In closing my presentation at NetRoots last thursday, I summed up a number of simple things folks could do to fight climate change – one of the most important being, to vote for gosh sake. I had spotted Congressional candidate Nancy Skinner in the back of the room and asked her to stand.
Fortunately, and this is the cool thing about NetRoots, a writer for Climate Progress, Katie Valentine, was in the room and taking notes.
DETROIT, MICHIGAN — Congressional candidate Nancy Skinner is taking a novel approach when it comes to the issue of climate change: she’s running on it.
Skinner, a Democratic candidate for Michigan’s 11th district, is making climate change a central part of her campaign, hoping her focus on an issue that so many other politicians have shirked or denied will make her stand out in the race, whose primary election is August 5. She told ThinkProgress that taking action to address climate change is particularly pertinent in Michigan, due to the state’s history in and capacity for manufacturing.
The state could be a hub for the production of renewable energy, she said, and could help slow a warming trend that threatens crop reductions, heat waves, longer periods of drought and decreased health of the Great Lakes in the Michigan and the rest of the Midwest.
“Here we are now with all this infrastructure, where we can ramp up our production of wind turbine engines and solar,” Skinner said. “The United States cannot fall behind on this, and there’s no better place than Michigan to really start producing this stuff quickly. So it’s great for Michigan, and it’s a must for the country.”
The record-setting winter in Michigan this past year — some of which was part of the Polar Vortex, a system whose possible link to climate change scientists are undecided on — helped solidify Skinner’s decision to make climate change a major part of her campaign.
Skinner also is concerned about increased heavy precipitation events and how they’re going to affect Michigan’s agriculture industry. If California continues on its path of extreme drought, she said, Michigan may have to ramp up its agricultural output. But with more extreme precipitation events, which the recent National Climate Assessment forecasts for the Midwest, topsoil could be eroded, making it difficult for Michigan to achieve greater agricultural production.
“We have to get with the scientists and think about how we deal with drainage … so that we are able to step up the production of agriculture to meet the needs of the country,” she said.
Skinner first became interested in environmental issues when her sister-in-law died of melanoma in the early 1990s at 32 years old. At that time, the hole in the ozone layer was growing rapidly, a factor her doctor said could have contributed to the cancer diagnosis. So, Skinner began to research the hole, eventually reading Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance in 1993.
After the Great Midwestern floods of 1993, Skinner worked with President Bill Clinton’s White House to develop a team of federal agencies and architects that rebuilt two communities affected by the floods in Missouri and Illinois on higher ground, so that they wouldn’t be destroyed if the kind of flooding seen in 1993 happened again.
Skinner ran for Senate in Illinois in 2004, but ended up losing to then state-senator Barack Obama.
“[In 2004] I ran on climate change and he ran on health care,” she said. “And he won. And he passed health care. And I hope to run on climate change and advance climate change progress in the way our president got something done that wasn’t done since FDR.”
Skinner also ran for congress in Michigan in 2006, on a platform of eliminating subsidies for the fossil fuel industry and creating a more efficient auto industry, a race in which she was endorsed by then-Senator Obama but which she ultimately lost.
Rep. Kerry Bentivolio (R), who’s earned a four percent score from the League of Conservation voters in his year and a half in Congress, along with four othercandidates, three of whom are Democrats. One of Skinner’s Democratic primary opponents, Bill Roberts, has said the first thing he will do if he’s elected will be to call for the impeachment of President Obama, on the charge that the president has committed “crimes against the Constitution.”
Michigan’s 11th district has had a Republican representative since 1967, aside from a month and a half term when a Democrat was elected to fill Thad McCotter’s seat after he resigned amidst charges of election fraud.
While she’s running for a House seat, Skinner’s not just focusing on what she’ll do for her own district, or even her state, if she’s elected. She said she plans to create a group that works to get candidates who are pro-action on climate change elected, a sort of Emily’s List — a group that works to get pro-choice, Democratic women elected to Congress — for climate change. She wants her voice on climate change to be among the first of many elected to Congress in the coming years, so that Congress has a chance to produce real, meaningful legislation on climate change. Presidential action helps, she said, but an act of Congress is needed if climate change is to be alleviated, and it’ll only happen if enough people in Congress are supportive of climate action.
“The climate needs one House seat, and then we build on that,” she said.
A year ago, Skinner wrote a position paper on climate called “No Time Outs: Climate Change Strategies for the Two Minute Offense”- I hope she won’t mind if I excerpt it here.
Nancy Skinner: No Time Outs:
As the daughter of a football coach and a lifetime career of trying to address the climate crisis from many different platforms; activist, a radio and television pundit, and in two races for federal office, I know that climate change is no game. It’s real, and it threatens humanity. Not way off… in seasons unknown to our children and theirs, but in our own lifetimes.
I’ve often used analogies to communicate complex concepts as a professional communicator. I can’t help but think that when it comes to where we are now in relation to mitigating the worst ravages of climate change, it is like the two minute offense in football. That really means we have one last chance to avert the unthinkable.
The hour is late. James Hansen, in a new paper, says that “…goals of limiting human-made warming to 2C and CO2 to 450 ppm are prescriptions for disaster.” At just 0.8C warming so far, he says we have little or no “cushion” left to avoid dangerous climate change. At 4C, talking of adaptation is absurd. James Hansen says warming has brought us to the “precipice of a great tipping point”. If we go over the edge, it will be a transition to “a different planet”, an environment far outside the range that has been experienced by humanity. There will be “no return within the lifetime of any generation that can be imagined, and the trip will exterminate a large fraction of species on the planet”.
The Climate Change Action Centre surveyed the literature for the 4C scenario. “Half of the world would be uninhabitable. Likely population capacity: under one billion people. Whilst the loss will be exponential and bunch towards the end of the century, on average that is a million human global warming deaths every week, every year for the next 90 years. The security implications need no discussion”. A toddler alive today will have a 1 in 10 chance of survival.
The strategy must be solid, all the players must be playing “for the team” and playing the best game of their life, and the execution must be flawless. When it’s over, win or lose, there won’t be a next season, or another ten years of idleness. There is only now. Now is the time to do what we must do. It’s no game of course, but there are two opposing forces, one is much more powerful and wealthy of course.
This is why tinkering with measures we hope will successfully eliminate carbon emissions is suicide. We must build what has been proven to work, and we must build it by the hundreds of GW per year or it will not be done in time. We must start NOW.
Unfortunately, the concept of NOW is not taking hold among enough people.
We will likely have to go through The Great Disruption before it does. That will lead to The Great Awakening, and then the WW2-Manhattan Project level response will begin and $$$$ costs will not matter. And guess which energy source produces the most electricity with the smallest carbon footprint? Hansen knows. (and so do you and I).
All renewable energy is the lowest carbon footprint possible. Make each subsequent generation of solar panels, wind turbines, wave power systems etc. – with renewable energy, and the footprint gets lower and lower over time.
That is a 100% true statement, and the only question is whether or not we will do it before the “cushion” Hansen speaks of is gone. It does not look as if we will because fossil fuel use is NOT ramping down fast enough—–I won’t shout this time, but “China, India, Coal, CO2, etc.” is still the fact of life that trumps all else.
What I’m talking about is what may become necessary when (not if) Gilding’s Great Disruption occurs and we have to attempt to cut CO2 emissions back to zero almost overnight. E-Pot’s favorite energy source WILL have to be a large part of the mix. There is simply no other way to replace the coal and natural gas burning plants quickly enough.
The sky-high materials requirement for renewables (wind farms 10x the concrete per average kW as nuclear, not to mention the huge expansion in transmission and distribution networks required to get remote RE to users) say that it’s a wash at best. When you add the combustion-driven backup that wind and solar require, RE is a very distant second.
http://www.skinnerforcongress.com/thorium-reactors—abundant-safe-and-cheap-energy.html
At least she doesn’t denigrate current nuclear technology (stuff that can actually be ordered today), but it’s very nearly damning with faint praise.
Aaaaah, lighten up! We all know that in your other life you are a PR flack for the obsolete PWR manufacturers.
She may be a bit over the top, but she DOES push for the new technology that will allay most of the concerns of the anti-nukes and can likely be built just as quickly as the old designs and probably faster. Hansen would approve of her message.
PS It’s really quite incredible that she would have the (non female parts) to speak out like this. I am going to contribute to her campaign.
I wish that other life paid better (actually, paid anything).
Join a union and demand a raise. Oh! Wait! I forgot!
The Republicans and the plutocracy have destroyed the unions.
Too bad.
To get anything out of a union, there have to be jobs there.
I’d settle for eliminating H1B visas.
I’ll let your xenophobia slide today.
I’m too busy trying to get Arcus to come down off his high horse.
“Xenophobia”, really? Microsoft has been advocating a doubling of H1B numbers, but just announced layoffs of 18,000 personnel. Less than half of STEM-degree recipients find work in STEM. The US unemployment rate itself is understated by more than half. Xenophobia?
What you say is true enough and something to worry about, but that still doesn’t mean that your previously demonstrated xenophobia isn’t part of your equation.
Anyway, I’m much more concerned about what’s leaving myself—–the flow of companies in the other direction—-the inversions and tax avoidance.