Getting Political

So, I haven't been here for a while.

Part of what I've been doing is calling, emailing and commenting on the Facebook pages of my senators and congressman as regularly as I can.

Though I've always voted, I've become, for the first time in my life, politically active. (Thanks, Trump.)

The issue that most concerns me: climate change and how we are ignoring it.

According to The Indivisible Guide, which I highly recommend reading, contacting your representatives is one of the most effective things an ordinary person can do to get their voices heard. The 65 is also good.

Oh, and you'll get busy signals a lot with the phone calls. I've learned that you should call the representative's Washington, DC office but if you can't get through (or, maybe even if you can), call one of their in-state offices as well. And if your congressmen are like mine, Congressman Poe, to email them, you will need those last extra four digits of your zip code before their website will even let it through.

Making these contacts is not hard -- all the contact info is easily available and, on the very rare occasions when you will be able to get through to a live person at one of their phone numbers, their staffers are always unfailingly polite. Their job is to take down your thoughts and pass them on. It literally just takes minutes.

I honestly don't know if commenting on their official Facebook pages is helpful. But one of the things I like about that is, rather than sending your thoughts into the void, where, at best, a beleaguered intern will check off that yet another person is concerned about the climate (though those calls and emails are important too), on Facebook, other people can see the comments. My representatives routinely have thousands of comments on their posts, most telling them to start doing what's right for our country.

I do recommend ratcheting up the privacy settings of your Facebook account; I've been reading the replies to people's comments from pro-Trump people and they can be pretty unhinged and scary. Interestingly, the far-right Cruz has far more venomous supporters than the more moderate Cornyn.

And there is nuttiness. I had an Facebook exchange on another site, actually civil, with a woman who likes Trump because she thinks he is a sign of the end times. "Fasten your seatbelts," she said.

Back in the real world, I like that on my representatives' Facebook pages (Senators Cruz and Cornyn, Congressman Poe), when the representative's staff put up an innocuous post about, say, Texas history, the comments appear immediately and will be, over and over again,  "That's nice, Senator, but when are you going to have a town-hall meeting?"

I don't think what you write, how detailed of an argument you make, how good your writing is matters. What really matters is to make that contact -- repeatedly -- and make your opinions known.

Here is one of the longer emails I have sent to my representatives, just to give you a sense of what someone else is doing:

I am one of your constituents and I am writing to register my horror – there really is no other word for it – and absolute disagreement with your positions regarding climate change.

I’ve read Republican statements about climate change, from Trump’s claim that it’s a “Chinese hoax” to Republican legislators saying they are “open to debate” on climate change, but you all are ignoring the overwhelming facts of the matter.

For instance, Republicans claim they don’t want to control greenhouse gas emissions because you think it would place the US at a “global economic disadvantage.” However, 350 American major companies pleaded with Trump to not abandon the goals of the Paris agreement because it would harm American prosperity.

As one expert said, “President Trump seems intent on reviving a 19^th century energy source rather than pursuing the promise of the 21^st century.”

And experts, including the heads of coal companies, say that he won’t be able to bring coal-mining jobs back – not because of government regulation but because of market forces (natural gas is already and  renewable energy is quickly becoming more cost-efficient) and because of the increasing use of mechanization in coal mines.

Furthermore, recent headlines proclaimed “US Cedes Lead on Climate to China.” The Chinese know not only that protecting against climate change is the moral thing to do, but that it is also the economically smart thing to do.

43 bipartisan senior military leaders and national security, homeland security and intelligence experts pleaded with Trump to take climate change seriously because it is “a significant and direct risk,” not only to our military forces, but to our nation as a whole.

The science is, of course, overwhelming. Why else would the Trump Administration be so intent on destroying government research data that scientists had to scramble to save what they could? As one Arctic researcher wrote, “Each defunct page is an effort by the Trump administration to deliberately undermine our ability to make good policy decisions by limiting access to scientific evidence.”

And poll after poll shows that the majority of Americans believe climate change is real and want our government to do more, not less, to protect us from it.

Meanwhile, despite all this, you side with climate-change deniers, many of whom have blatantly obvious financial interests for their denial, such as the Koch brothers, whose companies are some of the largest producers of pollution, including greenhouse gases, in our country. And you have slimy financial interests too, when you accept their campaign donations.

How you look your children in the eye is beyond me.

Please reconsider your stance and protect our country from climate change. You are on the wrong side of history on this one.

Thank you.