There is something tangibly rewarding when after have put your hands in warm soil, planting for your own table, to being able to harvest bounty from the soil.  

Along with millions, tens of millions of others, my own gardening experience is reflected in a larger plot and on a much bigger stage as First Lady Michelle Obama pursues organic gardening on the White House lawn with the assistance of many, including students from a DC elementary school.

While there has been some 80 lbs harvested to date, some for White House meals but most for local food kitchens, yesterday The First Lady celebrated the end of the school year with Bancroft Elementary students with harvesting from the garden and eating an organic salad. And, they all literally had the fruits of their labors as “once kids finished their salads, they were rewarded with a cupcake topped with fresh garden berries”.

While it might be fun to get one’s hands dirty, rewarding to see the ‘fruits of one’s labor’ on the plate before you, and tasty to eat this fresh, pesticide-free food, this connects to larger issues.

Senator Jeff Merkley came to the podium during the luncheon session at America’s Future NOW! focused on energy.   He opened, reinforcing core points from his 2008 campaign:

If I’d been here a year ago, I would have talked to you about three things:  The need to transform energy economy, create jobs, and tackle global warming. … About the third, during the campaign, I spoke it about every single night. People asked me why, as it was 21st on people’s concerns.  I responded: it should be first on everyone’s agenda and the only way it will be is if we talk about it.

Senator Merkley speaks, today and elsewhere, knowledgeably and forcefully about Global Warming, providing a litany of items that should part of the agenda moving ahead. Amid these items and opportunity, Senator Merkley made some key points.  But, he provided a straightforward shorthand of what must happen.

If I am going to simplify the issue, we have to quit taking geologic carbon and turning it into atmospheric carbon.

Shut up already!!!

President Obama has said favorable words.

Al Gore says supports it.  Paul Krugman says support it. Two Nobel Prize Winners.

WTF are you to question the President and two Nobel Prize winners?

That is a question received, in more than one space, when it comes to the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security (ACES).

Well, with all due respect to our President and the infallibility of Nobel Prize Winners (Kissinger (’73), James Watson (’03), etc …), we should be clear that the bill, as drafted, falls far short of what is necessary and, well, quite likely falls short of what is possible.

Last night, the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act out for consideration by the rest of the House.

This bill is filled with good … and bad elements. It has strong provisions for improving energy efficiency in the United States, a weak renewable energy standard, and massive (MASSIVE) direct and indirect subsidies and payoffs for the fossil fuel industries.

This is a challenging moment.

There are environmental organizations cheering from the rooftops. There are environmental organizations declaring their opposition. And, there are those vowing to fight even harder.

Help me figure out the lesson that we should draw from an event this week. The Alberta Government, central to perhaps the most disastrous project in North America, is receiving an award for leadership at an Environment Forum.  Consider me confused …

The Aspen Institute and National Geographic are banding together to give out six awards as part of the Aspen Environment Forum.  

A ceremony to recognize and reward excellence for those making a real and concrete contribution to innovation, implementation, and communication of energy and environmental solutions.

Amid the awardees are some heroes, but some are far from heroes. The “government” awardee: The Province of Alberta, Canada. Yes, that Alberta government which is facilitating what has been called the most destructive project on Earth: devastating Alberta in the rapacious Tar Sands projects.   And, this is occurring in the same month that National Georgraphic ran The Canadian Oil Boom: Scraping Bottom.

Many in the Republican “base” found John McCain an outrage, his policy views and perspectives abhorrent, not least of which that he deigns to consider reality in stating that Global Warming is a serious issue meriting attention (even if his policy prescriptions aren’t enough).

Well, what does the Glorious Leader of the Republican Party have to say about this?

“Despite the hysterics of a few pseudo-scientists, there is no reason to believe in global warming.” Rush Limbaugh, 1993

Ah, words that could warm the cockles of even the cold heart of George “Will-ful Deceit” Will.

Watch where you drop it … you could hurt your feet!

There must be something about the number, but Republicans truly don’t seem to like 1100 page bills.

At the White House meeting, Mr. Gingrich said, he told Mr. Clinton that any “attempt to ram through an 1,100 page bill, which is what I am told the Mitchell measure is, would so embitter the process that I don’t think anything else would pass. I think this is crazy.”

Perhaps if the page count had been different, Americans would have universal health care today.

Just a little while ago, the White House held a ‘progressive media and bloggers teleconference’ with Jared Bernstein, Chief Economist for the Vice President.  As a quick reminder, Jared is one of the bloggers that have become “former bloggers” by transitioning into the Obama Administration.

Not surprisingly, Bernstein’s call focused on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan, which has just passed through the Conference Committee as a $789 billion package, incorporating some of the good ideas from the White House and the House, and the bad ideas from the Senate.

NOTE:  The Bernstein photo is from a Drinking Liberally event …

Sadly, every time that we fill up our gas tank, flip the switch for fossil-foolish electricity, warm ourselves with (high efficiency?) natural gas, we risk sending funding to people dedicated to destroying the potential for fostering paths toward mitigation of global warming and our other serious challenges.  Fractions of pennies add up to serious money, serious funding for those evidently uncaring as to the havoc that they are fostering for their own children — let alone yours and mine.

From the West, we have the fumes of a particularly egregious group of astroturfers. Let’s talk a little  about the Western Business Roundtable.  

The other day, the Environmental Defense Action Fund opened voting for ‘the people’s choice’ as to the best 30-second video to explain how a Cap & Trade program to control carbon dioxide would help cut the nation’s dependence on oil. Putting aside questions as to Environmental Defense’s devotion to a CAP uber all, the best video seemed clear:  The Thinking Cap.   This choice seemed clear, evidently, to many as this video was the runaway victor for EDAF’s $1000 “People’s Choice” award.  (The Climate Activists’ Choice Award.) But the experts, the experts had a different perspective.  They went with the foul-language oriented Cursing Cap.

Irony

(from the Ancient Greek ???????? eironeía, meaning hypocrisy, deception, or feigned ignorance) is a literary or rhetorical device, in which there is an incongruity or discordance between what one says or does and what one means or what is generally understood. Irony is a mode of expression that calls attention to discrepancy between two levels of knowledge.

Yesterday was a marvelous day, on many levels, with some great people newly sworn into Congress, on both the Senate and House sides.  …

The irony …

Of watching Dick Cheney administer the oath of office to the Senators of the 111th Congress.