The Abolition of Dirty Energy-The Climate Minute Podcast

Colliding memes this week! Obama portrays as angry black Climate Hawk, while angry black men take to the streets in Baltimore. Environmental justice looms over the news. Mitch McConnell defends coal (as a proxy for slavery) while the Pope convenes a meeting on the moral implications of global warming.  Are Climate Hawks the new Abolitionists?  We discuss.

The reading list:
•    Obama as "angry Black Man"
•    Baltimore as a toxic environment
•    McConnell, coal and slavery
•    McConnell, oil and slavery II
•    "The Energy of Slaves"
•    Tim DeChristopher
•    DeChristopher on the moral crisis of our time.
o    At his sentencing, standing before the federal judge, DeChristopher concludes a long, eloquent statement that spreads across the Internet and galvanizes a growing climate-justice movement:
o    “This is not going away. At this point of unimaginable threats on the horizon, this is what hope looks like. In these times of a morally bankrupt government that has sold out its principles, this is what patriotism looks like. With countless lives on the line, this is what love looks like, and it will only grow. The choice you are making today is what side are you on.”
•    New Abolishionists?
o    What we want to abolish is our outmoded, broken economic and energy systems that threaten our survival, in part because they put no value on human and ecosystem inputs and impacts.
•    New Abolitionist II
o    More acutely, when you consider the math that McKibben, the Carbon Tracker Initiative and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) all lay out, you must confront the fact that the climate justice movement is demanding that an existing set of political and economic interests be forced to say goodbye to trillions of dollars of wealth. It is impossible to point to any precedent other than abolition.
•    Pope Francis
•    Dave Roberts on Vox
Check out live  links at our blog,  https://massclimateaction.wordpress.com/?p=4330&preview=true&preview_id=4330
Because we recognize the necessity of personal accountability for our actions, because we accept responsibility for building a durable future and because we believe it is our patriotic duty as citizens to speak out, we must insist that the United States put a price on carbon.

Thanks for listening.
…Ted McIntyre