For the last 21 years, the primary issue I have focused on is the climate crisis. It’s a no-brainer for me: it is a scientific fact that time is running out to prevent ecosystem and societal unraveling unless the world rapidly stops burning coal, oil and gas and shifts onto wind and solar, in particular, as well as geothermal and flowing water as the dominant and ubiquitous sources of energy for transportation, power, heating and cooling. The tipping points, the points after which it will be extremely difficult to prevent that unraveling, are possibly just years, not decades, away.
But there are two other issues that I consider of great urgency right now: Gaza and Israel’s continuing anti-Palestinian crusade to take over all of Palestine, “from the river to the sea,” and the urgent necessity for the strongest possible defeat of Trump and MAGA on November 5.
What specifically am I doing and planning to do for the next two months in those three areas?
GAZA/PALESTINE: I will continue taking part in weekly, pro-ceasefire demonstrations every Friday in downtown Montclair, NJ organized by NJ Peace Action and be open to participating in others and responding to organized call-ins to elected officials. I will follow the news closely on a daily basis as to what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank, with the ceasefire negotiations, and with the mass movement inside Israel demanding elections to replace the repressive Netanyahu right-wing regime.
THE CLIMATE EMERGENCY: My immediate priority is helping to organize nonviolent direct action at the September 19th monthly meeting in Washington, DC of the commissioners who run FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. FERC is responsible for the regulation of the US electrical grid, as well as deciding whether to grant permits for the expansion of the methane gas industry, which is today primarily a fracked gas industry.
When it comes to that second task FERC is a proven rubber-stamper: according to a study in 2022 by a House committee chaired by Jamie Raskin, between 2000 and 2020, out of 1,021 gas industry applications for permits to expand, only six were turned down. FERC is the epitomy of a rubber stamp agency.
There was a period of time in 2021 and 2022 when, under the leadership of Richard Glick (no relation), steps were taken to change this reality. In February, 2022, a Glick-led new policy was passed by a 3-2 vote of the FERC commissioners to mandate much stricter review of the greenhouse gas emissions and environmental justice impacts on local communities of proposed gas projects. In response coal baron Joe Manchin and Republicans on the Senate committee overseeing FERC brought heavy public pressure on the three Democrats who voted for it. Within a month, in March of 2022, one of them, Willie Phillips, changed his vote, no new policy was enacted and ever since, particularly after Manchin used his power to oust Glick at the end of 2022, followed soon after by Willie Phillips being named chair, FERC has continued with its rubber-stamping ways.
However, all is not lost! This summer, between mid-July and mid-August, the federal appeals court in DC which hears appeals of FERC decisions handed down three separate opinions voiding or remanding to FERC their approvals of permits for three LNG export terminals on the Gulf coast, a Texas pipeline and a pipeline project in NJ.
Why did this happen? Apparently a main reason is a Supreme Court decision on the “Chevron doctrine” earlier this year which weakened a 40-years long policy that courts should generally defer to internal decision-making processes of federal regulatory agencies. The not-so-Supremes said the courts could be more active in their oversight capacity. And the DC Court of Appeals took that decision and ran with it, to the detriment of the gas industry and the benefit of our disrupted climate.
On September 19th a coalition of climate action groups is organizing a large and visible presence outside and inside the first FERC commissioners meeting since these three decisions came down. A strong turnout will amplify the court decisions and ratchet up the public pressure on the FERC commissioners to finally do the right thing for local communities and the planet. Please learn more and plan to come if you can!
DEFEATING TRUMP/MAGA: What is the key to the defeat of would-be dictator, misogynist, racist and pathological liar Trump? ONE THING: A BIG TURNOUT! All of us who get it on the urgency of this election need to figure out how we can best take part in the phone calling, postcard writing and door knocking in the swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada from now until November 5.
For myself I’ve begun to drive an hour and a half over to Pennsylvania on Saturdays to take part in door to door canvassing in the Allentown area, and I intend to keep doing so every Saturday that I can, which should be most of them. In addition this week I will start doing organized phone calling one, two or more evenings a week into swing states. I intend to “leave it all out on the field” in my small, one person way—which is all that most of us have!
I’m very glad that Harris and Walz, not Biden and Harris, are the Democratic nominees. That change has set in motion an historic and potentially powerful mass movement in defense of democracy and against the fascist threat. I love to see and hear the many thousands of people at Harris rallies chanting, “We won’t go back” and “When we fight, we win.” Without that fighting spirit on the part of millions, we have little chance of bringing about the transformational changes we need.
I am critical of more than a couple of the positions being taken, and not taken, by the national Democratic Party. I have no illusions that a Harris/Walz victory and Democratic control of the House and Senate will, alone, bring about the change this country and world desperately need, particularly right now on the climate crisis and Palestinian self-determination. But a winning result on November 5 will, in the words of the United Electrical Workers Union, allow us “to live to fight another day” and to do so with the wind at our back.
This result, for sure, is more than worth fighting for. If you are progressive it’s an existential necessity.
Ted Glick has devoted his life to the progressive social change movement. After a year of student activism as a sophomore at Grinnell College in Iowa, he left college in 1969 to work full time against the Vietnam War. As a Selective Service draft resister, he spent 11 months in prison. In 1973, he co-founded the National Committee to Impeach Nixon and worked as a national coordinator on grassroots street actions around the country, keeping the heat on Nixon until his August 1974 resignation. Since late 2003, Ted has played a national leadership role in the effort to stabilize our climate and for a renewable energy revolution. He was a co-founder in 2004 of the Climate Crisis Coalition and in 2005 coordinated the USA Join the World effort leading up to December actions during the United Nations Climate Change conference in Montreal. In May 2006, he began working with the Chesapeake Climate Action Network and was CCAN National Campaign Coordinator until his retirement in October 2015. He is a co-founder (2014) and one of the leaders of the group Beyond Extreme Energy. He is President of the group 350NJ/Rockland, on the steering committee of the DivestNJ Coalition and on the leadership group of the Climate Reality Check network.
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