By Hailey Snow, Youth Director
Last night, as the sun set over the Capitol, The Alliance for Climate Protection’s softball team, The Lions, took on our climate’s greatest enemy: the oil lobby. They took to the field and scored 27 to the paltry 14 brought in by the Oil Barons.
What was so intimidating about the Lions last night? It could have been their grassroots mobilization and the record attendance of both players and fans. It could have been their on-message heckling. They didn’t pass up an opportunity to ask why the batters were against creating millions of clean energy jobs. It could have been their fans lining the field dressed in the famous oil barrels, which they’ve used time and time again to highlight the Deepwater disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Or it could have been the fact that every Lion scored at least one run and/or had an RBI with four homeruns scored.
At the beginning of the season, Big Oil came to the Alliance and specifically asked for the matchup. This was a much-needed win for the Lions and for clean energy. Let’s hope they lobby just as badly as they play softball!
It seems apropo’ for the environmental movement as a whole regarding this crisis. Playing “softball.” While softball games are going on Pakistan drowns in record floods. Russia now starves due to intense wildfires and heat, the effects of which will reverberate throughout the food market. China drowns on one end from floods amd mudslides while the other end thirsts and hungers from desertification and drought. The US is also feeling the effects of this as well in the form of drought in the Southwest, and even in the Northeast as erratic weather is now the rule of the day. The Arctic and glaciers worldwide continue to melt at an unprecedented pace as the very ecosystems that sustain us including the hydrologic cycle are affected. I truly don’t mean to be rude, but playing softball is not exactly what I expected to read here. Where is the outrage? The righteous indignation? The Youth marching in Washington EVERYDAY like they did during the Vietnam War? Where are you? Where is the movement Al Gore spoke of?
RW mouthpiece Sean Hannity on Fox tonight is once again going to attack Al Gore and environmentalism as a whole in stating that he has the nail in the coffin to refute global warming and that environmentalism is simply a communist Marxist plot to control the world… and you know what? People will BELIEVE THAT. They mock the heartfelt sincerity of peoplel like us, and more importantly, distort theh facts to suit their own political agenda. And who is there to speak for us and this planet to SHUT THEM DOWN? While these charlatans are out in the MSM pushing their lies, propaganda, ignorance, and political partisan hatred, where is the truth to counter it? Playing softball? Oh well, please indulge my utter frustration at what appears to be a total lack of guts to take on these purveyors of deceit.
When you are ready to start that movement, please post about that here. I will be right here at the ready.