One of the best take-home messages of our study preparing for Global Warming, Cap & Trade, Dollars & Sense is that you can’t take any particular short-term weather pattern and extrapolate a larger trend one way or the other.
So all you folks saying “Snowmageddon is absolute proof that global warming is a hoax” or suggesting that “Snowmageddon is absolute proof of extreme weather caused by global warming,” cool your jets.
A clip in which Thomas Friedman nails why we’ve got to find some way to revive the constructive push and pull of democracy right here at home. Hat tip to Luke.
“[Population] growth has come on so big, so fast that Michael V. Hayden, the direction of the Central Intelligence Agency, stated that his analysts now believe the most worrying trend in the world is not terrorism but demographics… most of the growth is almost certain to occur in countries least able to sustain it, and that will create a situation that will likely fuel instability and extremism…” — Thomas Friedman in Hot, Flat and Crowded
Considering hosting our own public forum to make sense of the Tallahassee controversy on Biomass, I attended last night’s City Commission meeting that allowed public testimony on the topic. If you’ve got four hours (and a couple of Valium) you can watch it yourself courtesy of The Tallahassee Democrat.
The majority of discussion was respectful and civil – if not always entirely factual – although there were enough really bad moments that most of the commissioners felt the need to comment on the lack of civility as the meeting ended.
Mayor Marks:
“There were a lot of things said tonight. And a lot of them were accurate and a lot of them were inaccurate…”
“…It is clear there is a lot of misinformation, misleading information, bad information out in the public sector… some of it in my opinion was presented to the public deliberately in an attempt to confuse the public. And that’s troublesome to me. I’ve even had people fundamentally tell us that’s what they wanted to do… We will have civil, orderly procedures in these chambers. I will not tolerate anything else. That’s what our citizens expect and this is what we’re going to have.”
Commissioner Andrew Gillum:
“I think that the relationship between public officials and the public is a sacred one… We do a lot of things throughout the week and in our time as elected officials and sometimes people disagree with those things and sometimes people agree. What I wholeheartedly disagree with is demagoguing of people who give their time and their lives because they care and their talents to this community and at the first disagreement, they’re demagogued. They’re called baby killers, they’re don’t they don’t care about black people, they’re told they don’t care about kids and so many other things. And I think those are things that I reject are completely untrue and certainly not representative of the elected officials who serve on this body.”
Commissioner Debbie Lightsey:
“All the right and the wrong, the pros and the cons are never on one side of the equation. If they were this would be an easy job and I will tell you it is not easy… Part of the problem here is the public has not received adequate information to date. Some of the information I think should be very reassuring to many of you. Some of these things aren’t a matter of judgment, they are a matter of fact. You can look at what’s going to be burned, you can look at the emissions, you can look at all those kinds of things. This is factual information. There are plants like this in operation. It’s not he said she said. In this world there are still things that are fact and things that are factually incorrect and we need to sort those out here tonight. Because I’ve heard a lot of stuff that was not factually correct and in my view was stated to be alarming as opposed to informative. I told everyone that before this discussion to tonight what I wanted to hear from people was their view on this but that I expected people to be civil and honest. To a huge degree everybody complied this that, but there were a couple of exceptions. And I have noted those, as I always do and I don’t appreciate that. And you have no credibility in my book when you behave that way in these chambers. We’re here trying to make a hard decision that balances a lot of issues in this community and we’re doing the best we can. I expect everybody when we have this next public hearing to be civil, to discuss this on the merits, to not make snide personal remarks that get you no where here, in fact it discredits your position and you need to recognize that.”
“America does have a problem: I think we’ve lost our way since 9/11. And the world has a problem: It’s getting hot, flat and crowded. And I think we solve our problem by taking the lead in how we solve the world’s problem. In a world that is HOT, global warming; FLAT, the rise of middle classes from India to China and Brazil; and getting CROWDED in terms of population – what I call ET or Energy Technology is going to be the next IT, the next great industrial revolution. And I’m a big believer in whichever country dominates that economic revolution is going to have the most security, the most respect, the most competitive and the most healthy population.”
Friedman quotes John Gardener “This is a series of incredible opportunities disguised as insolvable problems.”
