What principles are you willing to to go to jail for?
It may seem odd timing that many of us are heading to the nation’s capital early next month for a major act of civil disobedience at a coal-fired power plant, the first big protest of its kind against global warming in this country.
After all, Barack Obama’s in power. He’s appointed scientific advisers who actually believe in… science, and he’s done more in a few weeks to deal with climate change than all the presidents of the last 20 years combined. Stalwarts like John Kerry, Henry Waxman, and Ed Markey are chairing the relevant congressional committees. The auto companies, humbled, are promising to build rational vehicles if only we give them some cash. What’s to protest? Why not just give the good guys a break?
If you think about it a little longer, though, you realize this is just the moment to up the ante.
Read the rest of this Yale Environment 360 Op-Ed piece here.
This article appears in Feb 24 – Mar 3, 2009.
