OMNI NEWSLETTER: ACTIONS, COMMENT

NOVEMBER 24, 2006, BUILDING A CULTURE OF PEACE

 

OMNI is experimenting with its Newsletter.  Melanie Dietzel is now compiling the CURRENT EVENTS.  Send your notices to her—and well in advance.  She will publish every other week on a regular schedule.  Her next CURRENT EVENTS NEWSLETTER will appear this Sunday.    melaniedietzel@cox.net

 

The subjects, reports, commentary Newsletter will appear irregularly as in the past, but with some experiments here also.  The familiar comprehensive newsletter will continue, but also special issues.  These are intended not only to be informative but to lead to action—to letters, calls, flyers, forums.  They are also, as before, open to anyone; just send your writing to Dick.  Please volunteer for your favorite world peace, human rights, social and economic justice, and environmental (land and species) subject.  And anyone can edit any of these numbers.  A new general editor is solicited.

 

SPECIAL NUMBER ON GLOBAL WARMING

 

This initial number on CLIMATE CHANGE is divided into two parts.  All subsequent numbers will follow this format, though other subjects might be introduced:

 

I.               Identifying aspects of the local/state carbon footprint.  Before we begin to cope with the problem, we must see not only its systematic extent but its detailed reality.

 

  II.  OMNI’s actions, especially its Carbon Caps Task Force.

 

I.  BUSINESS AS USUAL

    OMNI’s free showing of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth was motivated by laudably grand good intentions. Hundreds were alerted to the urgency of climate change. A jump forward in knowledge was achieved.   But the next morning we awoke to our unchanged, CO2 culture.  Nobody in OMNI was surprised, because we have understood that CREATING A CULTURE OF PEACE AND JUSTICE AND ECOLOGY is BUILDING A NEW CULTURE.  Like militarism, the fossil fuel CO2 culture is systemic and will require a mighty effort to change.  

     Examples:  “Easy to Be Green,” an article with photo of volunteers cleaning our lake, “More Than 340 Participants Shine Shores of Beaver Lake” (TMN 10-1).  This  pleasant, worthwhile outing might have been made even more valuable in the context of global warming and how to make ecological work count in reducing our individual and societal carbon footprints.

      Bikes, Blues, and Barbeque:  The Sat. procession was lengthened, so for several hours thousands of motorcycles traveled miles and miles all around Fayetteville filling our atmosphere with pollution/CO2.  And outside Fayetteville?  Not only maybe 100,000 bikes roaring to Fayetteville, but BBB adds a Poker run for 800 riders to rumble a course of some 140 miles around NWA. 

     Asa Hutchinson while running for office: Business before Environment: “Arkansas shouldn’t take stronger actions against greenhouse gases because doing so could hurt its economy,” reported TMN (10-10, 2006, 7A). ( In contrast, Gov. Schwarzenegger of Calif. Signed a law in Oct. capping greenhouse emissions.)

     Arkansas Governor and Legislators.   “Sales Tax Proposals a Hot Topic in ’07 Legislature” (TMN 11-24).  House Speaker-elect Benny Petrus (D-Stuttgart) in discussing future taxes, said “’we need to decide what the true needs [of the state] are.’”  Rep. Rick Green (R-Van Buren) on the same subject assumes “roads are part of the big picture of future economic development.”   Cutting the sales tax on utilities to assist development (i.e. corporations) was taken for granted by D and P, including Gov.-elect Beebe. NOT ONE WORD ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE/CO2 AS A FACTOR.

    Population and Climate Change.  Population growth is one of the causes of CO2 increases. 

See Art Hobson:  http://physics.uark.edu/hobson/NWAT/05.12.10.html  

 

Send your examples and comments on the status quo of global warming in Fayetteville, NWA, and Arkansas. 

 

II.  OMNI’s new CARBON CAPS TASK FORCE

(by Kelly Mulhollan)

OMNI has a new CARBON CAPS TASK FORCE dedicated to addressing the global warming crisis. This effort is in concert with the package of global warming bills that the Arkansas Citizens First Congress have initiated to go through the legislature this year. The Task Force is

focusing on the creation of a bill similar to what California passed earlier this year--a carbon caps bill that aims at reducing C02 emissions below 1990 levels by 2020. This is a huge undertaking and we are the first Southern state to initiate such a measure. So far the

task force has completed the preliminary research and roughed out a bill for the Citizens First Congress. A meeting  took place in Little Rock with environmental leaders from all over the State and a political strategy committee was formed to seek legislative sponsorship for the bill. The next phase for the task force will be to set up a statewide education campaign to create an awareness of the effort and gain support in all districts. We are now raising money for the campaign.   We will need all the help we can get.

 

 Currently the members of the Carbon Caps Task Force are- Kelly Mulhollan, Edward Hejtmanik, Art Hobson, Gladys Tiffany, Dick Bennett, Abel Tomlinson, Stephan Pollard, Dan Kelley, Kathy Kisida, Annie Littell, Pippin Lowe, Geoff Oelsner, Yvonne and Gerry Segal, Jamie Ulick.  Contact Kelly Mulhollan if you wish to join the committee.

 

 

 

 

 

 

> Dick Bennett

> jbennet@uark.edu <mailto:jbennet@uark.edu>

> (479) 442-4600

> 2582 Jimmie Ave.

> Fayetteville, AR 72703