by Toby Reid, VPOE

Dear President Obama,

I am writing to you today as a concerned global citizen who wishes for his future and the future of the generations to come to be taken into account when the world gets together to plan the successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol, in December of this year in Copenhagen, Denmark.

For many years now, we have known the cause of climate change. It is human caused, and is due to our exponentially rising carbon emissions which have resulted from an exponentially increasing consumptive society. We have been keenly aware of the dangerous path that we’ve been collectively blazing since the second Great War, a time that caused my grandparents to say ‘enough is enough, we just want peace and stability’. It was the noted economist, Kenneth Boulding, former president of the American Economic Association, who declared in his book “Economic Analysis” in 1941: “anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist”.

While the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 is a good first step in tackling our exponentially growing carbon emissions, containing provisions that improve building codes and that support a cap and trade system for carbon management, it is not even close to being enough for what the world needs from its largest emitter. Under the terms of this Act, a satisfactory outcome could be obtained if just 12 percent of the nation’s electricity is generated by renewable means by 2020. This outcome would simply be delaying the inevitable and making the problem worse. Renewable electrical generation IS the future, and something the current administration should be holding as one of its top priorities for the current term.

Your lack of bold leadership on enacting emissions laws on polluters, large and small, will only undermine the global effort that is currently being organized by countless concerned citizens on this planet, who realize that the day has come that we must all account for our wayward, over-consumptive path. You are right when you suggest that we must all be responsible for one another, and that we must preserve the future for the generations that are to come. However, you are very wrong if you believe that responsibility towards future generations is found in this Act.

Given this need for increased humanity in human society, Mr. President, and the Executive Staff of the White House, the Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 is simply not enough. Mr. President, you have spoken of the audacity of hope, which has given people around the world a reason to believe that doing well by each other will do good for us all. Well, this letter is to remind you not only of the audacity of hope, but of the hope of audacity. Now is not the time for half measures and political appeasement. Now is the time to demonstrate to the world what it truly means to be our brother’s keepers. Now is the time for bold leadership, and actions that will save us from the increasing costs that climate change will have on this planet. These costs may not be borne in your lifetime, but they may be borne in mine, or those of Malia and Sasha, or their children.

The generations that are currently in power have preached to the younger generations to be responsible, and to think of how our actions will affect others. To this I ask, where is the example being set for us? Where can we look to see what self-sacrifice and stewardship are all about? The younger generations have seen older generations preside over the removal of over 90% of the animals from our oceans, destroy 50% of the world’s life sustaining forests and deplete over half of the world’s oil in just under 70 years. This selfishness must stop. It makes me angry that this double speak is being told to younger generations, some children, in a manner that is meant to make us believe that what is being preached about responsibility, self-sacrifice and stewardship, is truly being practiced. Our current moment in history has clearly revealed that there has been a lack of accountability at the top. And it must stop!

Mr. President, and the Executive Staff of the White House, I ask you to be audacious. I ask you to be bold. Your generation, and the generations before you, have asked the younger generations to take on the biggest challenges this world has ever seen. In return, all we ask for is truthful accountability to the preaching: an example that shows the world that bold actions of responsibility, self-sacrifice and stewardship will win the day. Now, and in Copenhagen this December.

As the former First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, said “You must do the thing you think you cannot do”.

If you think you can’t do it and it’s not possible to be more accountable to our carbon emissions, let me remind you of some great words that once inspired change across the world: “Yes you can”.

With respect, from your friendly neighbor to the North. Peace be with you,

Toby Reid
Vancouver, BC
Canada