( – promoted by lowkell)
A piece by Kos on Daily Kos reads in part:
[Y]ou say, people ARE excited about the environment on Daily Kos! Haven’t I seen all those Keystone XL diaries? And yes, to some degree, that interest is growing. But compare candidate fundraising for Robin Kelly in the Illinois 2nd Congressional District-a race that revolved around the NRA (white hot topic), and that of Ed Markey in the Massachusetts Senate special election, who would be among the biggest environmental champions in the entire Senate if elected. Kelly raised $114K from nearly 6,500 community members. Markey has raised $3,277 from 138 of you.
When we sell Markey, we do so on environmental grounds, and quite frankly, the environmental community on Daily Kos hasn’t responded. Some of you may not like that. We at Daily Kos HQ don’t like that, but the broader community guides us. After seeing several appeals for Markey fall flat, we pretty much gave up on it.
It should be noted that stakes in these two issues are not at all comparable. Not even of the same order of magnitude. Not even within one order of magnitude.
But we humans have many millennia of being concerned about individual people killing other people. The problem of people collectively killing the planet we live on is new to us.
And habits of thought and feeling change slowly. Hard wiring even slower.
Homo sapiens is not ready to be responsible for the fate of the biosphere. Unfortunately, our species has that responsibility anyway.
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Andy Schmookler, an award-winning author, political commentator, radio talk-show host, and teacher, was the Democratic nominee for Congress from Virginia’s 6th District. He is the author of various books including The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution.
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