Score one for the little people… all your protests and Indivisible groups demanding to be heard by your senators has paid off… but we have to KEEP UP THE PRESSURE….
I don’t know about you, but the politics of this time are draining my spirit and I am aware there is a disconnect to my soul of hope. I think we have lost the sense that a nation is a place, a land, a river, a base of life of which we all are a part. If you separate the nation from its place, you separate people from their soul.
A few weeks ago we read excerpts of Terry Tempest Williams latest book, The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks during our post July 4th special. This is not Bergman’s “Hour of the Wolf,” it is the hour of the mountains, the rivers, the glaciers, the sandstones, the eagles and the fritillary butterflies. We need the solace of our home.
You obviously picked up the extraordinary beauty and lyricism of Terry Tempest Williams’ writing. She is as much a national treasure as the land she writes about. This week we will have the interview with Terry about her latest book, The Hour of Land. Added to her writing is a sense of urgency as she is more aware of the terrible threat not only to our national parks and monuments, but to our total environment. Of our 59 national parks, 42 have some form of oil exploration, fracking or drilling. We cannot forget that essentially after the advent of trains, we wiped out the buffalo in about 10 years. About 25% of our CO2 emissions now come from our recent-about 6 years- accelerated extraction and export of fossil fuels by fracking, deep water drilling, shale extraction etc. The price of fossil fuel extraction has gotten very high.
So what do we do about it?
Is fossil fuel energy and the increasing environmental and health costs going to continue or do we convert to renewables? It’s going to take input from all of us. Are you aware that the “Energy and Natural Resources Act of 2017,” Senate Bill 1460, is quietly working its way through the Senate? While most eyes are being diverted to Trump – health care, Russia, the crisis du jour, McConnell is steadily moving to a vote of this 900 page bill. Some people call this the “Trump/McConnell Dirty Energy Bill.” McConnell has fast tracked the bill by putting it on the Senate calendar so he can advance it to the Senate Floor without going through committees. We will discuss aspects of the bill with JANET REDMAN, U.S. Policy Director at Oil Change International, where she focuses on ending taxpayer handouts to the fossil fuel industry and building support for innovative policies to drive a just transition to a clean energy economy. Janet serves on is an the board of directors of the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives and Associate Fellow with the Institute for Policy Studies’ Climate Policy Program.
I’ll give you a hint…
There is a small section on renewables in the bill – solar and wind are not even mentioned. Many experts feel it locks us in to the advancement and use of fossil fuels for our future.
—Mary and Arlene
Tune into From a Woman’s Point of View Thursday at 10 am.
