On Wednesday night, Organizing for Action (OFA), the grassroots organization that pushes for President Obama‘s agenda, held a conference call to discuss the Obama administration’s proposed new Environmental Protection Agency rules to curb greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. The call featured Rohan Patel, who is special assistant to President Obama and White House Deputy Director of Intergovernmental Affairs. Patel spoke about what the Obama administration seeks to accomplish with the new EPA rules, as well as the White House messaging on climate change.
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Hurricane Sandy flooding, October 2012
Today, the U.S. Government released its annual National Climate Assessment (NCA) and it is deservedly scary. Just last month, the United Nations released its landmark report on climate change, and it also was duly scary. Both of these reports, like the ones published before them, indicate that climate change is here, that it is largely caused by human activity such as burning of fossil fuels, that climate change is partly responsible for severe weather events like storms and drought, that climate change, if unchecked, will cause massive economic and other upheavals, and that climate change can be mitigated by lowering greenhouse gas emissions and using more clean renewable energy. However, many people seem to find climate change too big and too scary, and thus feel frozen to do anything about it. Instead of treating climate change as such a big scary problem, as these reports often do, perhaps it is now time to bite-size climate change in order to solve it.
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http://youtu.be/1zFruNyiUHQ
Yesterday, NBC’s “Meet the Press” held a climate change “debate” between Bill Nye “the Science Guy” and Republican Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. The debate (see video above) represented the triumph of science over stupid.
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If you’re a progressive and you follow the mainstream media, you might think that all you’re supposed to do lately is play weak defense against the attacks on implementation of the Affordable Care Act. That’s exactly what Republicans want — for progressives and Democrats to cower under the Republican agenda (which includes destroying the ACA), like a boxer pinned in the corner. But Messaging Maxim #1 is Go On Offense. That means to come out of the corner swinging, by pushing the progressive agenda. Here are some items on the progressive agenda, in case you’ve been following mainstream media “news” and have forgotten:
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While it’s easy to get caught up in the mainstream media’s focus on the latest small shiny object, Democrats should take a deep breath and ask themselves, “What do we stand for?” In our Messaging Manifesto for Democrats published over two years ago, we provided a possible answer in just two words. Here’s how Democrats can get back to basics and promote fundamental Democratic Party values in the current political and media climate:
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Want to know the dirty little secret that may cause many Republicans to believe in climate change? The secret is: there’s lots money to be made. Indeed, climate change a/k/a global warming could unleash economic opportunities on par with the Agricultural Revolution, the Industrial Revolution and the Information Revolution that kicked into high gear with the Internet. Here are some ways in which capitalists may capitalize on climate change:
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