My Congressman

Here's a portrait Representative Rush Holt, NJ 12th district (Democrat) at a townhall meeting in Oceanport on July 21st. The townhall was about global warming and energy, and in the two hours, 7-9PM, amazingly, remained on topic. Holt believes that the American people have crossed the thresholds of understanding that the global climate is changing and that human activities have something to do with it; that there is something we can do about it is not yet realized. Vice Admiral Paul G. Gaffney (Ret.), President of Monmouth University made the actual presentation of scientific knowledge about climate change; a rather conservative presentation which made the points that climate change is happening, there are many potentially bad things (and some good things) that could happen; we should throw all the government resources including ocean data from the Navy and nuclear labs' supercomputers to monitor, predict and plan for the consequences; and that we should try to at least slow down the rate of change so we have time to adapt.

Glenn Greenwald rates Holt as one of the best persons in Congress; I follow politics less but would agree; the only thing one could ask for more of is seniority.




Photography note: cropped and resized, ISO 1600, 105 mm f/4, 1/125 seconds, without flash (which was photographically a mistake, but was not intrusive on the meeting; some otherwise good shots were ruined by motion blur at 1/40 second shutter speed).


PS: Among his grandchildren are two named Varun and Rohan.

PPS: Holt and Gaffney discussed climate change in a totally non-partisan manner, which was another good thing.

PPPS: I was carrying the 70-200mm f/2.8 but once the meeting started I didn't think I could inobtrusively change lenses. I think a good photographer needs a thicker hide than mine.