiss, at the Center for American Progress. That accounts for half of what the big five oil companies made in 2009 profits.

President Obama also included deficit-neutral revenue from a federal program to cap the pollution that causes global warming. Proceeds from this program would help “vulnerable families, communities and businesses”… and focus on “adapting to the impacts of climate change” both here in the U.S. and in developing countries.

Support for helping those least responsible for global warming is long overdue (and why the commitment to provide $10 billion in funds in the Copenhagen Accord is so significant). While concern for global warming moves further off the radar screen for Americans, the problem only gets worse. According to the Environmental Justice Foundation, 325 million people are adversely affected by climate change each year and 300,000 die. In this century, hundreds of millions of people are likely to be displaced because of sea level rise.

Connect this with the reference in the release of the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review this week that climate change will “exacerbate future conflicts” and the need for action couldn’t be clearer.

No one – no one would suggest that we should ignore adequate defense for our country and our troops abroad. And yet, on the top of the budget pile is $895 billion for defense. I see that number and I’m reminded of a sign in the office of Rev. John W. Wimberly, of Western Presbyterian Church in Washington DC: “Budgets are Moral Documents.”

For a church that helps feed thousands of homeless people at Miriam’s Kitchen, is involved with the Greater Washington Interfaith Power and Light to save energy, and respond to climate change, building a health clinic in Ethopia, and much more, the sign is a reminder of what their work is all about. It should be a reminder to all of us. Budgets are Moral Documents.

To Be Of Use

As we await President Obama’s State of the Union address tonight, it seems fitting that I would come across this poem by Marge Piercy. Unfortunately we have more “parlor generals and field deserters” in Congress than the country can tolerate. Thankfully there are millions of Americans who will get up tomorrow and continue to carry their heavy loads with “massive patience”… “who strain in the mud and muck to move things forward.” I honor them tonight.

To Be Of Use

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

Flat and Fat

My nephew was 11 and living in a suburb of Chicago when he first visited with us at our cabin in Western Maryland. I told him in advance that the cabin was a “TV-free zone.” A few days into the visit, Ben announced to me that “I was probably the only house in Maryland that didn’t have a TV.” I reminded him that I had given him the heads up. “Oh that’s OK, Aunt Jenn. Who needs TV when you have the wilderness?”

Unfortunately Ben’s experience – and attitude – is not the norm. Today too many kids are spending more time than ever inside in front of flat screens. The Kaiser Family Foundation just released a report Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year Olds that shows every type of media use has increased over the past 10 years, except (and sadly for this book lover) reading.

Kids are now clocking 7.5 hours per day “consuming media” -- these rates are even higher for Blacks and Hispanics. That’s almost as much time, the report notes, as adults spend at work. When taking into account multi-tasking media use, it really adds up to nearly 11 hours a day.

And here’s the kicker: the report also shows that the youth who spend more time with media say they have lower grades and lower levels of personal contentment.

The irony shouldn’t be lost on anyone that in the same week, federal health officials reported that one out of every five U.S. teenagers has cholesterol level that increases the risk of heart disease. At least one-third of youth are overweight or obese and that means soaring rates of Type 2 diabetes and other physical ailments that could easily make this generation the most unhealthy yet.

Michelle Obama’s work on childhood obesity is welcomed and the effort should include an emphasis on outdoor time. Kids need time outside, in unstructured play, for their mental, physical and social well-being. Check out some of these resources that can help kids (and you!) get a daily green hour that will keep them healthier and happier.

Jonah Lehrer, writing in the Boston Globe shares some interesting studies on how nature –even a glimpse—can help us focus. It’s referred to as “attention restoration theory” and nature is the single biggest ingredient; and very beneficial to our brains.

Studies show that kids with ADD focus better after spending time outdoors. All of us will focus better after spending time outdoors! So, while I appreciate your visit to this blog, I’d rather you get up and get outside.

Advice for the President's Speechwriters

What should the President say in the State of the Union? Well, if his speech writers were asking me, I'd say the President needs to come out tough and stay tough. He needs to hit these four themes:

1. Of the people, by the people, for the people
2. “No” is not a solution
3. Hold on to the vision
4. Better, but not good enough.

And in case they asked for it, here's a draft:

We must not lose sight of why we are here. Our work must be "of the people, by the people, and for the people. " We are here in this Chamber because people voted for us to govern for the people; not for corporate power, not for special interests, not for our own personal gain. We are “of the people” – and to me that means we must walk in their shoes. We must understand -- to our core—that Americans are suffering, they are angry and they are afraid that things will only get worse. They have little faith in our ability to do our jobs. Doing our jobs means we have to be about the How.

We do not have the luxury of ignoring the multiple challenges this Administration inherited. I am about how we can meet these challenges and solve these very complex problems. If you disagree with my approach, tell me how you propose to solve them. Just don’t tell me and the American people, “No.” We cannot govern under a two-letter policy of “No.” “No” is not a solution. “No” is not leadership.

To those who suggest this Administration has taken on too many issues too fast, I say, step up and work with me, or step out of the way. There is much work that needs to be done and I will not limit my vision of the greatness we can create together because of those who want to rewrite history or be obstructionist.

I still hold on to the vision that America can be better. Where every American will have health care and no one will be denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition. I hold on to the vision that we will have health care reform in this country to prevent insurance companies from ending coverage because someone has been too sick for too long. I still hold on to the vision that America can lead the clean energy revolution, create millions of new jobs and make our country energy independent. I still hold on to the vision that my daughters and their generation will enjoy a healthier and safer environment. I still hold on to the vision that America can be a respected leader in the world community.

I refuse to accept that the partisanship that has poisoned our political process is here to stay. I still hold on to the vision that we can work together on behalf of the American people.

The State of the Union is better, but it is not good enough. While I am proud of this Administration’s accomplishments in our first year, there is much more work to do. Americans deserve better. We have not solved all the problems we inherited, and we cannot do it without the leadership and commitment of all of you sitting here tonight.

It is time to stop worrying about our jobs and ensure we create the jobs Americans need. It is time to stop worrying about our campaign budgets, and create the opportunities Americans need to repair their budgets. It’s time to stop obsessing over our own political power and give Americans back the power they need to improve their lives. It is time to stop the hateful rhetoric that breeds anger and division among our citizenry. It’s time that lobbyists for Big Oil and Big Coal, Big Banks, Big Insurance and Big Drug companies step away from the controls.

It’s time that “Main Street matters more than Wall Street” becomes more than a catchy tagline.

Climate Change and Change Management

Been putting together a presentation outline for the Chesapeake Bay Organizational Development Network entitled, What’s Climate Change have to do with Change Management? Hmmm.. that would be everything.

There are numerous “laws” of change management that can impede change efforts if ignored. Three of these laws are worth noting when examining the status of climate and energy legislation: The Law of What Is, The Law of Resistance and The Law of Imagination.

The Law of What Is simply means meeting people where they are. This means ensuring that the starting place for any change effort is not your destination, but the shared experiences that define the reality of those who will need to be part of the change. “It’s the economy, stupid” is that starting part.

Any change effort will always have forces for change and forces for sameness, hence the Law of Resistance. Fully embracing the resistance is the only way to move beyond it – what organizational development specialists call the “paradoxical theory of change.” Resistance is a natural byproduct of change – it’s something that should be respected, not destroyed. Ignoring it doesn’t work either. What’s so interesting about the current state of affairs on energy and climate legislation, is that the political resistance doesn’t match what Americans want. Poll after poll reinforces Americans interest (especially among Independents) in reforming our energy policies. The fact is – what Americans are concerned about -- jobs, the economy, dependency on foreign oil – can all be addressed through reforming our energy policy and addressing climate change. It is the pathway out of economic anemia. And yet, resistance, largely sitting on partisan fault lines, isn’t going away. The forces for sameness are still winning.

Add to this, the phenomenon of “system justification” described in Apocalypse Fatigue: Losing the Public on Climate Change, by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, at Yale Environment 360 -- the more one hears about the need to change, the more one hunkers down and justifies the existing system – aka lifestyle. This is particularly true when talking about climate catastrophe. There has always been a fine line between communicating the perils of inaction on climate change and keeping people hopeful that there are solutions they can see and understand.

In a good read, “Stranger than Fiction: Avatar, Copenhagen and the Politics of Climate Change, Anthony DiMaggio quotes Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.” (By the way, I don’t agree with his take that Copenhagen was a failure, see December posting, “Why Copenhagen Was A Success.") The difficulty Sinclair refers to is all about resistance – and it’s not just the Exxon executives resisting because their job depends on it or those Senators resisting because their corporate donations depend on it – it’s still millions of Americans who resist because they fear change – and think their jobs and lifestyles depend on not changing. Which brings us to the next law, The Law of Imagination.

We need to capture the imaginations of the American people about how their world can be different and better. The “imagine a world where America leads the clean energy revolution … where once shuttered manufacturing plants are buzzing with activity … where the air is cleaner… where we don’t have to worry about our energy sources running out. .. where we don’t send our hard-earned tax dollars to foreign countries, …. where the economy is strong and jobs are plentiful… ” We still have work to do to paint this picture in a way that finally allows people to stop holding on to the same so they move toward the change that’s needed. We also need to capture the imagination of obstructionists who could actually be turned into heroes by delivering a jobs bill that improves the economy and the environment at the same time.

We need to become master storytellers, communicating a positive, aspirational narrative, moving more Americans into a world they can see themselves in, a world they don’t want to miss out on, a world they will want to demand for themselves and their children. We simply can’t get the reform needed without more Republicans, Independents and Democrats demanding the economic opportunities they deserve -- and that can result from passing climate and energy legislation.

Murky Water... and Air

All of us who fish know that one of the worst conditions you can fish in is murky water. Murky means you just won’t be able to see the fish. Murky means too much has been stirred up and the fish, well, get to hide better in the murky water.

So it is with Senator Lisa Murkowski – deciding to stir it up. Deciding to hide under murky water and generate a whole bunch of murky, dirty air. A couple of fossil fuel lobbyists have written an amendment to weaken the Clean Air Act and have gotten Senator Murkowski to do their bidding for them.

Seems like Senator Murkowski, from Alaska, doesn’t like the fact that the Supreme Court ruled that under the Clean Air Act, the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate the pollution that causes global warming -- pollution that is melting the very land mass that is called Alaska. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is just doing her job – beginning the process to regulate carbon pollution. Seems like Senator Murkowski doesn’t really want to do her job as a Senator – which is to legislate.

Despite the fact that the Senator from Alaska doesn’t deny that climate change is real, and she’s been known to actually talk about the impacts to the state she represents, she doesn’t want EPA to do anything about it. That, the Senator contends should be the purview of Congress. OK. So doing something about it means stopping the EPA from doing anything about it, even though the Senate has still done nothing about it. Hmmm… sounds pretty murky to me.

The Senator’s spokesperson, Anne Johnson suggested that the reason the Senator is going ahead with this Dirty Air Amendment is that she doesn’t want the threat of “EPA regulations hanging over their head.” And how does that actually prevent Congress from doing its job? Interesting to note that Johnson also said that, “Alaska is ground zero for climate change. If anyone is going to be able to talk this much about it, it's someone from Alaska." So, again, the Senator wants to strip EPA of any authority to regulate the very pollution that is making Alaska ground zero for climate change because the Senator from Alaska isn't doing anything herself?

Seems like the Senator from Alaska also hoped to hide under the murky water the fact that in this campaign cycle she’s the #1 recipient of money from electric utilities and is #4 in the line up for oil and gas handouts.

Alaska is on the frontlines of global warming and Senator Murky needs to figure out just who she wants to represent – the fossil fuel industry or the people of Alaska. That’s pretty clear. If the Senator really cares about those villages that in her own words are “falling into the ocean," because of climate change, she needs to make a clear choice.

It’s time polluters stopped messing with the air we breathe. The Clean Air Act is one of the most successful laws Congress has ever passed and has improved the lives of millions of Americans – children and the elderly in particular – who suffer from asthma and other respiratory conditions.

The amendment to weaken the Clean Air Act may come up as early as Wednesday, January 20. Call your Senators and tell them to vote NO on the Murkowski amendment. Congress needs to focus on the real business at hand: passing a climate and energy bill that will improve the economy, protect the environment and our national security. We need legislation that caps carbon pollution and creates an investment infusion in clean energy technology. That’s pretty clear.

Re-entry

For many of us who had the opportunity to take a break over the “holiday season,” the re-entry into the maddening pace can be a bit shocking, especially if we gave ourselves the break we really needed. Did you unplug? Did you let go? Rest?

For me, the week was spent in the quiet surroundings of a cabin in the woods; spending time every day outside experiencing a true Garrett County winter. There’s something more than invigorating about being outside in single digit weather, filling bird feeders, bringing up wood and breaking track in the new fallen snow. Time was spent making meals with family and friends, reading True Compass, by Senator Ted Kennedy. Writing. Embracing the solitude. Letting the day have its own fullness. Getting a lot of sleep.

Dr. Ester Buchholz was a pioneer in researching the benefits of solitude and has been often quoted about its value: “Others inspire us, information feeds us, practice improves our performance, but we need quiet time to figure things out, to emerge with new discoveries, to unearth original answers.”

Wayne Muller in Sabbath, reminds us “that the world aches for the generosity of well-rested people.” He goes on to suggest that:

“A ‘successful life’ has become a violent enterprise. We make war on our own bodies, pushing them beyond their limits; war on our children, because we cannot find enough time to be with them when they are hurt and afraid, and need our company; war on our spirit, because we are too preoccupied to listen to the quiet voices that seek to nourish and refresh us; war on our communities, because we are fearfully protecting what we have, and do not feel safe enough to be kind and generous; war on the earth, because we cannot take the time to place our feet on the ground and allow it to feed us, to taste its blessings and give thanks.”

Muller speaks of his own experience sitting on dozens of boards and commissions with people who, as he surmises, because they are so tired, overwhelmed and overworked they lack the time and the capacity to “listen to the deeper voices that speak to the essence of the problems before them.” The result is a quick fix which provides “the seed of a new problem.”

So, perhaps, we should be grateful that Congress is taking a break. We can always hope that the time away will bring the wisdom and wake up call needed to get a climate and energy bill passed by Earth Day, 2010 that takes care of the essence of our economic and environmental problems.

And perhaps even Arianna Huffington and Cindi Leive will decide that their one month resolution to get enough sleep will become a life time resolution.