Which brings me to the just-completed Heartland Tour. I write this from Cleveland, head home on the train starting at 3:45am tomorrow (Sat.).

TOUR SUCCEEDS! TOUR FAILS!

The Tour succeeded beyond my expectations in engaging folks close to key senate decision-makers, decision-makers who will determine if the U.S. starts to lead the world in climate laws and behavior or continues our wanton ways. We made strong local connections with activists in Arkansas and Ohio. For two weeks, we have been right where we need to be. I’m glad we did the Tour.

But…

The Tour failed to close the vast distance between political expediency and the planet’s laws that govern all life on earth. If we fail to close this distance, we are doomed.

Jobs. Agriculture. Coal.

Whatever the local name, political expediency is the game. Meaning, what will it take to re-elect Senator XYZ? This is a recipe for climate ‘cataclysm’ about which Jim Hansen warns us.

What if Sherrod Brown or Blanche Lincoln or Mark Pryor or Evan Bayh or Richard Lugar or Kent Conrad or Byron Dorgan or Ben Nelson said, “I’m not running again. I’m following my conscience and the science. I’m doing what I know the planet needs now.”?

It’s not impossible.

Look at Richard Lugar’s career. For more than 25 years, Lugar has championed nuclear disarmament. The conference room in his Indy office is festooned with blown-up photos of Lugar in the Soviet Union (from the 1980s) and Russia negotiating mutual reductions of nuclear weapons between the U.S. and Russia. Every creature on Earth owes Lugar a debt of gratitude for this visionary work.

But Lugar is the same man who promotes global ruin by tirelessly pushing biomass and biofuels. “The Lugar Energy Initiative” is his group shilling biomass and biofuels.

What gives?

Corn as King in Indiana is what gives.

Corn (ethanol) means jobs. Corn means money. Corn means happy farmers driving their corn ethanol-fueled tractors. Corn means votes.

And if so much money can be made and so many votes can be bought is such a short time with biofuels, why let’s keep right on rolling with biomass, another Lugar favorite.

Lugar wins. The Earth loses.

Lugar as world-saver is made possible by Indiana voters not making a lot of money from nuclear weapons manufacture. Lugar is freed to follow his conscience.

Lugar as planet-ruiner is brought to you by huge amounts of money being made from biofuels and (soon) from biomass.

So, non-oppositional Touring can be strong and effective–but alone will never roust the business-as-usual set. But SOS teams this  friendly approach with NVCD and other oppositional tactics. These strategies shout “We are in climate emergency! The time for business-as-usual is past!”

Now, maybe, maybe, maybe, we have a shot at bringing about the sea-change we needed yesterday.

It was a visually interesting ride, if you like endless fields of corn and soy.  “Biofuels,” said Duff, with contempt.  I noticed many corn fields that had an almost pinkish shade in their dryness.  Also noticed variations of color in the soy plants that brought this odd question to mind:  Is there any chance that such vast acres of non-food crops are being watered with pollution perhaps not allowed when the land was used for food crops?  I know agribusiness is a chemical business, and I know the energy business is in many places related to the waste disposal business.  The question arose from my protective nature:  when the land is returned to feeding life, will the land still be good for food crops?

Badgley, Laing, Sammons, Meredith Turner (Senator Brown's Liaison), and Tim Krueger (Cleveland resident, Coordinator Ohio Student Environmental Coalition)

Thursday, September 17, 2009. Meredith Turner met with us on behalf of Senator Brown. She paid close attention, asked questions, and told us very clearly that she doesn’t often get proposals that are as thorough and sensible as what we gave her.

Tim Krueger, an Ohio native and Cornell graduate, is the Coordinator for the Ohio Students Environmental Coalition. He attended the meeting with us, and spoke with Meredith about organizing a roundtable discussion that Senator Brown might attend to hear from his constituents about the problems with cap & trade, the error of including biomass with solar, wind and georthermal, and the underlying major problem of committing to actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

We have done an excellent job in our communications with Senators in the 4 states we visited. In Arkansas and Ohio, we have also made strong local contacts that we hope will develop into Climate SOS partnerships at the grass roots level. The Senators need to hear from us over and over and over again.

Meredith, Senator Brown’s liaison, told us it’s hard for them to know what constituents really want, because they hear most often from the money people; when they do hear from the everyday people, the presentations are almost never thorough and specific like Climate SOS’s.

OUR GRASSROOTS WORK HAS ONLY JUST BEGUN.

The view from a speeding train

We’re speeding along and then all of a sudden we have to stop. The conductor comes on the loudspeaker and says why: freight trains get priority on the rails. Duff Badgley has plenty to say about this. Check back again for an audio clip of the Badgley rant.

Stop for Freight Trains

Duff Badgley, Randy Massanelli (for Senator Pryor), Dr. Bill Sammons, Donna Shade, and Donna Kay Yeargan (for Senator Lincoln)  September 15, 2009
[Photograph by Susan Laing]

Randy Massanelli, speaking for Senator Pryor, expressed concerns for “harnessing and improving technology and efficiency,” as well finding a “global solution.” Senator Pryor is also very interested in geothermal, and Bill Sammons mentioned that he has had geothermal working very well in his home for twenty years.

Donna Kay Yeargan said that Senator Lincoln has not yet addressed the 450 versus 350 ppm CO2 emissions target, and that the Senator has expressed concerns about cap & trade’s economic impact on small business and agriculture. Duff Badgley asked about reports that Senator Lincoln said there would be no climate bill in 2009. Ms. Yeargan said she’d read the same reports, but that the Senator had not made that comment to her.

Both Yeargan and Massanelli showed interest in the information Climate SOS presented about biomass being incorrectly included among the renewables, and the suggestion that the $500 billion biomass subsidies be applied to genuinely clean renewable technologies such as wind, solar and geothermal. Also well received was a proposed amendment for an in-line payment that would ensure citizens the right to sell excess power back to the grid.

Bill arrived, Donna arrived, Susan turned off her computer and off those three went–north to Conway, Arkansas to meet a group that calls itself Green Drinks. They hardly drank anything while we all engaged around Bill’s presentation, local news and thoughtful discussion. There is more to tell about his wonderful group and meeting, but it will have to wait til later. For now, enjoy the photos.

Our Arkansas SOS organizer, Donna Shade, succeeded in getting us a meeting with the lone holdout for our Heartland Tour–Senator Mark Pryor of AR. I had tried many times to get this meeting, but was shut out. Donna’s success show the undeniable strength of local, constituent activists.

Now, we will meet Pryor’s State Director in the same 9/15 session we had previously scheduled with Senator Blanche Lincoln’s State Director. This could be a powerful gathering. We’re meeting with both staffs. And Lincoln is now the chair of the climate-crucial Senate Agriculture Committee.

But Donna did not stop with this success. She has also set two grassroots organizing events for Susan and me to attend in and around Little Rock. And she is trying to get interviews with me on local radio shows–plus sending our press relase out to state media outlets. She also wants for her Jonesboro group some of the SOS banners I have been carrying across the country.

Donna’s SOS activism fulfills the initial vision for the Tour: spark local activists to help us KILL THE BILL, demand tough science-based climate laws and carry on after after the Tour leaves. THANK YOU, DONNA!

Tim Krueger is organizing Cleveland for SOS in the same way. He has arranged for a group of Ohians–mostly college students–to come with us to the 9/17 meeting with Senator Sherrod Brown’s staff. Tim came to us by way of Mattie Leitman in Columbus, OH who came to us by way of Mike Ewall of D.C. and Philly. Nice national network emerging here.

The Cleveland meeting with Brown will sit a number of fresh-eyed young activists at the table to lobby for the beleagured planet they are inheriting. I find this enormously hopeful. Young folks will be battling for climate laws that can work for all creatures–not just the polluting elite. Hopeful, hopeful.

I’m pumped and grateful–to Donna, to Tim, To Mattie, to Mike…to SOS.

Arkansas, here we come! Train leaves at dawn. Gets into Little Rock Monday at 3am. (ach!)

Duff

We met with Richard Lugar’s State Director and Deputy State Director. “Mark,” a senior Lugar staffer from D.C., joined us on speaker phone. Mark told us that Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas has said publicly that “there will be no climate bill in 2009.” Mark said the health care bill had jammed the senate schedule leaving little time for climate legislation.

We talked coal power and wind power and local opposition to biomass in southern Indiana. Lugar’s staff emphasized their “Lugar Energy Initiative” that pushed biofuels and biomass, among other forms of energy. We presented the details of how non-sustainable biomass is. I let biofuels–my specialty–slide as too hard a sell.

We stressed 300-350ppm of atmospheric CO2 as the target science has established as the level beyond which climate disaster looms. We told them SOS would oppose any climate bill that kept 450ppm as its target.

We also stressed our opposition to cap-and-trade as a mechanism for addressing carbon emissions. I quoted Jim Hansen’s opposition to cap-and-trade.

We presented Jim Hansen’s CAP-AND-DIVIDEND carbon tax proposal.