Climate Corner – Mass media and local meetings

by Martin Luecke
November 2019

The latest issue of The Economist is a first for the conservative magazine:  focusing the entire issue on the question of climate. Time magazine gave climate the cover story. The New York Times put it on the front page. And CNN made climate change their longest town hall meeting ever.  In steady succession we are witnessing in real time our mass media waking up to the Climate Crisis. This makes Windsor Park’s Climate Change Resolution even more important. That is why our committee is reaching out to all of our neighbors, including Mueller, Hyde Park, Wooten Park, Pecan Springs, Cherrywood, University Hills, North Loop, Eastwoods, JJ Seabrook, St. John’s, and many more.

At each of these meetings we take five minutes to explain our Resolution, how we made it, and our plan to deliver it to every elected official who represents Windsor Park.  This idea is met with applause and enthusiastic participation. Climate Crisis Committees are starting up all around us.  

In the past month our committee has delivered WPNA’s Climate Change Resolution to the offices of US Congressman Roger Williams and State Senator Kirk Watson, where we received warm welcomes.  We were told that Congressman Williams has changed his approach to climate change from disbelief to “listening”. This is a big step. Watson’s Director of Legislation said our timing was fortuitous:  The Lieutenant Governor was asking for new legislative ideas for the next session and they were looking at our climate change legislation ideas. It is clear to me the tide has turned politically towards talking about climate change policy for real.  The Congressman admits to concern about climate change, and the Senator’s Chief Policy Person was open to our ideas. In both meetings it felt like we had pushed a button on the elephant in the room. The Climate Crisis is real and no one wants to be caught on the wrong side of history, so all the publications and media makers and politicians are jumping onto the bandwagon.  Even stalwart anti-climate-change Texas Senator John Cornyn is now pitching his own bill aimed at making natural gas the go-to answer for climate change problems.  

I will point out that these same people have known about the threat since 1988, when NASA’s director of Climate Science James Hansen reported to Congress of the impending danger. Thus began the world’s climate policy conversation and led to the first international agreement at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, which was ratified by President Bush I.

We have posted the WPNA Resolution on our website: https://www.windsorpark.info/climate-crisis-committee/, along with all of our data, to-do lists, legislation ideas, and newsletter articles.  Our neighbors are using WPNA’s website to put together their own resolutions.

Our next objective is to get on the Austin Neighborhood Council agenda and pitch the Resolution to 80 neighborhoods. The problem is: WPNA renounced it’s membership in the ANC last year and we no longer have a seat in the room. But not to worry, we are making fast friends with multiple members of the ANC.  It appears from all our meetings that everyone gets it now, and it’s time to take action.  

Contact me at mwluecke@hotmail.com