Environmentalist Bill McKibben: Get Angry at Corruption in Congress
Here’s environmentalist Bill McKibben at his best, pointing out that we should shelve the resentment and cynicism that we feel for corruption in Congress, and start to show how we truly feel: ANGRY. He writes, “We’ve reached the point where we’re unfazed by things that should shake us to the core.”
According to James Hansen, the government’s premier climate scientist, tapping Canada’s tar sands for the Keystone pipeline would, in the end, essentially mean “game over for the climate.” So how could Speaker of the House John Boehner insist that the Keystone approval decision be speeded up? Well, he’s gotten $1,111,080 from the fossil-fuel industry during his tenure. His Senate counterpart Mitch McConnell, who shepherded the bill through his chamber, has raked in $1,277,208 in the course of his tenure in Washington.
McKibben refers to cynicism as “a sucker’s game.” Until we demonstrate how truly outraged we are, we’ll get exactly the degree of change we deserve: none. As Frederick Douglass reminds us, “Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.”
Go ahead and get angry, but expect people to get angry back. Building a pipeline from the oilsands (they don’t yield tar) will not be game over for the climate. That guy is lying. And I’m angry about it.
Notice how much more prosperous everybody became during the 20th Century. This was because of the mining and use of petroleum. People who hate petroleum hate prosperity, and they hate people. I’m angry about that too.