CLIMATE DISASTERS & SEA-LEVEL RISE
THROUGHOUT THE 2022 ELECTION CYCLE, VOTERS NEED TO ASK
WELL-CRAFTED, FACT-BASED QUESTIONS ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING,
OF EVERY CANDIDATE FOR CONGRESS
To anyone who knows what is actually happening to our country (and the entire planet) as a result of global warming, climate change, and sea level rise, it is easy to become glum, and grim.
But that attitude does not, and will not, win elections, for candidates.
So, I’m going to propose a different approach, with a different attitude. One where anyone who wants to actually help the planet, help humanity, and make connections with other people who have good hearts, good sense, and goodwill, can approach the 2022 election cycle with a full, fair, and entirely true recognition that it offers a noble, challenging, and worthwhile quest, and adventure, for anyone who chooses to making a commitment to helping elect better (and, better-informed) candidates to both the House, AND the Senate. Here is the challenge, and the quest:
Working both:
(i) on your own – by doing your own reading, studying, preparing, rehearsing, and posting drafts on social media of what you are hoping and planning to do, before you actually do it; and,
(ii) in cooperation and communication with other like-minded, good-hearted, sincere people who truly want to try to help their friends, their families, and all of humanity,
please consider choosing, and committing to, the following challenges:
(A) try your absolute best, to figure out the best way to ask, and phrase, some carefully-loaded and pointed questions, which people who want to help slow down global warming can ask of any and all candidates for Congress; and,
(B) go out and actually start doing it, in public, at any and every event where any candidate for Congress will be appearing, and might be willing to answer questions from the audience after the `speechifying’ part of the event ends.
And, commit to doing it again and again, repeatedly, as an “iterative” process, where one of your main goals is to seriously question and analyze, as honestly as possible, what went right, what didn’t seem to work so well, and how YOU might be able to do better, next time, since YOU are the only person YOU can control. If you’re not already familiar with them, read the Wikipedia entries on Edwards Deming, Masaaki Imai, and “Continual improvement process”, and commit to making “always try to keep getting better” one of your personal goals, both in the challenge proposed herein, and in life in general.
And, learn to anticipate the responses you are likely to get, from politicians, when you ask them questions they do not want to have to answer. For numerous reasons, politicians will try to sidestep, deflect, and dance around certain questions, and the grimness of what is happening with global warming places it directly in the “Deflect, sidestep, and make vague, indirect, unenforceable promises and reassurances about it” category. Keep asking yourself how YOU – as a key player in a back-and-forth exchange, the one who asked the question, and who now needs to stand strong and firm until that question gets faced up to and actually answered, instead of being sidestepped and evaded – might be able to do better, somehow, the next time you do it. And, understand that one possible way to ask a question about some fact that is important, is to simply describe the fact itself, in language that is as clear, direct, and to-the-point as possible, and then add some variant of the question, `Have you been informed about that fact, and do you either agree, or disagree, that it is true, real, and factual?’
In addition, recognize the value of teamwork, and be willing to team up with others, to find better ways to keep asking and confronting political candidates with questions about an intensely unpleasant and unwanted threat and problem that Congress does NOT want to have to face up to. If you will stay on the good side – the side that is actively trying to help solve a huge and deadly problem, rather than the side that keeps trying to ignore it and pretend it doesn’t exist, or can wait and be solved later – you will find that there are other good, caring, and compassionate people in nearly any audience, at nearly any type of political event (excluding events that have been deliberately organized and intended to attract extremists, fringe-dwellers, and malcontents). So, if you see and hear a good, well-done, or even just promising action by a good person at such an event, be friendly toward that person after the event ends, say something nice about what s/he did, and find out who s/he is working with, and whether they might want to consider forming some type of . . . if not an actual team, then perhaps some type of friend and/or sharing group, on one or more social media platforms.
In addition, understand, and learn to simply accept – as one of life’s hard but true lessons and limits – that different players on any team, in any team sport, will have different roles. In basketball, there are differences between guards, forwards, and centers; in football, there are differences between blockers, runners, and linebackers; and in baseball, a team usually wants power hitting from the fielders at first and third, and agility and good defense from the fielders at shortstop and second. The goal of anyone who truly wants to be part of a team – rather than someone who is better at solo competitions, such as tennis or golf – becomes finding the best ways to merge, blend, and combine the different talents, strengths, assets, desires, and motivations of different people, into teams that can work together effectively, while helping everyone on the team become better at whatever role that they have been asked or assigned to perform.
So . . . with the above as preface . . . every sentence, every fact, every forecast and prediction, and every word, on every page in this section, is my best effort to set forth, and put into play, a set of facts – and, a display of how I believe these facts can be approached, organized, and described, in ways that can give them better chances of penetrating into the thoughts and awareness of people who hear about these facts. I hope others will try to figure out ways to weave at least some of these facts into their own efforts, as they ponder the opportunity which this election cycle has offered to them, to embark on what can indeed be approached, thought of, and turned into, a noble, challenging, and worthwhile quest, and adventure.
I also invite and challenge anyone to turn any of the facts on the following pages into a short video, for platforms like TikTok, YouTube, or Instagram. Set the stage, and explain that you are trying to show the rest of the world how YOU would propose to take one or more actual, hard facts about global warming and climate change, and turn it/them into a question, phrased in whatever way you propose to ask it, at a political event where one or more candidates for Congress will be taking questions. If people will take THAT as a challenge, and create discussion groups, chat rooms, or whatever, to work on, polish, and hone those kinds of questions until they reach a point that people find impressive, that could genuinely help improve, solidify, and advance the cause we need to be working on, if we’re going to have any chance of getting better (and better-informed) people elected to Congress.
A strange, peculiar, and even bizarre combination of events and conditions has come together, in ways that can and will directly affect the 2022 elections. Rather than allowing the thrashings and turmoils of pro-Trump and anti-Trump arguments, attacks, and counter-attacks to totally dominate the political agenda this year, people who care about global warming, and about finding ways to force Congress to begin doing useful things that can help slow it down, have a chance – this year – to create a DIFFERENT set of issues – and a DIFFERENT set of player/participants who focus on and talk about OTHER things – in ways which MANY voters may actually welcome, and appreciate, as a change-of-pace (and a relief) from the endlessly angry, divisive, unsolvable arguments about Trump.
And so . . . a list of what I believe to be hard, solid, and provable facts, about climate change and sea level rise, begins on the next page. As you read my descriptions, notice how they have been sequenced, and how each one is both prefaced (to set the stage), and then explained. Also keep in mind the good advice that, `People remember stories, more than they remember numbers.’ I don’t claim that anything I’ve done is optimal, or ideal; however, I gave serious thought to every sentence on the following pages, and those statements are what I came up with, in the hope that anyone else can use whatever I’ve done, to provide a set of grips, or handles, which may be able to help at least some people get a better hold on something which:
(i) is so complex, difficult, and challenging that it has defied the best efforts of many of the best minds on this planet, so far; and,
(ii) threatens the future, stability, prospects, and happiness of every family, every society, every culture, every race, every religion, every nation, every government, and every human on this planet, with no exceptions for the wealthy -- whose wealth, actually, is likely to make them even more appealing, as targets, if mob violence and mass killings overthrow the rule of law.
If you are willing to accept the challenge, and try to help humanity, then please, try to accept that what I’ve done is merely an attempt to try to attach some grips, and handles, onto the surface of something that is far too large for anyone to grab hold of. The only chance we will have, to try to survive the disasters that are coming, is if those who care, and who are willing to try, can learn to work together, somehow.