“The Green Monster,” the legendary wall at Fenway Park, holds a central place in the friendly rivalry between Connecticut’s Yankees fans and the state’s Red Sox loyalists. At just over 37 feet tall, the wall been esteemed by these rivals since it was built in 1912 to block the view of non-ticket holders on Boston’s Landsdowne Street.
So we’d like to thank our friends at the Yankee Institute (named not for the team but presumably in honor of our Yankee heritage) for dubbing our omnibus bill addressing climate change “The Green Monster.”
Yankee Institute is, of course, the fossil-fuel-funded conservative think tank that tries to keep Connecticut in the stone age when it comes to progress on environmental protection. In dubbing this important bill “The Green Monster” in a recent mailing, the institute is proving once again they are in left field (just like the wall) when it comes to climate consciousness.
In their mailing piece, the institute tries to scare an unwitting public with half truths and fabrications. In the first place, House Bill 5004, colloquially known as the Connecticut Climate Protection Act, is still a work in progress. Anyone who knows about the machinations of legislation understands that, because the devil is in the details, any ambitious omnibus bill proposal goes through several iterations before it is put to a vote in a legislative committee.
As a caucus priority, the bill seeks bipartisan support: until the leaders of the Democratic and Republican House caucuses put their heads together on this, it is irresponsible in the extreme for the Yankee Institute to claim to know what is actually in the bill. But as we have seen time and again, anti-environmentalists rarely let facts get in the way of a good scare.
Is our “Green Monster” ambitious? You bet it is, because it has to be; dithering in the face of climate change-induced calamity is disastrous.
Does it have many components? Yes, and thanks, Yankee Institute — we’ll take your calling it “gargantuan” as a compliment.
Does it declare a climate crisis? Yes, because any sentient being watching fellow Americans from Bozrah to Hawaii suffer catastrophe from climate change induced flooding and wildfires has to recognize we are in a crisis.
Will it seek to protect marginalized communities? Yes, because some of us put our money where our mouths are when it comes to helping lower-income households. We don’t evoke this concern only as a way of defeating climate action.
Is it full of opportunity for businesses that want to do the responsible thing? Yes, because environmentalism is actually good for the economy.
But is it an insurmountable hurdle, as is implied by its comparison to the big, high wall at Fenway? No, it’s not. HB 5004 is practical, necessary, timely, and achievable. It assumes that many adults in positions of authority actually care about the lung capacity of their own grandchildren. And it assumes most of us are willing to try to get over that wall of climate change denial. After all, dozens of ballplayers have found the right combination of arc, loft and angle to sail those 310 feet from home plate over the Green Monster since Hugh Bradley belted a three-run homer over the wall in the seventh inning on April 26, 1912. (You know what else happened in 1912? An estimated 33,000 electric cars traveled American roads.)
Too bad the Yankee Institute promotes fear and pessimism over Yankee Ingenuity. Perhaps once they see the actual bill, they’ll get over their fear of The Green Monster and focus on the monster of our own making — the globally devastating effects of our addiction to a fossil fuel-based economy.
State Reps. Christine Palm, Moira Rader, Hector Arzeno, John-Michael Parker, Aundre Bumgardner and Brandon Chafee represent the 36th, 98th, 151st, 101st, 41st and 33rd Connecticut House districts respectively.