Gun Violence and Climate Change: Are They Related?

The tragedy of the mass murders in Newtown, CT were indeed horrible. I am extremely sad for the families affected, and not only those families but all who have suffered as a result of gun violence.  The Newtown incident indeed seems to have been the turning point for finally coming to grips around a sensible gun safety policy.

Hurricane Sandy was thought to be a similar turning point relative to the climate change tragedy too.  But unfortunately gun violence has turned the country’s attention away, hopefully temporarily, from similar urgency to act to save our climate.

But the two issues are similar.  How, you wonder?  Well imagine if President Obama put the same emphasis on acting to mitigate climate change as he is now doing to reign in our culture of gun violence.  

Below is the text of the very speech he recently gave on his plans for reducing gun violence.  I have taken the liberty to somewhat modify it, and frankly it wasn’t that difficult using some basic word and phrase substitutions.  My edits are in italics.  

Just imagine if this speech had indeed been given, perhaps sometime within the last 4 years after any one of our extreme weather disasters. When will we hear similar passion from our President on an issue that has a much more far reaching catastrophic impact than any other we have ever faced?  Will it be this year?

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you, everybody.  Please have a seat.  Good afternoon, everybody.

Let me begin by thanking our Vice President, Joe Biden, for your dedication, Joe, to this issue, for bringing so many different voices to the table.  Because while reducing the impacts of climate change is a complicated challenge, protecting our children from harm shouldn’t be a divisive one.

Over the months since the tragedy in New Jersey and New York, we’ve heard from so many, and, obviously, none have affected us more than the families of those who lost loved ones or their homes and businesses.  And so we’re grateful to all of you for taking the time to be here, and recognizing that we honor their memories in part by doing everything we can to prevent this from happening again.

These are our kids.  This is what they’re thinking about.  And so what we should be thinking about is our responsibility to care for them, and shield them and future generations from harm, and give them the tools they need to grow up and do everything that they’re capable of doing -- not just to pursue their own dreams, but to help build this country.  This is our first task as a society, keeping our children safe.  This is how we will be judged.  And their voices should compel us to change.

And that’s why, last month, I asked Joe to lead an effort, along with members of my Cabinet, to come up with some concrete steps we can take right now to keep our children, our citizens and our planet safe, to help prevent massive destruction from extreme weather events like Hurricane Sandy, to reduce the greenhouse gases that lead to an epidemic of pollution, wildfires, drought, flooding, and catastrophic storms in this country.

And we can't put this off any longer.  Just last Thursday, as TV networks were covering one of Joe’s meetings on this topic, news broke of another outbreak of extreme heat accompanied by wildfires, this one in Australia.  In the months since entire communities were violently taken from us via Hurricane Sandy, hundreds more of our fellow Americans have reportedly died prematurely due to air pollution.  And every day we wait, that number will keep growing.

So I’m putting forward a specific set of proposals based on the work of Joe’s task force.  And in the days ahead, I intend to use whatever weight this office holds to make them a reality. Because while there is no law or set of laws that can prevent all emissions of greenhouse gases, no piece of legislation that will prevent every storm, every drought, if there is even one thing we can do to reduce this destruction from extreme weather, if there is even one life that can be saved, then we've got an obligation to try.

And I’m going to do my part.  As soon as I'm finished speaking here, I will sit at that desk and I will sign a directive giving the EPA, the Dept. of Energy, scientists and scientific institutions, schools, mental health professionals and the public health community some of the tools they need to help begin climate change mitigation and education efforts.

We will make it easier to keep the worst threat to our climate out of the US by rejecting the Keystone Pipeline permit.  We will help communities hire more resource officers if they want them and to develop emergency preparedness and climate adaptation plans.  

And while year after year, those who oppose even modest regulation and mitigation activities have threatened to defund scientific or medical research into the causes of climate change including the role of CO2 emissions and other particulates, I will direct the Centers for Disease Control and the EPA to go ahead and study the best ways to reduce it -- and Congress should fund research into the effects that pollution and catastrophic extreme weather events leading to loss of homes and communities may have on young minds.  We don't benefit from ignorance.  We don't benefit from not knowing the science around climate change and of this epidemic of climate change denial.

These are a few of the executive actions that I’m announcing today.  But as important as these steps are, they are in no way a substitute for action from members of Congress.  To make a real and lasting difference, Congress, too, must act -- and Congress must act soon.  And I’m calling on Congress to pass some very specific proposals right away.

First:  It’s time for Congress to require a national carbon tax that will set a steadily rising price on carbon.  The laws already passed, those increasing fuel efficiency standards for vehicles for example, when fully implemented, will reduce carbon pollution by 6 billion tons for the cars built from 2017 to 2025. That's equivalent to removing a year's worth of carbon pollution from the U.S. We’ve also taken the historic step of setting a carbon pollution standard for coal-fired power plants. And we've doubled the generation of clean, renewable electricity from sources like solar and wind power.

But it’s hard to enforce laws that are constantly challenged in court and distorted in their cost and benefit by misinformation think tanks. That’s not safe.  That's not smart.  It’s not fair to responsible business owners, citizens who demand transparency and accountability by energy companies and polluters, and most of all to our children who expect to have a hospitable planet around when they are adults.

If you want to ensure we do protect our planet and climate for the future -- we need to transition from a fossil fuel based economy as quickly as possible.  This will require the same or more level of commitment and support that we applied to getting to the moon.  And that was accomplished in only 10 years. This is common sense.  And an overwhelming majority of Americans agree with us that climate change is happening now and we need to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant -- including 80% of Democrats, 72% of Independents and 50% percent of Republicans, according to one survey.  So there’s no reason we can’t do this.

Second:  Congress should appoint an EPA administrator who will continue to enforce and expand our Clean Air and Clean Water acts. As the outgoing administrator Lisa Jackson said on the 40th anniversary of the Clean Air Act, “we will continue to promote commonsense strategies that encourage investment in energy efficiency and updated technologies. The history of the Clean Air Act is the history of environmental innovation, and we intend to carry on that tradition”.  

Technologies and actions that harm our environment such as hydraulic fracturing or placement of pipelines that put clean water sources at risk and contribute to emissions of methane exacerbating climate change, have no place in our society.  A majority of Americans agree with us on this. 

And, by the way, so did Richard Nixon. 

Richard Nixon, one of the staunchest defenders of “New Federalism”, a view which directed money and power away from the federal bureaucracy and toward states and municipalities, believed he could respond more efficiently to the needs of the people. After a groundswell of citizen outcry leading to the first Earth Day demonstrations of 1970, he sent dozens of environmental proposals to Congress, including the Clean Air Act of 1970, perhaps one of the most significant pieces of environmental legislation ever passed. He also created two new agencies, the Department of Natural Resources and the Environmental Protection Agency, to oversee environmental matters.

And finally, Congress needs to help, rather than hinder, regulatory agencies as they do their job.  We should get tougher on all forms of fossil fuel extraction and consumption, especially on those who skirt regulation and do all they can to dismantle, distort and ignore them.  And we should severely punish anybody who helps them do this, including fossil fuel funded studies that are specifically authored to hide or falsely counter scientific outcomes of environmental studies.  Since Congress will have to confirm a director of the EPA, they should confirm someone, who will be as strong an advocate for the climate as was Lisa Jackson.

And at a time when budget cuts are forcing many communities to reduce emergency responders, cut disaster relief funding and delay infrastructure repairs and hardening improvements, we should put more resources into these and other activities.

Let me be absolutely clear.  Like most Americans, I believe the Constitution requires us to “promote the general welfare”. I respect our strong tradition of free enterprise and the right of businesses to pursue a profit.  There are millions of responsible, law-abiding businesses and ethically acting corporations in America who cherish their right to entrepreneurial and capitalistic endeavors. 

I also believe most business owners can agree that we can respect the Constitution while keeping an irresponsible, unethical, greedy and law-breaking few from inflicting harm on a massive scale.  I believe most of them agree that if America worked harder to restrict emissions, eliminate fossil fuel subsidies and invest in clean energy, there would be fewer atrocities like the one that occurred from Hurricane Sandy.  But we have to acknowledge that because we’ve already delayed, actions taken today won’t yield an observable benefit for a long time but that only means we can’t delay any longer. It will take some time to have a renewable energy infrastructure in place and instead of spending time and money on extreme energy sources, we should be investing in our future. That’s what these reforms are designed to do.  They’re common-sense measures.  They have the support of the majority of the American people.

And yet, that doesn’t mean any of this is going to be easy to enact or implement.  If it were, we’d already have cap and trade or a price on carbon or stricter emissions regulations or a ban on fracking.  

This will be difficult.  There will be pundits and politicians and special interest lobbyists publicly warning of a tyrannical, all-out assault on liberty -- not because that’s true, but because they want to gin up fear or higher ratings or revenue for themselves.  And behind the scenes, they’ll do everything they can to block any common-sense reform and make sure nothing changes whatsoever.

The only way we will be able to change is if their audience, their constituents, their membership says this time must be different -- that this time, we must do something to protect our communities and our kids and all future generations.

I will put everything I've got into this, and so will Joe.  But I tell you, the only way we can change is if the American people demand it.  And by the way, that doesn’t just mean from certain parts of the country.  We're going to need voices in those areas, in those congressional districts, where the tradition of anti-regulation, anti-science and anti-taxation is strong to speak up and to say this is important.  It can't just be the usual suspects.  We have to examine ourselves and our hearts, and ask ourselves what is important.

This will not happen unless the American people demand it.  If parents and teachers, police officers and pastors, if hunters and sportsmen, if Americans of every background stand up and say, enough; we’ve suffered too much pain and care too much about our children to allow this to continue -- then change will come.  That's what it's going to take.

In a letter that a child, a victim of Sandy wrote me, she said, “I know that laws have to be passed by Congress, but I beg you to try very hard.”  Julia, I will try very hard.  But she’s right.  The most important changes we can make depend on congressional action.  They need to bring these proposals up for a vote, and the American people need to make sure that they do.

Get them on record.  Ask your member of Congress if they support a rising fee on carbon to help reduce emissions and steer us towards cleaner energy choices. Ask them if they support investments in renewable clean energy technologies.  And if they say no, ask them why not.  Ask them what’s more important -- doing whatever it takes to get a A grade from the Koch Brothers and their front groups that funds their campaigns, or giving parents some peace of mind that their grandchildren will have a livable planet? 

This is the land of the free, and it always will be.  As Americans, we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights that no man or government can take away from us.  But we've also long recognized, as our Founders recognized, that with rights come responsibilities.  Along with our freedom to live our lives as we will comes an obligation to allow others to do the same.  We don’t live in isolation.  We live in a society, a government of, and by, and for the people.  We are responsible for each other. And our Creator would demand that we use those inalienable rights being good stewards of the planet given us.

The right to live safely in coastal communities, that right was denied to people living in communities from Rockaway, New York to New Orleans.  That most fundamental set of rights to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- fundamental rights that were denied to victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, farmers wiped out from the recent droughts, communities destroyed by recent wildfires on too frequent a basis to tolerate, and all the families who’ve never imagined that they’d lose a loved one to extreme weather events -- those rights are at stake.  We’re responsible.

When I visited Staten Island, I spent some private time with many of the families who lost their children that day.  And one was the family of Brandon and Connor Moore. Brandon was two years old and Connor four when they were swept out of their mother’s arms by the rushing flood waters while trying to flee their home. I expressed to them as a father, as a parent, my heartbreak over what they went through.

 And now I think about the short lives that they lived and the life that lay ahead of them, and most of all, I think about how, when it comes to protecting the most vulnerable among us, we must act now -- for Brandon and Connor.  For the 1000 other innocent children and adults killed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. For the more than 600 people killed in 14 weather disasters in 2011 or the more than 300 people who lost their lives in the 11 major weather disasters just last year in 2012.  For the men and women in big cities and small towns who fall victim to hardships from loss of livelihoods and homes now on a regular basis.  For all the Americans who are counting on us to keep them safe from harm.  Let’s do the right thing.  Let’s do the right thing for them, and for this country that we love so much. 

Thank you.  Let’s sign these orders.