Missed our panel on climate change and energy prices with Elizabeth Warren
and the Oscar-nominated writers of Don't Look Up? No problem!

[ [link removed] ]Watch the video here. (Then, be sure to [ [link removed] ]share it with your friends
on Facebook and [ [link removed] ]on Twitter!)

[ [link removed] ]Turn on images to see our Zoom event with Elizabeth Warren and the
Don't Look Up writers.

LA Times columnist Mary McNamara was one of over 55,000 people who tuned
in Wednesday to our virtual panel on climate change and energy prices with
Elizabeth Warren and Oscar-nominated Don’t Look Up writers Adam McKay and
David Sirota.

[ [link removed] ]This column was her takeaway: "The only thing we should be talking
about is the climate crisis."

[ [link removed] ]Missed our event with Elizabeth Warren and the Oscar-nominated "Don't
Look Up" writers on clean energy and gas prices? Watch the video here! And
[ [link removed] ]share it with your friends on Facebook and [ [link removed] ]on Twitter.

Then, [ [link removed] ]chip in here to support our advocacy to unite Democrats behind
strong clean-energy policy and messaging.

Here an excerpt from Mary's column in the LA Times:

As I was contemplating the value of writing a column in which I simply
state outrage and the obvious in as many ways as I could think of, a
colleague alerted me that the Progressive Change Campaign Committee was
hosting a Zoom conversation among Adam McKay, David Sirota and Sen.
Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on this very topic. Thinking they might have
some answers, I zoomed in.

McKay and Sirota share story credit for the Oscar-nominated "Don’t Look
Up." Written and directed by McKay, the film follows the travails of two
astronomers who try to warn the world about the enormous asteroid they
have discovered is hurtling toward Earth and an extinction-level impact.
Spoiler alert: No one listens, and extinction occurs.

The parallels between the asteroid and the climate crisis are obvious
and intentional, as is the tragic (albeit with darkly comedic top notes)
ending. Still, I must admit it was a bit weird to hear McKay saying
exactly what I had just been thinking: Why are we -- the media, the
government, the citizenry -- talking about anything but the looming
possibility that life as we know it is going to end in less than 10
years?

How old will you be when climate scientists stop offering any hope at
all?

As McKay told the more than 2,000 people who joined the meeting, he is
very concerned that there has been a communication breakdown around the
climate crisis. The media are not reporting on it often or urgently
enough, he said, so people are not acknowledging the crisis on an
emotional level.

Until we do, nothing will change.

"The panic, the fear that should be happening isn’t happening," McKay
said.

More important, neither is the collective resolve.

Referencing "The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and
Defiance During the Blitz," McKay added that it’s as if the people of
England learned that they were about to bombed by the Germans and rather
than prepare, they did nothing and said, "Oh, it’ll be fine."

"When Britain met that challenge, everyone came to life, everyone did
their best thinking," McKay said, and that is what should be happening
now in this country around emissions control.

So acknowledge the fear, then Keep Calm and Demand Clean Energy.

"It’s not that we don’t have the solutions. We do," McKay added. "Clean
energy is better and cheaper than it’s ever been. That’s the tragedy of
what is happening — we have the science and the solutions. The only
thing that’s lacking is the awareness."

Sirota and Warren echoed those sentiments and the list of obstacles:
climate deniers, broken incentives, an under-informed and increasingly
overwhelmed public, those who would politicize a nonpolitical topic and,
above all, powerful lobbies.

Speaking from a basement room in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.,
Warren said the political influence wielded by oil and gas companies is
"so baked into this place that they don’t need to ask for a special
thing. They just need a lot of inaction."

"There’s a segment of the populace that understands the threat but
doesn’t understand the urgency," said Sirota, a journalist and political
commentator based in Denver. "If we can move those people, we can make
this an electorally salient issue."

Terms like "electorally salient" may not help make our reaction to the
climate crisis more visceral, but the point is clear: It must become the
No. 1 issue in any election.

We all need to vote — and agitate — as if our lives depended on it,
because they do, and we need to remind ourselves of this on a daily
basis.

"Talk about it in your day-to-day conversation," said McKay. "If you
knew there was a giant comet coming to Earth, it would come up. This
culture is pressuring us to believe that everything is normal, when it’s
not."

To be fair, many people do regularly discuss the climate crisis (The
Times has a whole newsletter, "Boiling Point," devoted to it), and this
culture is an ever-shifting tension between protest and reassurance, the
granular and the universal. We use relatively small events, like Smith’s
slap, to discuss larger things, and that’s as it should be.

But if we weren’t ready to demand action on the looming climate
catastrophe when it was 30 or 20 years away, we really need to do so
now.

If a few days of outrage over Disney’s tin-earned response to Florida’s
heinous "Don’t Say Gay" legislation can force the company’s chief
executive to do a 180, image what effect voters could have on their
elected officials if they put the same targeted effort into demanding
that this country lower carbon-dioxide emissions starting today.

So sure, deal with other issues, weigh in on whatever controversy is
trending. I certainly will, because it’s my job. But don’t pretend that
there isn’t an asteroid hurtling toward Earth, because there is. An
asteroid we created, so we’d better do our best to stop it, and fast.

[ [link removed] ]If you missed our event that inspired this LA Times column, watch the
video here. And [ [link removed] ]share it with your friends on Facebook and [ [link removed] ]on
Twitter.

Then, [ [link removed] ]chip in here to support our advocacy to unite Democrats behind
strong clean-energy policy and messaging.

Thanks for being a bold progressive.

-- The PCCC Team ([ [link removed] ]@BoldProgressive)

P.S. If you haven't done so yet, [ [link removed] ]add your voice to the more than
60,000 people calling on Dem leaders to unite behind strong clean-energy
policy and messaging. SIGN ON HERE.

 

 

 


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