Combating Obama’s Climate Change Cowardice In Two Simple Steps

Another week of climate change nightmares, another week of sell-out Democrats enabling the fossil fuel industry. It was announced Planet Earth’s atmosphere held strong at 400 PPM of Co2 for an entire month, 50 points higher than climatologists say is anything short of disaster.

Just days later, the president approved drilling for yet more fucking oil, this time out of the rapidly melting Arctic pole. Barack even pandered with a line about “rigorous safety standards” like some asshole who doesn’t remember the Gulf clusterfuck.

Some claimed disappointment that Obama would do such a thing in light of his stated carbon reduction goals. Sorry, folks, but the president has no carbon reduction goals. Obama gives zero fucks about climate change, just like the rest of the Democratic party, just like the Republican party. The only difference is the GOP doesn’t bother lying about it. Liberal climate change denial is real, and rampant.

Elsewhere in the blog-o-verse, there’s cowardice even among those who do appreciate the magnitude of doom we’ve reserved ourselves. We’re told to stop using terms like ‘environment’ and ‘planet’ because, y’know, our celestial home is just too controversial to name aloud. Our newsfeeds are contaminated by absurd public relations advice to dial back our dialog to the point of saying virtually nothing at all.

Here’s an example from The Guardian of all places:
“Street protests are almost immediately linked to politically-aligned campaigns, from which we try very hard to disassociate. For people like me who live on the equator, we just do not get images of melting ice caps and stranded polar bears.”

I’ve never been to the equator, but I’ve a pretty good idea what rising sea levels will do to the populations of South Pacific atolls over the next century. Moving on.

Overcoming this push to self-censor, to water down rhetoric, of fearing dumbshits who point to New York snow in winter as proof global warming is a hoax – it is vital we don’t shoot ourselves in the foot looking for that broad base of acceptance that will never happen. It’s been said before, but we don’t need 7 billion people to be concerned with ecological collapse in order to stop ecological collapse. Far from it, such goals are time wasted by only the most vile corporate greenwashers.

Bike advocates make for shitty environmentalists. Where you’d expect the strongest, most educated voices in the active transit community to be hurtling over themselves extolling low carbon virtues of a carbon-fiber bike life, there’s instead a severe silence.

Also fans of self-censoring, bike advocates bicker over whether to banish the word ‘cyclist’ for fear of alienating themselves even further from motorists who couldn’t give a rat’s ass how some spandex dude hogging the lane self-identifies. Instead, we find active transit wonks mired in hyping the fiscal and societal benefits of two-wheeled commuting. And more power to them for it.

All well and good: Bikes are fun, bikes are cheap, bikes make your property value go up and food carts fall from the sky.  Bikes also curb the hell out of your carbon consumption. From banal souls I’ve been told ‘bikes can’t save the world’, to which I reply, ‘Oh, yee of little imagination.‘ You don’t need much imagination at all, really. Bikes are half of a simple, two-step solution to fight climate change and fossil fueled Democrats.

Most online carbon footprint calculators assume we’re still middle class, drive often, and fly at least a couple times a year – which is almost nobody you know under the age of 35 today.

The “average American” (they’re out there, maybe) is responsible for about 20 tons of carbon emissions per person, per year. This is compared to the global average of 4 tons per Earthling. Riding a bike full time and (…drumroll…) eating a Vegan diet reduces your footprint vastly, to under 0.4 tons.

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You’re likely already on board with cycling as much as possible if you’ve read this far, but it’s far less likely you’re Vegan.

I know, you tried it once, but then goat cheese or something. Or you’re “90% Vegan“, which is just another way of saying you’re not Vegan at all. It might sound scary to commit to never eating animals again, but a dead planet sounds even scarier. Besides, you’re an adult now. It’s time you weened yourself off bovine baby formula.

While you might think living car-free and plant-strong isn’t easy, it is remarkably simple. No two choices you make each day will have a more positive impact on the health of your own body, our Earth, and the animals we share it with.

Obama can drill for all the oil he wants and ruin the arctic. Maybe we can stop him, maybe we can’t. But virtually all of us can make a little fucking difference in our own lives. Even The Guardian can admit: it’s the individual revolutions that add up to real hope and change.

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Resource links:
VegNews Magazine
Vegan Sidekick
The Vegan Society

Thumbnail image from Pepe’s Vegetarian Bistro – Lincoln Nebraska
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1 comment

  1. For me plant based diets and bicycle commuting go hand in hand.

    Eat a whole foods plant based diet, and your body thanks you for it. Eat nasty shit, and your body and mind feel like shit.

    Your body recovers from that long ass bike ride better when your diet is good. So the biking and the healthy eating together provide some tangible positive feedback.

    The ecological benefits are just nice, but have never honestly been my primary motivator.

    I could be a better eater, I do eat lots of internationally produced produce.

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