Brazil got the Olympics. Will they best us in the global warming fight too?

As U.S. legislators debate reform to save money on health care, Brazil has bigger things in mind. Namely, saving the planet. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva wants to propose reducing the deforestation rate in Brazil's Amazon rain forests by 80 percent by 2020, he told Agence France-Presse on Tuesday. Lula plans to unveil a more complete package in December at the global climate talks in Copenhagen. On the same day, Brazil's environment minister told Reuters the fast-growing country is considering capping its carbon emissions at 2005 levels.

If the carbon cap were to take effect, it would be an incredibly bold move. In the U.S., it would also be impossible. Special interest groups aligned with coal and steel state congressmen would shoot it down in a heartbeat. Even under a president who has stated that the environment and global warming are huge priorities for the most powerful country on Earth, the U.S. is looking more and more like an environmental laggard that can't make progress on what could well be the pivotal issue of the next 50 years.

Brazil is following in the footsteps of China, another newly minted economic powerhouse, which is pushing hard to green itself and the world. Either this year or next, China will surpass the U.S. in total wind power generation. China is also set to surge past the U.S. in solar power developments, not to mention the fact that Beijing is already building the smart electricity distribution grid that the U.S. is only beginning to plan.

So what does the U.S. need to do to regain leadership in the increasingly important race to green the world? At this point, radical surgery is likely necessary. Start with rewriting the U.S. Constitution to change the Senate. The Founding Fathers certainly intended the Senate to serve as a check on the efforts of the more politically exposed House of Representatives and the Executive Branch. But I wonder whether they would have agreed to a situation in which states holding less than 1 percent of the U.S. population (Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota) could hold the entire legislative process hostage.

The demographic shifts that have led to higher and higher populations in the Blue States and on the coasts make this uneven representation even more of a farce -- and an enormous barrier to policies that would do great good for many but cause pain to a few. A higher national gasoline tax, a more robust cap-and-trade system on carbon emissions or a straight carbon tax, reduced subsidies for petroleum production and reduced subsidies for ethanol could all be possible with a Senate that was not so woefully slanted and ungovernable.

Failing a new Constitution (no, I am not entirely serious in my previous suggestion, but this is a commentary), the U.S. should be, at a minimum, matching the environmental commitments of Brazil and China. This would be a minimal way to stay abreast of these rising powers that still have economies dwarfed by ours. Over the longer haul, the green policies proposed by Brazil are politically sound and economically advantageous.

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/10/15/brazil-already-got-the-olympics-will-they-best-us-in-the-global/

they have horrendous environmental problems due to lack of environmental laws.


I think Lula pretty good but simply stating some arbitrary goal doesn't make one all of a sudden green. Lets see Brazil actually implement and enforce those measures to prevent rain forest destruction.

what if Obama comes out and says we will reduce deforestation by 85% that makes him greener than Lula??

People in that forum have been keeping their eyes on Brazil's relationship to the environment, too, from what I've seen.

Thanks, Blue_Tires!

Nearly 60% of the American people opposed the war on Iraq (--Feb 03, all polls).

Nearly 60% of the American people oppose the war on Afghanistan.

And a whopping 80% to 90% of the American people want strong environmental protection.

We are a well-informed, progressive people--contrary to the impression that our corpo-fascist 'news' monopolies try to give us of ourselves. Why then have we become such a backward nation?

I don't attribute it to the Senate, particularly--although I think abolishing the Senate is a good idea. I think it's more attributable to a succession of corrupt, rigged, delusional elections--a problem that is likely more easily remedied than altering the fundamental structure of the federal government, by abolishing the Senate, or the Electoral College, or abolishing corporations--all of which would require the Senate, the House and the President to agree. We cannot even attempt anything so bold, by way of reform--nor the corrupt (campaign contributions/lobbyist) and delusional (corpo/fascist 'news' media) aspects of our election system, until we rid the country of the pestilence of 'TRADE SECRET' voting systems.

The later reform is also more doable. During the 2002 to 2004 period, the federal government, under the Puke/Blue Dog Party, fast-tracked electronic voting systems all over the country, run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled, now, mostly, by ONE private corporation with far rightwing connections that would make your hair stand on end, and they failed to require any audit/recount controls. They did this with a $3.9 billion electronic voting boondoggle passed by the Anthrax Congress. But they didn't require it. States/local governments can revert to hand-counted paper ballots, so long as they provide these extremely riggable electronic machines only to the handicapped (whose corrupt organizations were the front for this coup). Thus, it is now possible for the Dark Lords who rule over us to easily--EASILY!--rig entire national elections without leaving a trace. Restoring democracy in the US must begin by throwing these machines into 'Boston Harbor.' Until we do, we have no power to address the filthy corrupt campaign contribution system and fascist propaganda machine of the corpo/fascist 'news' monopolies, nor any other needed reform.

Control over election systems still resides at the local/state level where ordinary people still have some potential influence. That makes it doable. You may never meet your Senate bloviator or your Congresscreep, but your county registrar of voters may live right down the street from you. The local/state deciders, on voting systems, reside much closer to home. They can reject the federal boondoggle money, hire back the little old white-haired ladies and gentlemen who used to count our votes (or hire from the legions of the unemployed), and goddamn count the votes by hand, in full public view of the local precinct, as it was done for two hundred years. And the media can goddamn wait for the results! (Canada does it in a day!) (--and they have universal health care!)

Latin America has worse corpo/fascist media than the US, but has managed to elect leftist (majorityist) leaders all over the region--in Brazil, Venezuela, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, and came within a hairsbreadth (0.05%) of winning the presidency of Mexico, which would have been nearly a clean sweep of half the western hemisphere. How did they do it? Transparent vote counting--a good government measure that they have been working on for over a decade (locally and through the OAS and the Carter Center). Other good government practices--such as banning campaign ads (advantage to the rich) in the weeks just before the election--have also been instituted. But the key--the most fundamental and important element of democracy--is that the vote counting system is done by hand in the public venue, or, if electronic, is owned and controlled by the public (OPEN SOURCE code--as in Venezuela--not 'TRADE SECRET' code), with a sufficient audit to detect fraud in an electronic system (55% in Venezuela--which is five times the minimum needed--as opposed to an utterly scandalous ZERO percent audit in half the US and a meager, inadequate 1% in the other half).

We cannot even begin to address the unfree press, or the campaign donation/lobbyist filth, until we have restored transparent vote counting. The three together--the corpo/fascist media, the campaign donation system and egregiously non-transparent vote counting, comprise a cauldron of corruption that stinks unto the Cosmos. It is truly diabolical. But the actual vote counting system, a) is something that we, the people, still have some potential control over, and b) is the key to all other reforms.

If we some day decide to abolish the Senate, and succeed at doing so, it will be because we first abolished ES&S and other 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines.