The Earth cannot handle more than 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Currently, humanity has added enough CO2 to bring the content in our atmosphere to 389.42 parts per million.

 

On October 24, 2009, a worldwide day of action will address this crisis. See 350.org.

 

From December 7 through 18, 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark, world leaders will meet to decide on how to address the carbon crisis.

 

Yet federal, state, regional and local American democratic institutions, paralyzed by the influx of corporate cash, have been unable to address what some consider the most perilous threat humans have ever faced.

 

In the face of this crisis, some deny, some are paralyzed, some want to change the world, like the Al Gore and the Yes Men!, who both advocate civil disobedience.

 

The humble state of Connecticut, using legislative tools developed during the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, could be a leader in addressing climate change. The law guiding state energy policy begins with Connecticut General Statutes §16a-1: "It is found and declared that a shortage of energy supplies and resources exists in the state."

 

This series of statutes allows the governor to declare an energy emergency if an impending shortage of usable energy supplies threatens the health, safety, or welfare of state citizens (C.G.S. §16a-2).

 

The law defines "energy resources" to include natural gas, petroleum products, coal and coal products, wood fuels, geothermal sources, radioactive materials, and any other resource that can yield energy (C.G.S. §16a-11).

 

Pursuant to this finding, the General Assembly created an Energy Emergency Plan, C.G.S. §16a-9, under which the Secretary of the Office of Policy and Management is able to ration oil and gas supplies.

 

At least someone in state government has some awareness of this oil emergency law, because on September 20, 2005, Principal Analyst Daniel Duffy from the state Office of Legislative Research prepared a report answering whether state law prohibits price gouging.

 

Duffy's response details the oil emergency plan. He noted that the statute was last amended in 1994, and it gives the OPM secretary the right to impose price restrictions on energy resources.

 

Someone read Duffy's report in 2005, when oil prices were approaching $150 a barrel, and then plain ignored it.

 

Although it was a Republican President in 1973 who dealt with the first oil embargo, a Republican governor – even one with stratospheric approval ratings – would not dare buck the Bush administration in 2005.

 

The political consequences of declaring an oil emergency to stop price gauging would have sent shockwaves throughout not just Connecticut, but the world.

 

An American state invoking fuel rationing independent of the federal government in Bush’s America? Unbelievable. It need not be in Obama's America. Connecticut has the power to start such a revolution. It chooses not to, of course.

 

I, for one, am pretty confident that we have an oil emergency on our hands, and we have energy shortages that threaten to harm the citizens of this state. Think of the price of home heating oil during the winter, and the skyrocketing gas prices that led to people choosing between mortgage payments and gas in the tank to get to work.

 

Consider also that the United States is currently engaged in a two-front war to protect oil supplies. Thousands of dead and hundreds of thousands of mentally and physically wounded people is not an emergency.

 

Does climate change, which is directly related to fossil fuel emissions, create an emergency?

 

Political loyalties and philosophies aside (what pro-business Republican would constrain the quest for private profits?), suppose that Connecticut's current OPM secretary, Robert L. Genuario, declared an oil emergency in Connecticut and instituted rationing not only to protect dwindling oil supplies, but to protect the climate?

 

Suppose that Genuario instituted a multi-point plan. He used eminent domain and the oil emergency statute to direct the flow of all waste vegetable oil from restaurants and food services in the state to create a series of biodiesel production plants that would go to create cheap fuel for school buses and mass transit.

 

Suppose Genuario drafted the massive school bus fleet into regular mass transit routes in suburban Connecticut that serve not just schoolchildren, but adults, too?

 

As part of the plan, Genuario rationed gas, mandated carpooling, and fast-tracked the New Haven to Hartford train line by running it with diesel engines like the spur line from Bridgeport to Waterbury.

 

Some would cry that Genuario is taking away America’s God-given right to consume, which people equate with freedom. Some would hail the green revolution at hand.

 

Some might even think that the oil emergency is worthless, as Greenpeace released a report this week saying that peak oil consumption (as opposed to peak oil production) is at hand because humankind is shifting from fossil fuels.

 

While Governor Rell may be like Nixon in using law enforcement plumbers to spy on her political opponents, she doesn't seem to have the courage to recognize that our energy system has dangerously compromised our society's future.

 

Nor does anyone in the state capital want to carpool with her chief of staff Lisa Moody. If the Governor is going to ask ordinary citizens to make sacrifices, of course, her staff in the Capital must lead the way, right? A good leader doesn't ask people to do what they won't.

 

In all seriousness, most, if not all of us, are aware of the threat of climate change. Yet the scientific basis of the 350 parts per million goal hardly sees mention in the current political debate.

 

Journalist Chris Hedges suggests that we are living in a state of denial. We continue to live our lives as if we can go on throwing things away to infinity, burning gas like the wells will never run dry, and chasing the almighty dollar just to survive.

 

We avoid politics because of the problem of collective action problem, where many of us free ride on the efforts of others, and none of us will do what is painful and uncomfortable unless there is either reward or we are told to by someone holding the monopoly of force on our lives.

 

That is why we need the state to intervene. The use of the oil emergency statutes will not likely be a subject for the Governor’s race in 2010. It should be. But the quest for power will not accommodate the truth and reality of what is happening on Planet Earth.

 

Should we fail to limit carbon emissions, and cap the number at around 350 parts per million, the planet will change. Our American lives will change, whether we like it or not.

 

Declare An Oil Emergency?...(top)