[MCN] My climate change email to Sen. Jon Tester today

John Meyer john at cottonwoodlaw.org
Thu Jun 6 17:35:04 EDT 2019


Please let us know how Tester responds. 

The future of Montana’s economy lies in developing our renewable resources like wind and solar. The “All of the Above” approach that includes burning coal is literally killing us all. We have to elect people that are taking a strong stand and working on the Green New Deal. Tester, Daines, and Bullock are becoming irrelevant. Kathleen Williams sometimes likens herself to Janette Rankin—hopefully she will be strong like Janette and come out even stronger against fossil fuels. 

Make Montana fossil fuel free by 2023. 



John Meyer
Executive Director & General Counsel 
Cottonwood Environmental Law Center
P.O. Box 412 Bozeman, MT 59771
John at Cottonwoodlaw.org
(406) 546-0149

The information contained herein is privileged and confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, you must delete this email and inform the sender of the error.

Like what we're doing? Click here to donate. 

> On Jun 6, 2019, at 3:15 PM, Lance Olsen via Missoula-Community-News <missoula-community-news at bigskynet.org> wrote:
> 
> Senator Jon Tester
> United States Senate
> Washington DC
> 
> Dear Jon
> 
> In December of 2018, recognizing the broad array of economic risks associated with emissions from combustion of fossil fuels, the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, a group of 415 investment firms managing combined assets worth more than twice the size of the entire Chinese economy, concluded that 1— corporations must be required to come clean on reporting their climate risks. 
> 
> That’s not all. This same group also concluded that governments must back away from 2 — reliance on thermal coal, and 3 —stop subsidizing all fossil fuels, and 4 — get on with putting a price on carbon <<https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/10/business/climate-change-investors-cop24/index.html>>.
> 
> Try as they might, your colleagues across the aisle cannot dismiss this group as a bunch of socialists. Nor can they dismiss this group as a bunch of hippie tree huggers. Although they might try to look the other way, your colleagues across the aisle need to realize and admit that this group is a group of practicing capitalists, worried about rising threats to capital. 
> 
> I endorse and support the four above steps to reduce the many risks emerging from combustion of fossil fuels. My own concerns focus around climate-driven risks to living species and ecosystems, including risks to humans, especially children, but these concerns will be served with initiation of the four important steps urged by the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change.
> 
> The beauty of this investment  group’s four-point pressure campaign is that it doesn’t focus on requiring corporate disclosure of exposure to climate risk as a single silver bullet sufficient to the cause. It also urges government reform on three counts, not one, rejecting any suggestion that some single action by government can do the job. That’s consistent with climate scientist’s recent urging that action will be needed across broad swaths of our lives and times. 
> 
> Last but not least the investment group’s four-point campaign is highly consistent with major features of the Green New Deal. But, however the Green New Deal itself works out, the Quixotic quest for a silver bullet has delayed realistic thinking for too long. 
> 
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> Elizabeth Kolbert: " And I think the point that Bill has made, and I agree with it, is maybe we can avoid the worst possible future. But I don’t think at this point we can avoid a lot, a lot, a lot of damage.”
> 
> Bill McKibben: “Look, Betsy’s right. So we’re not playing for stopping climate change. We’re playing maybe for being able to slow it down to the point where it doesn’t make civilizations impossible. That’s an open question. There are scientists who tell you we’re already past that point. The consensus, at least for the moment, is that we’ve got a narrow and closing window, but that if we move with everything we have, then, perhaps, we’ll be able to squeeze a fair amount of our legacy through it. But Betsy is right, an already very difficult century is going to become a lot harder no matter what we do. It’s at this point trying to keep it from becoming not a difficult and even miserable century but a literally impossible one.”
> https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-new-yorker-interview/bill-mckibben-and-elizabeth-kolbert-on-the-un-extinction-report
> 
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> Greta Thunberg: “We live in a strange world. But it’s the world that my generation has been handed. It’s the only world we’ve got.”
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFvXc14g3AQ
> 
> ————————————————————————————————————
> “A new area of study is the field that some of us are beginning to call social traps. The term refers to situations in society that contain traps formally like a fish trap, where men or whole societies get themselves started in some direction or some set of relationships that later prove to be unpleasant or lethal and that they see no easy way to back out of or to avoid."
> 
> John Platt. Social Traps. American Psychologist, August 1973
> —————————————————————————————————
> Excerpt:  "Environmental psychologist Susi Moser, also talks about the importance of acknowledging our underlying fears and distress about climate change as an important coping strategy.  She argues that this is a necessary step for developing ‘authentic hope’ about climate change.  Moser (2012) calls it ‘the bravest thing’ – getting real, accepting reality without illusions, and accepting that better tomorrows may not come.”
> https://www.isthishowyoufeel.com/blog/how-do-people-cope-with-feelings-about-climate-change-so-that-they-stay-engaged-and-take-action
> ————————————————————
> Teen activist says leaders not 'mature enough' to take action on climate
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/12/15/teenage-activist-calls-leaders-not-mature-enough-take-action-climate-change/
> Dec 15, 2018 ... Greta Thunberg spoke at the global climate conference in Poland, telling officials they 'are too scared of being unpopular' to take action on ...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -----------------
> Missoula Community News: An announcement list for the progressive, alternative and nonprofit communities in Missoula and Western Montana.
> 
> List Info:
>   http://bigskynet.org/mailman/listinfo/missoula-community-news_bigskynet.org
> List-Post:
>   mailto:missoula-community-news at bigskynet.org
> List-Help:
>   mailto:missoula-community-news-request at bigskynet.org?subject=help
> List-Unsubscribe:
>   http://bigskynet.org/mailman/listinfo/missoula-community-news_bigskynet.org
>   mailto:missoula-community-news-request at bigskynet.org?subject=unsubscribe
> List-Subscribe:
>   http://bigskynet.org/mailman/listinfo/missoula-community-news_bigskynet.org
>   mailto:missoula-community-news-request at bigskynet.org?subject=subscribe
> Want a human?
>   mailto:listadmin at wildrockies.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://bigskynet.org/pipermail/missoula-community-news_bigskynet.org/attachments/20190606/2061b7ce/attachment.html>


More information about the Missoula-Community-News mailing list