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.