Friday 11 July 2014
Letter # 411
Dear President Obama,
Sometimes when we read about wars and disasters and specific events that just happened, we don’t really see the larger pattern. I was struck recently by a small article about VERY severe drought in Syria. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/07/world/middleeast/syria-unicef-says-drought-adds-to-safe-water-woes.html
Some parts of Syria have received the lowest level of rainfall in 50 years! Most places in Syria have gotten only half their normal rainfall. The civil war has been raging since March 2011 and much damage has been done to water and sewage systems. UNICEF reports that there is only 1/3 the amount of clean water in Syria as there was 3 years ago! What are people to do? This is a regional drought also affecting Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq. We are likely to see more and more refugees not just from the war, but from climate change! Please stop the Keystone XL pipeline today. We need to quickly stop relying on fossil fuels and stop increasing the carbon in the air. It’s the only was to lessen climate disaster. Thank you.
Susan J. Ringler, Worried by Drought in Syria
Monday 14 July 2014
Letter # 412
Dear President Obama,
I was happy to read recently that landowners in central Mass. are questioning whether we need yet another natural gas pipeline through their properties. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/11/business/energy-environment/new-england-confronts-surging-demand-for-natural-gas.html
Kinder Morgan says we need the cheap natural gas, but more and more landowners are questioning whether we do! As Shanna Cleveland, an attorney with the Conservation Law Foundation, says “Big pipelines lock us into a system we need to out grow and undermine efforts to address the climate crisis.” Yessiree Bob!!! She is right. I’m happy that only half the landowners have let Kinder Morgan survey their land. I hope this pipeline gets stalled until we realize we don’t need it and don’t want it! Please stop the Keystone XL pipeline and send YOUR message that fossil fuels are old-school and need to be quickly phased out!
Thank you.
Susan J. Ringler, Pastures NOT Pipelines
Tuesday 15 July 2014
Letter # 413
Dear President Obama,
I send you this image from a wonderful Richard Estes exhibit I saw in Portland Maine. Estes is an extraordinary painter who works from photographs. It’s hard to see in this postcard, but Estes does what the human eye and photographs cannot: he makes every detail crisp, whether near or far. The result is a hyper-realism that is unsettling (albeit interesting) as it draws our eye to different parts of the canvas. The crispness valorizes every detail equally and this gives his paintings a creepy quality for me! The human eye focuses, and that involves CHOICE – to see one thing better, we see another less. Similarly, an “all of the above” energy policy seems to valorize all energy sources. But this is an illusion, just as unsettling as an Estes painting. Beyond the rhetoric of “all energy,” you still make energy CHOICES. Please stop the Keystone XL pipeline. Please show us that your focus is on reducing carbon emissions so the world remains a great place for humans!
Thank you.
Susan J. Ringler, Lessons from Richard Estes
Wednesday 16 July 2014
Letter # 414
Dear President Obama,
I was thrilled to read today of the report to the UN by 15 teams from different countries on how to keep global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/09/business/blueprints-for-taming-the-climate-crisis.html
Hats off to Jeffrey Sachs and the Sustainable Development Solutions Network for tackling the specifics of this huge overhaul to our energy uses. To achieve this goal we must reduce carbon emissions by mid-century to NO MORE THAN 1.6 tons per person – for every person on the planet. Annual emissions today in the US are MORE THAN 16 TONS per person. Ten times too much! But the good news is WE CAN DO THIS! The American team built several models to hit the target with different mixes of nuclear, renewables, and some carbon capture. They propose, for example, that 15 years from now EVERY new car sold in the US would be ELECTRIC! Let’s get started right away on this huge task. Please stop the Keystone XL pipeline today. Fossil fuels are for the past, NOT the future. Let’s get going on the work to be done.
Thank you.
Susan J. Ringler, Huge Cuts to Carbon ARE Possible
Thursday 17 July 2014
Letter # 415
Dear President Obama,
I am writing again about the UN report yesterday about how to keep global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. The report “underscores the pointlessness of small, incremental emissions cuts.” The US needs to cut emissions 4 percent every year to hit the target. This is more than 10 times faster than the EIA forecasts this year. We need to cut carbon FAST. As Eduardo Porter bluntly states, replacing coal with natural gas is unproductive. “Cheap” gas and oil are not “cheap.” They will trap us into a high-carbon future at OUR PERIL! Stop the Keystone XL pipeline NOW. Please please! What can we do THIS YEAR to reduce carbon emissions 10 times faster than last year? Let’s get more renewable energy online FAST. Here are the numbers. We can do this without crashing the economy. Let’s start NOW. Let’s make it the new slogan: 4 percent a year! We can’t afford to put this off any longer. Our future is in our hands. We have some plans, now let’s execute them. Stop fracking, stop new gas and oil pipelines. Let’s strengthen our electric grid and build out renewables. Let’s go for it! Thank you.
Susan J. Ringler, Reduce Carbon 4% a Year
Friday 18 July 2014
Letter # 416
Dear President Obama,
I liked the opinion piece by David J. Hayes today about small modular renewable energy systems that are compact and scalable and can be used with wind or solar in remote communities. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/18/opinion/wind-solar-clean-power-off-the-grid.html
This is a technology I would gladly invest in. I think it could be quite profitable. Please help get these systems off the drawing board and into production. Not only will these micro grids help remote communities, they may also provide back up for hospitals in emergencies. The dept. of Defense has successfully deployed such systems, now let’s spread the technology! Let’s invest in the clean technologies we already have and scale them up BIG!! Please also stop the Keystone XL pipeline TODAY. It has NO PART in the clean energy future of America or the planet. It’s a bad idea that we should not encourage in any way. Remember. We need to reduce carbon emissions 4 percent every year!! Every year!
Thank you.
Susan J. Ringler, Scale Up Clean Technology
Friday 18 July 2014
Letter # 417 (2nd letter today)
Dear President Obama,
I write to honor the architect Randall Stout who died of cancer at 56 last week. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/17/arts/design/randall-stout-architect-of-innovative-environmental-designs-dies-at-56.html
I had never heard of him before reading his obituary, but I love the fact that he designed everything from museums to the low-cost Dockweiler Beach Youth Center. He used energy-efficient materials when others were not. He designed for the future. We will need more architects like him as we face the climate crisis in the coming decades. He will be sorely missed.
In his honor, please stop the Keystone XL pipeline today. We need to stop using fossil fuels and design energy systems for a carbon-free future. Look FORWARD Mr. President, with optimism and urgency and help get us headed for rapid change. Remember, we need to reduce our carbon emissions 4 % each year starting NOW! Not 0.4% but 4%. Don’t lose any more time.
Thank you.
Susan J. Ringler, Honoring Randall Stout
Saturday 19 July 2014
Letter # 418
Dear President Obama,
Oiii! Oiii! The government should absolutely NOT be approving guidelines for seismic searching for oil and gas in the Atlantic Ocean! https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/19/us/white-house-opens-door-to-exploring-atlantic-for-oil.html
We have discovered too much oil and gas already. We need to turn off the fossil fuel tap! It will destroy the planet – make it unfit for human habitation. This is lunacy and also very destructive of ocean life and habitats. Why do you let the Interior Dept. make such a bad decision? We must cut our carbon emissions every year 10 times faster than we are currently doing. There is NO room for future oil and gas exploration in this critical phase to decarbonize! We cannot just carry on as before. Please stop the Keystone XL pipeline NOW. We don’t need it or want it. And please get the Interior Dept. tostart saying NO to oil and gas companies.
Thank you.
Susan J. Ringler, No seismic Oil exploration in the OCEAN
Monday 21 July 2014
Letter # 419
Dear President Obama,
I suppose it’s none of my business, but I was struck a few months ago, by an article about Kathryn Ruemmler, who was your White House Counsel for two years. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/07/us/politics/departing-white-house-counsel-held-powerful-sway.html
The article was mostly about her years as WH Counsel, but also noted she was a lead Prosecutor on Enron, later worked as a white-collar defense lawyer, and will go back to white collar DEFENSE. As the mother of a young woman interested in law, I find myself wondering where is Ms. Ruemmler’s MORAL COMPASS? How can you go from prosecuting white collar crime to defending it? Clearly the latter pays more and uses similar detailed expertise. But does getting close to all that detail just obscure the line between right and wrong? So with you, does the daily crush of details obscure what the largest long-term crisis on the planet IS? Please stop the Keystone XL pipeline Right NOW. Don’t get distracted from the climate crisis. If we irreversibly damage the climate, nothing else matters. Keep your moral compass steady.
Thank you.
Susan J. Ringler, Guided by Moral Compass
Tuesday 22 July 2014
Letter # 420
Dear President Obama,
Thank you to Henry Fountain for the long article on carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) today. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/22/science/corralling-carbon-before-it-belches-from-stack.html
More people need to know more about this technology. But the article is misleading in a number of ways. First the 1 million tons of CO2 per year that Norway stores under sea sounds like a large amount, but is TINY. Second, selling CO2 to use to pump more oil (enhanced oil recovery) just creates MORE CO2 to get rid of!! Third, saying the technology is known is like saying building a cabin is like building a skyscraper! CCS is a bad idea built on man’s hubris. Some think we can just engineer our way out of anything! The only good news in the article is that the high development costs of CCS are keeping its proliferation to a slow crawl. Hopefully we will realize our tech skills are better used developing renewable energy than CCS. Please stop the Keystone XL pipeline NOW! Send a strong message! Leave the oil in the ground.
Thank you.
Susan J. Ringler, CCS is a Bad Idea
