Further, contemplate about the folly of instigating ever more sweeping resource wars for economic superiority when petroleum products are ultimately affiliated with uncontrollable climate change effects. Is there not some harebrained inherent contradiction when one's actions, actually, lead to results that are opposite to the ones that he is trying to achieve? With climate change factors in the mix and their being related to fossil fuel use, how can any ongoing oil use possibly be expected to create durable economic improvements? How can they possibly check the global financial crisis?
As you are aware, a growing number of top atmospheric researchers deem it impossible to limit climate change to a 2C rise. Indeed, the minimum that they expect is a 4C increase.
In relation, World Bank chief economist Lord Stern stated, "A rise of 5C would be a temperature the world has not seen for 30 to 50 million years. We've been around only 100,000 years as human beings. We don't know what that's like. We haven't seen 3C for a few million years, and we don't know what that looks like either."
He went on to add, "Do politicians understand just how difficult it could be, just how devastating rises of 4C, 5C or 6C could be? I think, not yet," after which he warned that the risk associated with governments not adequately addressing climate change in time to avert the brunt of the disaster would lead to catastrophic consequences. According to him, these involve risking at least a third of the world's aggregate wealth, along with a minimum of a thirty percent reduction in consumption per person worldwide. Posed another way, global GDP would drop to at least 70 percent of current output. [4]
With the above assessment in mind, here are some additional considerations. I hope that you will reflect on them and, while you're at it, please view Howard Zinn's documentary "The People Speak". [5] I think that you need to see it so that you will be reminded of your earlier passions and commitments.
In any event, you are always going to have critics and obstructionists. In relation, the more that you try to reconcile with the other side - the more they will demand, regardless of the particular position that you take. This is a given outcome for bipartisan politics, regardless of where one stands on the ideological spectrum.
So you might as well take a deep breath, chuck the speechwriters' carefully crafted words and wing it. State the unvarnished truth about your understandings in terms of the actions that absolutely need to be undertaken to preserve the world intact for our and future generations.
Nobody expects that, were you to be candid, you wouldn't have lots of trouble ahead. People who gain advantages from the status quo remaining as it is, people like the Waltons and some of the Rockefellers, would clearly get agitated and outright hostile.
They always do when their undue privileges are threatened. However, this being the case does not excuse any one of us, especially not you in your influential position, from taking chances and commencing those actions, unpopular although they may be, that he knows are in the best interest of the citizens in his country and the world in general. Anyone who deems otherwise is a sorry excuse for a human being - a little nothingness. I know this is so and you know it, too.
In relation, please remember that nothing is politically right when it is ethically wrong. Consequently, it takes tremendous courage of conviction to, on a consistent basis, keep on the principled path.
Yet one must do so. Without it, there can be no good leadership. As Thomas Jefferson suggested, "I never did, or countenanced, in public life, a single act inconsistent with the strictest good faith; having never believed there was one code of morality for a public, and another for a private man."
This outlook in mind, your success or failure as a President will depend on your capacity to fearlessly follow life supporting choices, not necessarily whatever is politically expedient, easy, popular with colleagues or comfortable. In a similar vein, it means your unshackling yourself from a perverse level of corporate influence.
All considered, realize that you can learn to take a firm step to move forward in a better direction than you have chosen to take so far. As you can gather from the commentary at Asher Miller's "Open Letter to President Obama" [6] at Post Carbon Institute's website, there are many people who will encourage, support and assist you in doing so.
Sincerely,
Emily Spence
References
