There’s even a fierce battle brewing in Florida between the Koch brothers and a free market Tea Party group pushing for solar power—a clear sign that, as with gay marriage, there is no longer just one single monolithic conservative position.
This ongoing shift is far from a done deal, and there’s still plenty of confusion and denial out there, reflected in a recent Media Matters report that most major media ignore global warming’s role in recent severe winter snowstorms, but the trends are more in synch than not, and as with the unexpected Indiana RFRA firestorm, the cumulative impact of those multiple trends has the potential to surprise. Considering how depressing the decades-long gridlock on climate-change has been, that can only be viewed as a sign of great hope. The long-term climate impacts remain grim, and there are no guarantees here, but there is hope.
Climate Progress blogger Joe Romm recently drew a direct parallel (“Boycotting States: The Future For Climate Activism?”) focusing specifically on the necessity of the state-level struggle. He highlighted Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell’s mendacious threat to the global community, invoking state-level opposition to EPA greenhouse gas regulation—and the key role of casting it as a moral struggle.
“McConnell, the Kochs, and their pro-pollution allies, have taken the climate fight to the states. So the climate community will have to step up its game the way the LGBT community has,” Romm argued.
The LGBT community didn’t win by asking by for people to “accept gay marriage by holding their moral noses,” he pointed out. They won because “they set out to change change people’s minds about what is moral,” and that’s “the lesson that the gay revolution holds for any progressive movement,” particularly the climate action movement to save our planet’s future.
It’s a very important argument, and the profile of the moral dimension is being raised significantly by the divestment movement. But this only highlights part of the rapidly changing dynamics of this struggle.
The first trend is rising problems for the fossil fuel sector, which can be seen on at least three fronts: (a) financial and (b) physical/technological, which are tightly intertwined, and (c) political, where pre-existing problems, both climate-related and otherwise, come to the fore as fossil fuels lose their position of dominance. These problems are most severe for coal, the dirtiest and most deadly of the fossil fuels.
As noted recently in the Economist, whole countries are turning against coal, and “producers face prolonged weakness in prices.” More specifically, “The Dow Jones Total Coal Market index has fallen by 76% in the past five years.” It went on say:
High-cost deep mines in the rich world are worst-hit: in America 24 coal companies have gone bust in the past three years, and one-sixth of the remaining capacity loses money. But even Australia, whose low-cost opencast mines play a role akin to Saudi Arabia’s in the oil market, is jittery.
Coal’s problems aren’t just limited to the U.S., so there’s simply no way to spin this as “Obama’s war on coal,” as Republicans are wont to do. This a global problem for a global industry that’s at the heart of causing global probllems for everyone else.
To be more specific: A look at the situation in China—the world’s biggest coal consumer—found multiple indications of declining demand, and increasing pressure to continue cutting back. ………http://www.salon.com/2015/04/10/heres_how_we_defeat_the_science_deniers_even_wingnuts_learn_that_reality_is_good_business/
