LIVE from Pittsburgh: Inslee urges netroots to help get Waxman/Markey through Senate
The first of today's afternoon Netroots Nation panels that I'm attending is called Setbacks in Environmental Policy and the Law: Reversing the Trend. I chose the panel because it sounded like a good topic, but perhaps more importantly, to support two great leaders from the Pacific Northwest who are speaking on the panel: Denis Hayes, the President & CEO of the Bullitt Foundation, and Representative Jay Inslee, my voice in the United States House of Representatives.
The panel, moderated by the Alliance for Justice's Nan Aron, naturally gravitated towards a discussion of the Waxman/Markey bill passed by the House of Representatives back in June.
Representative Inslee expressed his concern that inaction could doom chances for worldwide progress on reducing emissions. (Representatives from leading nations are due to meet in Copenhagen, Denmark, this December for a critical meeting to discuss replacing the Kyoto Protocol).
Inslee pleaded with attendees of the panel to devote some time, every day, to lobbying senators to vote for Waxman/Markey in the Senate.
Hayes spoke eloquently about some of the atrocious decisions that were made in the Reagan years (especially the dismantling of the funding for the Solar Energy Research Institute (now the National Renewable Energy Laboratory).
Hayes also mentioned having a conversation with Jared Diamond shortly after the release of Collapse (a rather excellent book about how societies choose to survive or fail) in which he asked Diamond if there was any common factor that united the case studies in his book.
As Hayes recalled, Diamond suggested that there was, and that it was the growth of a large disparity between the haves and the have-nots, where the haves gained the ability to wield enormous power without suffering any consequences.
Much of the question and answer part of the panel focused on strategy and tactics for trying to get a bill out of Congress by the end of the year. Inslee opined that the energy that fueled President Obama's campaign last week has dissipated, and the absence of activist ground troops is making it difficult to make progress on both climate and healthcare reform.
The panel, moderated by the Alliance for Justice's Nan Aron, naturally gravitated towards a discussion of the Waxman/Markey bill passed by the House of Representatives back in June.
Representative Inslee expressed his concern that inaction could doom chances for worldwide progress on reducing emissions. (Representatives from leading nations are due to meet in Copenhagen, Denmark, this December for a critical meeting to discuss replacing the Kyoto Protocol).
Inslee pleaded with attendees of the panel to devote some time, every day, to lobbying senators to vote for Waxman/Markey in the Senate.
Hayes spoke eloquently about some of the atrocious decisions that were made in the Reagan years (especially the dismantling of the funding for the Solar Energy Research Institute (now the National Renewable Energy Laboratory).
Hayes also mentioned having a conversation with Jared Diamond shortly after the release of Collapse (a rather excellent book about how societies choose to survive or fail) in which he asked Diamond if there was any common factor that united the case studies in his book.
As Hayes recalled, Diamond suggested that there was, and that it was the growth of a large disparity between the haves and the have-nots, where the haves gained the ability to wield enormous power without suffering any consequences.
Much of the question and answer part of the panel focused on strategy and tactics for trying to get a bill out of Congress by the end of the year. Inslee opined that the energy that fueled President Obama's campaign last week has dissipated, and the absence of activist ground troops is making it difficult to make progress on both climate and healthcare reform.
# Posted by Andrew : 11:18 AM
Comments:
Related to the disparity between haves and have-notes. You might be interested in this link: http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/
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