Joe Romm for the Woodie Committee Meets Here

Some, not Eli to be sure, may be wondering why Eli has volunteered to be head Bunny of the Joe Romm for the Woodie award.   Eli is a very old Rabett, so he has a memory of the real Woodie Guthrie, not the disneyfied version that the white glove environmental organizations are trying to sell.  Those folk, the Nature Conservancy, the Audubon Society, even the Sierra Club, would never have let the real Woodie inside the door, and the Rabett suspects their attitude to Joe Romm would be symmetric.

To really understand why Joe would be an appropriate winner of the Woodie, or at least the one that has wandered into environmental blogs, bunnies need to understand where Woodie Guthrie was born, where he suffered and what he did.  Guthrie was born into a fairly well off family in Okemah, Oklahoma in 1912.  His dad lost it all and the family was impoverished when the oil boom hit and left town, "busted, disgusted, and not to be trusted." at the end of WWI.

Guthrie's primary concern was to fight the exploitation of workers by the mine and oil field owners, but he personally knew and hated the environmental consequences of the fossil fuel industry and especially  the industry's rapaciousness driven by greed.  Note the resemblance to Joe Romm, and well, if you think Woodie had a love for the coal industry, consider the Dying Doctor

She walked the coal towns of Force and Byrndale
She saw the sewage waters flowing down the street.

She saw the children drink the cankered water
She saw the chickens fly up on the roof
She saw the waters overflow the sewers
And flood their gardens of victory.

She went to the big shots of the Shawmut Company
She did not beg and she did not plead
She stood flatfooted and pounded the table
Sewer pipes and bathrooms are what we need.

My dady told me to fight to cure sickness

But I can't cure sickness with sewage all around
These germs kill people quicker than I can cure them

Of course, after the oil boom, came the Dust Storms of the 1930s.  The Okies, Woodie was one,  are but a foretaste of the climate change refugees which Joe worries so much about.  So Long, Its Been Good to Know You, one of Guthrie's most famous song tells of how people were helpless against the Dust Bowl

I've sung this song, but I'll sing it again,
Of the place that I lived on the wild windy plains,
In the month called April, county called Gray,
And here's what all of the people there say:

CHORUS: So long, it's been good to know yuh;
So long, it's been good to know yuh;
So long, it's been good to know yuh.
This dusty old dust is a-gettin' my home,
And I got to be driftin' along.

A dust storm hit, an' it hit like thunder;
It dusted us over, an' it covered us under;
Blocked out the traffic an' blocked out the sun,
Straight for home all the people did run,

Now some, not Eli to be sure, would go on, and on, and on, but the basic case is made.  If Joe Romm has two identifying themes, they are worry about coming climate refugees and disgust at the greed of the fossil fuel industry.  These were Woodies themes too.