The (deputy) director's cut

The other night I went to the new Washington Nationals baseball stadium for the first time, on a beautiful summer evening for a game.  Upon taking in my first view of the facility I was immediately impressed.  I was especially charmed upon discovering that it was a LEED-certified “green” ballpark, the first of its kind in Major League Baseball.

I proceeded to my seats on the first base side, with a great view of the playing field.  I was taking in the sights and sounds of America’s favorite pastime, when I looked across the field and saw it.

The ExxonMobil brand, plastered on the left field wall.

Mr. Richardson, your beautiful carriage will now be turning into a pumpkin.  And the magic castle in which you find yourself is about to turn to sand.

Part of my sinking disappointment can be traced to the boyish naivete with which I hold major league baseball as something pure and inherently good.  Anyone who reads the papers knows that such is far from the case.  But I somehow manage to keep such realities locked away in a separate compartment as I avidly follow the sport year after year.  

That said, I can only block out so much.  

Exxon is the proverbial final straw, the worst of the worst.  They boast a long list of corporate deadly sins, from abetting human rights abuses in Indonesia to ripping up Canadian old growth forests so they can squeeze oil from sand, to funding front groups who misleadingly question the scientific consensus that global warming is real.  To see their logo plastered on a major league ballpark, and a “green” one at that, was like finding a tragic tear in an otherwise beautiful work of art.

But the childlike baseball fan within me is strong and wields rationalization as well as anyone, so I managed to put Exxon aside once the game began and became consumed by the play on the field.  It was a tight game midway through the 7th inning, which any good baseball fan knows is the part of the game marked by a traditional break in the action known as the seventh inning stretch.

At which point the loudspeakers blurted, “This seventh inning stretch brought to you by ExxonMobil”.

My inner baseball fan has just been ripped out, beaten senseless and unceremoniously kicked to the curb.

If you think about it, though, it actually makes sense.  Who better to sponsor this aspect of the game than the corporation that’s turned stretching things out into an art form.  For 19 years, Exxon has managed to stretch out the lawsuit brought against it for the 11 million gallons of oil its tanker the Valdez spilled into Alaska’s Prince William Sound in 1989.

It all came full circle yesterday, when the Supreme Court handed down its decision regarding punitive damages for the spill.  The high court (interpret that as you wish) effectively rewarded Exxon’s 19-year stretch by slashing an original $5 billion punitive damage assessment down to $500 million.  So the fishermen and other adversely affected Alaskans will get roughly $15,000 each as restitution for having their livelihoods shattered almost two decades ago.  While the richest corporation on the planet (in February Exxon posted the highest quarterly profits in US corporate history, to the tune of $11.7 billion), is being forced to pay the ratio equivalent of a speeding ticket.  

If Exxon can stretch out a lawsuit brought on by disenfranchised Americans and save itself $4.5 billion as a result, it can definitely sponsor a seventh inning stretch at a baseball game.  It’s like the Bush administration sponsoring a dance competition called the Texas Side Step.  Exxon’s getting plenty of help these days, with the Supreme Court’s error, the legal system’s forced play to keep the underdogs from scoring and the bad call at the plate by the Nationals organization when it let Exxon’s sponsorship contaminate its stadium.

Looks like the fix is in.

A review of the current week shows that it’s been a busy one for the environment. Since you might not know this given the way Eliot Spitzer’s fall from grace has dominated the headlines, here’s a quick recap.

Monday’s newspapers highlighted a new study asserting that the world must bring carbon emissions down near zero to avert a dangerous rise in global temperatures. Okay, so it’s worse than we thought. At least maybe lawmakers will start taking the issue seriously.

Then again, Spitzer probably eroded any last remaining faith you might have in elected officials. Fair enough. A decorated prostitution ring fighter like Spitzer getting caught hiring a prostitute would be similar to finding out that an environmental champion like Ted Kennedy opposes an offshore wind farm because it’s slated to be built near his family compound on the Cape.

Oh yeah, that happened as well.

Back to the environment. The same day science was making headlines on climate change, a group of Southern Baptist leaders announced their denomination has a "biblical duty" to stop global warming. If this comes as a surprise to you, then it’s worth noting they’re about three years behind the evangelicals on this. And while we’re talking religion, the pope recently released a new slate of seven deadly sins, effectively providing the first update to the original list in over 1500 years. Turns out polluting the environment is New Deadly Sin #1.

George Bush is supposedly a man of strong religious convictions. Do you think this got his attention? Maybe there was a time when he and his band of oilmen cronies could wave off such sentiments as a faction of the liberal agenda. But last I checked, the Southern Baptists aren’t exactly part of the radical left.

Unfortunately, other events this week clearly show the example provided by the religiously ordained didn’t get through to the White House. Monday represented yet another missed legal deadline by the Bush administration about whether to list the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. While the Department of Interior drags its feet to protect our furry friends from the north, whose population is rapidly declining because global warming is melting the Arctic sea ice critical for its survival, they’re wasting no time offering new leases for oil drilling in prime polar bear habitat. 29 million acres since the first missed deadline in early January, to be exact.

Which brings me to the final environmental event of this week worth mentioning. Greenpeace joined the Center for Biological Diversity and the Natural Resources Defense Council in a lawsuit against the Bush administration to force their hand on listing the polar bear. If the Baptists and Catholics can’t sway him, maybe the courts can.

I guess even Providence finds itself waiting out the term of history's worst environmental president.

Jerry moved, Bobby spit, and two days ago I felt truly excited about voting in a presidential election for the first time in my life. 

I won’t tell you whom I voted for, since Greenpeace is non-partisan and doesn’t endorse candidates. I will say I voted in the Democratic primary, which probably isn’t a huge shocker. Not that being a registered Democrat is a given for a Greenpeace staffer by any stretch. Many of my colleagues are registered outside of the traditional two-party set up, officially listed as Green, Independent, Socialist, Progressive, Whig or Skateboard Punk Rocker, to name a few. Certainly an approach to voting I respect and in many ways agree with in principle. I could go on all day about the shortcomings of the two-party, winner-take-all system we currently employ. But I’ll save that for another day.

On Tuesday, though, I felt a bit sorry for those who weren’t registered as Democrats. Because it meant they couldn't vote in the primary.  A primary in which I was actually excited about casting my ballot in a way I haven't felt since I started voting 24 years ago. How great was it to stand in front of the ballot box perusing my options, and know that my two main choices were a woman and an African American, both of whom are exceptional candidates with strong platforms on most issues. In addition to having a rare slate of inspiring choices, it was a great benchmark for where we’ve come as a country.

So often when voting in presidential elections I have felt like I was more voting against someone than voting for them. I cast my ballot with great passion in 2004, but that was primarily a vote against George Bush and the insolent/imperialistic policies that have marked his presidency since he stole the election almost eight years ago. They could run pretty much anyone against Bush (with the possible exception of Roger Clemens - is he lying or what?) and I’d vote for the challenger every time.  Only Bush and his stooges can make someone like Hanna Montana look like a legitimate presidential candidate, for no other reason than she'd be running against him.

But this time around feels different. I feel like we have real choices, who bring the promise of changing the destructive course our country has been on these past eight years. It’s still politics, I’m still inherently cynical and I'm not annointing any slam dunk saviors here. But despite all that I can't help but be inspired this time around. All I can say is that it felt good to actually be voting FOR someone, instead of simply picking the lesser of two evils.

Feels like help is on the way.

Earth Day. You’d think groups like Greenpeace would love a holiday-status occasion that's centered around Nature and Ecology. Truth is, as it relates to the greater environmental movement, Earth Day is something of a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, it’s great to have a day where everyone celebrates the earth and thinks about the environment. In classrooms across the country, kids are learning about ecology and issues that range from pollution and global warming to endangered species. Communities everywhere hold events to celebrate the planet and do something that’s good for it, with themes that include Clean the Park, Bike to Work and Plant a Tree. For one day each year, the environment is center stage, and issues pertaining to its health and well being are on the minds of just about everyone.

On the other hand, there’s an element of Earth Day that resembles the tradition of people who just go to church on Christmas Eve. How many individuals each year sit in the pews during this annual Yuletide church excursion and vow to be better people, only to conveniently slip back into their normal patterns of not-so-saintly behavior right about the time New Years Eve kicks off? Probably about as many as vow to do something good for the environment on Earth Day, then on April 23^rd continue to ride to work alone in their SUV’s, buy way too much plastic, chemlawn their yards and leave on every light in the house.

And of course there’s the corporate piece. At Christmas you have big business leveraging a spiritual holiday to increase sales and ramp up their bottom line. For Earth Day, polluting corporations annually attempt to use it as a marketing stage, to fraudulently convince consumers that they really are ecologically friendly despite the millions of pounds of poison they spew into the air and water every day. The common term for this is "greenwashing", which is the marketing equivalent of spraying whipped cream and expensive perfume on a steamy pile of horse dung.

Thus the "catch" to April 22. Everyone becomes more ecologically aware on this holy day of eco-freaks, but few carry it over into their daily lives. And the very corporations who are the biggest part of the problem use the occasion to disingenuously paint themselves green.

The way I see it, even with its flaws, anything that puts the environment on center stage and gets people around the world to pay attention, even if it’s only for a day, is a good thing. It’s certainly better than nothing. It’s always heartening for me personally when my kids bring home their Earth Day projects, and it’s even more encouraging that the environment has been a recurring theme in their curriculum throughout the year. If children are coming home from school talking about how global warming threatens polar bears, maybe parents will start to listen. Maybe that’s the seed that causes this year’s park cleanup to lead to a change in lifestyle. Maybe on the 23^rd, the Hummer gets swapped for a Prius , you rip up the Chemlawn contract, you stop buying gas from Exxon and tissues from Kleenex, and you install energy efficient lights in your home. This year, start living the line that every day is Earth Day. And do your part to take the catch out of April 22.

 

It’s official. Climate change has changed everything.

Sure, there’s the stuff you already know. More severe storms, melting polar ice caps, the projected year-round beach resort status of Nova Scotia. But what about the other stuff? Major League Baseball games are getting snowed out in April, the same year that January football games in New England could be attended in short sleeves. I played golf (at a goat field of a public course that doesn’t use pesticides because they can’t afford it) three times in January, and had my tee time this past Saturday cancelled due to frost.

Even politics is no longer predictable. Yesterday, Newt Gingrich and John Kerry were supposed to square off in a debate that was to resemble the 1984 World Wide Wrestling Federation title fight between Wahoo McDaniel and Ricky Steamboat. (McDaniel took the title when Tully Blanchard came to his aid with a steel chair). Instead of the projected smack down, Newt and John ended up all chummy when Gingrich unexpectedly stated that climate change is real, that "we should address it actively". To top it off, there was an unsettling moment where it appeared they might even hug.

One of the reasons why climate change is more recognized now than it was even two or three years ago is the emergence of so-called "poster children" for the issue. The polar bear has become the face of global warming, as its existence is now threatened by the melting ice caps at the North Pole. As evidence that the polar bear is raising the issue’s profile, more than 500,000 Americans recently urged the feds to list polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act due to the effect rising temperatures are having on their habitat. That’s almost double the previous record for public comments for an ESA listing in US history!

But its not just the charismatic megafauna that are at risk. According to the international organization Save the Children, 175 million children will be affected every year over the next decade by climate-related disasters like droughts, floods and storms.

Okay, you say. The plight of children and polar bears is alarming and tragic, and it makes me care that much more about the urgency to stop global warming.  But it isn't exactly surprising. Not like the giggle fest between Kerry and Gingrich anyway. THAT was surprising. Tell me something I don’t know.

Well, here’s an emerging casualty of climate change you might not have already considered: Business. Not exactly poster child material, but it makes Wall Street and wealthy political funders take notice.

According to a recent study, financial losses from weather-related catastrophes have risen an average of two percent each year since the ‘70s. Economists are viewing climate change more and more as a classic "market failure", with potential repercussions in the business sector that could be considered catastrophic in their own right.  Many agree that the single largest cause of that failure is corporations and governments don’t place a price on spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.  The resulting costs, however, could be huge.

Up until now, climate change has been seen as the cause of lefty liberals who want to make the world safe for polar bears and kids. Now, its champions need to include sports fans, golfers, day traders, parents, CEO’s, property owners and political pundits who make their living stereotyping congress.

Did I leave anyone out?