Guest Opinion | The fierce urgency of now

— from Cindy Wolf —

I read the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change October 2018 Update Executive Summary. You should, too. Especially if you hold public office. It basically says we have to stop using Petroleum and get to net zero within 10 years or our children will face widespread starvation. The Feds don’t believe it. 

I asked Senator Lovelett at a May OWC meeting, “We now have the IPCC report. We know we have to be off of petroleum and at net zero CO2 emissions in ten years. We have two of the four biggest refineries in the state here in the LD40. What is your plan to shut down the refineries and make sure all those people have jobs?” She asked me what the IPCC was and then said she did not think it was possible to close down the refineries in ten years time. Besides, she said, they would just go some place with less regulation and be dirtier.

I was depressed for a week. I cried. The Feds don’t want to believe the truth and the state only has the guts for resolutions, not concrete action. I see the possibility that if the LD40 can manage Just Transition, maybe people will stop being afraid that combating Climate Change means economic collapse. Maybe we can get some traction and lead the whole friggin’ country in solving this nightmare problem. But that will require a different set of skills and a different leadership style. It requires a seasoned, savvy negotiator used to saying hard things in a way people can hear. It requires a well-known, broadly trustworthy, unimpeachable character. It requires a systems thinker and courageous teacher who can guide a giant coalition in solving a frighteningly complex problem. It requires a hard headed, clear-sighted pragmatist who won’t freeze up in the middle of negotiating the hardest, most profound shift in modern LD40 history. Someone conversant with the use of power who understands the local ecology, housing dilemma, income disparity, food and farmworkers, and how integral it all is to this shift. It absolutely requires a fair minded leader who believes in data-based decision making and knows where to find that data, evaluate it, and place it in the big picture.

Tall order, yes? So Carrie Blackwood calls me, spends an hour on the phone defining the problems with petroleum economy transition in the 40th and the opportunities it presents and checks all the above mentioned boxes. She is a law professor and workplace attorney with a rare certification for workplace investigation that requires stellar ethics. She was Lead Negotiator for SPEEA, the Boeing Engineers Union. She worked for affordable housing in her own neighborhood. She knows what the IPCC is and has read the most recent work on climate science. She grew up poor and knows the importance of good pay for good work. She was a foster child and got lucky with a strong adoptive mother. She is a soldier’s child and sees the struggles faced by our veterans. She has lived among indigenous people, absorbed long term perspectives on land and learned other systems of law. She understands the importance of healthy food raised by people living with dignity. She understands that harmonizing the needs of people, salmon and whales is not impossible. 

We know what to do. We need the will and the leadership to do it.

Everywhere Carrie speaks she leaves people with the conviction we can do this. A broad grassroots spectrum of environmentalists, sustainable farming practitioners, labor lawyers, social justice warriors, health care advocates and just-plain-folks out here on the islands and throughout the LD40 know she is equal to the fierce urgency of now.

See you at the ballot box.