Musings: Mixed Messages

Though waning, the moon still shone brilliantly last night, causing clouds to gleam gold and the pastures to shine silver. By morning it had vanished, vanquished by a heavy pre-dawn rain shower that left the world, or at least our little corner of it, fresh and clean when Koko and I went walking this morning.

“Now this feels like spring,” I exulted when we ran into my neighbor Andy, who was still in that hazy place of trying to remember a dream. But I helpfully pulled him out of it with a discussion on politics — a surefire jolt into reality.

It seems Rep. Roland Sagum’s election year bid to pander to his constituents has gone down in flames now that the Lege has nixed his resolution seeking to recognize the cultural merits of cockfighting.

Kinda sad to think that was his main contribution to the legislative arena this session.

Interestingly, Rep. Jimmy Tokioka voted against it. Apparently in his contorted world, it’s OK to take a flat out stand of discriminating against same-sex couples, but you wouldn’t want to send the world a “mixed message” about cockfighting.

When it comes to climate change, it seems there’s an attempt under way to send people messages deliberately mixed up by special interests. According to a new Greenpeace report, oil companies and Koch Industries — one of the nation’s largest private corporations, owned by two brothers ranked among the 10 wealthiest people in the U.S. — are providing extensive financial backing for climate change deniers. The report details where the money has gone and notes:

[O]rganizations funded by Koch foundations have led the assault on climate science and scientists, “green jobs,” renewable energy and climate policy progress.

A Koch spokeswoman offered this reassuring rebuttal:

These efforts are about creating more opportunity and prosperity for all, as it’s a historical fact that economic freedom best fosters innovation, environmental protection and improved quality of life in a society.

Gee, I really wish she would have cited her historical references.

The Greenpeace report also maintains that Koch provided money to help turn up the flame under the much ballyhooed “Climategate scandal.”

In related news, the British Parliament just completed a formal inquiry into the controversy and found the scientists had not manipulated data. The report further concluded that while withholding information is standard practice in climate science, it’s “unacceptable” in a matter of such extreme “global importance and public interest.”

The inquiry also found that the climate data generated by the University's Climate Research Unit corresponds with other datasets from NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies and the National Climatic Data Center.

Such facts are slow to trickle in to Fox News, which continues to beat the drum of denial.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration is sending some mixed messages to the environmental community. On the one hand, we have the EPA finally speaking out against plans to blast the top off yet another coal-containing mountain in West Virginia, with the agency’s Shawn Garvin saying:

“We must prevent the significant and irreversible damage that comes from mining pollution, and the damage from this project would be irreversible.”

Then on the other, you’ve got Obama announcing plans to expand offshore oil drilling.

The latter is apparently part of Obama’s ongoing effort to appease obstructionist Republican lawmakers. But predictably, GOP politicians responded that it wasn’t enough.

When is the Prez going to realize that these guys are not gonna go along with anything he wants because their goal is to waylay his agenda in an effort to push him out of office?

And that by taking these sorts of approaches, he’s alienating a core group of supporters?