Don't you Know, Talking About a Revolution Sounds. . . .

This from Bill McKibben today, via TomDispatch:

McKibben asks us to "Try to fit these facts together:"

* According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the planet has just come through the warmest decade, the warmest 12 months, the warmest six months, and the warmest April, May, and June on record.

* A “staggering” new study from Canadian researchers has shown that warmer seawater has reduced phytoplankton, the base of the marine food chain, by 40% since 1950.

* Nine nations have so far set their all-time temperature records in 2010, including Russia (111 degrees), Niger (118), Sudan (121), Saudi Arabia and Iraq (126 apiece), and Pakistan, which also set the new all-time Asia record in May: a hair under 130 degrees. I can turn my oven to 130 degrees.

* And then, in late July, the U.S. Senate decided to do exactly nothing about climate change. They didn’t do less than they could have -- they did nothing, preserving a perfect two-decade bipartisan record of no action. Senate majority leader Harry Reid decided not even to schedule a vote on legislation that would have capped carbon emissions.

Well, the point is obvious. So, then what? McKibben continues:

"I wrote the first book for a general audience on global warming back in 1989, and I’ve spent the subsequent 21 years working on the issue. I’m a mild-mannered guy, a Methodist Sunday School teacher. Not quick to anger. So what I want to say is: this is fucked up. The time has come to get mad, and then to get busy."

I highly recommend McKibben's piece today It's a launching point for action. It raises questions for me. Will getting mad get 60 votes in the Senate? Who will respond to McKibben's facts or his anger? Or mine? How torqued up do we need to get? How busy? It's time to think seriously about how social change works in America, not in the abstract, but in the world as it really is. This is not Rachel Carson's America (and Bill McKibben is not Rachel Carson). The media landscape that amplified the groundswell of concern over pesticides and swamped the efforts of the chemical industry to discredit Carson and silence her message is no longer in place. Public trust in the integrity of journalism is at an all time low. More Americans get there "news" from Fox cable and neo-con radio, which get their programing scripted through conservative opposition research. Where does plain speech and passion get you in this landscape?

In sum, do we even have a path to affect change through consciousness raising in time? Time is the key element. I'm skeptical. If we do, fine. But if we movement build, as seems to be McKibben's ralling cry now, what is the probability of success? Is climate like past environmental fights? Is it like past progressive fights? Does it lie within the American Experience, or is it a-historical, outside any generation's experiences? Do we necessarily have to have the public on board before the federal government acts? American history isn't an unbroken narrative of Constitutional decorum. We've had command economic moments in American history. We've had Executives defy the Courts and the Congress, and the courts and the congress deferred/caved when Executive said that national security was at stake.

You can almost here Ricardo Montalban, "Time is a luxury you don't have, Bill."