Letters to the Editor
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Fossil-Fools drop Eco-Bomb
It is so sad that my fellow Americans want to wish and pray away the impacts of our energy-intensive lifestyle choices. Perhaps this is the result of our disinvestment in public education, particularly in the sciences; we no longer think. Even without the slow-motion catastrophe of global warming, we would eventually have to change our lazy ways. Only so much solar energy is captured by plants on Earth, and this captured energy accounts for ALL of our energy stocks. We have been drawing down the “reserve” that was created prior to our species existence for the past one and one-half centuries. When the prospect of depleting energy pools one at a time for the next couple of centuries was considered the extent of the problem, we could live with the notion that we have the time to allow technology to solve our energy use problem.
That is no longer the case. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when people advocate hybrid or electric cars as solutions to global warming. When the conservative estimate is that we have 40 years to cut back our emissions by half in spite of an anticipated doubling of our population it should be obvious to anyone that nibbling around the edges with slightly improved fuel mileages or using (mostly coal-fired) electric cars just won’t cut it. The use of fossil-fool driven devices is nothing short of an ecological bomb we are dropping on future generations. What are we thinking? We are killing off the planet’s ability to support life just so we won’t have to wear sweaters indoors or ride a bike when it is 100 F or ride a bus with “undesirables”.
I’m sure many readers will write in with all of the usual excuses for why they cannot possibly live without county-sized carbon footprints, but humanity must either live sustainably or join the extinction. Right now, America’s use of absurd amounts of energy is choosing extinction for everyone.
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If it's an insoluable problem then ok
Eco-Rads insist that global warming will kill us all next Tuesday. OK then, I accept that. There's nothing to be done short of suicide.
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Nulla Sallus: tough as a cotton puff
Since when do you, or any anti-lifers, take orders from "eco rads"?
Let me translate your letter. 'Since I don't want to do anything, and the most radical 5% of the environmentalist wing say it's too late anyway, I'm going to throw that in your faces as my reason for doing nothing, when really it's my own obstinance and laziness.'
Or in other words--typical regressive response.
Since conservatives are no longer conservative it's simply wiser to call them regressives.
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If you scream the sky is falling tomorrow morning
You'd better be reasonably sure you're right. Otherwise you start to sound like the people who castrated and killed themselves to be picked up by the space aliens on comet Hale-Bopp. If GW is really going to exterminate us all in the next 30 years either we unwind the clock all the way to the Dark Ages tomorrow or, we just throw up our hands and play beach volleyball until the Big Finish.
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The bad environmental news of 2008
Here's the bad news: the "major legislation" to increase CAFE mileage to 35mpg by 2020 was actually a defeat.
The original CAFE legislation, which was included in the Safe Climate Act that was introduced in the House in July, had a requirement of 36mpg by 2020; more importantly, it had a floor of 20mpg. It was this latter requirement that got the bill bottled up in committee by the "Democrat" From the Auto Industry, John Dingell. The auto industry association put forward a substitute that had no floor but required a "40% increase" in CAFE mileage by 2025. The "compromise" Pelosi did with Dingell was to rip out the good mileage part of the Safe Climate Act, and substitute the industry bill, with a "compromise" of 2020 instead of 2025. The other good stuff of the Safe Climate Act that was put into the Energy Bill - the requirement of 20% green energy for utilities, the cap on carbon dioxide and implementation of cap-and-trade - were the parts successfully filibustered out of the bill by the Republicans.
The result was the auto industry bill was passed.
You might want to know, the next time you're in the market for a Prius, that the leader of this whole thing was Toyota of America. That's because Toyota's best seller in America is not the Prius, but the "Tundra," an oversize pick 'em up truck that gets 10 mpg! Under the "major reform," the Tundra will only have to get 14 mpg by 2020! See, every time Toyota sells one Prius, it can sell two Tundras, and still meet the CAFE requirements, and this won't be changed by the new requirements.
Of course, $100/barrel oil and $4+ gasoline will turn Tundras and all the other butt-ugy, no-taste, Republicanmobiles into the extinct dinosaurs they are long before 2020, since in addition to filling the tank, Americans also have to eat.
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No one is saying the sky is falling tomorrow
We're saying it may.
I'll make this prediction: 50 years from now, when the 4th world water war (WWW4) is being fought, no one will be laughing about Gore getting the Nobel peace prize.
I'll make this suggestion: let's take the money and oil we're expending on Iraq, and build nuclear power plants across the globe, starting with the United states, and continuing to the rest of the world, in order of how much they pollute. Let's make all cars electrical.
Sure, we may have some meltdowns. It's better than 90% of the world's population dying off.
The fact is, we have to take drastic measures. Any drastic measure we take, other than nuclear power, is definitely going to kill millions of people. Let's all dismantle our warheads and use them to fire up the power plants. Swords into plowshares, people.
Wouldn't it be ironic if the age of Aquarius ends up being peaceful... because no humans are left to fight with each other?
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The good environmental news of 2008
The good news of 2008 for the environment is that we have the potential of an election this November that does for the environment what the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt did for the economy in 1932, and an election result that lasts for at least as long as the New Deal did.
That's because something completely unprecedented in American politics has been taking place "under the radar" this past fall.
We now have 8 Republican Senators and 19 Republican Congressmen who have announced their retirement, that they are not running for re-election in 2008. There has never before been an election with this many incumbents dropping out. Usually, if you're lucky, you get one or two, if you're really lucky you get three and if it's a frickin' miracle, you get four. But we have 27, all in one party, all negative votes on anything progressive, particularly the environment.
In all but one of the senate seats, and all of the House seats, a Democrat either is projected to win or is capable of winning with a good campaign. And every one of them is a good vote on the environment.
This means a 60+ pro-environment Senate and a close-to-veto-proof House. Of course, people who are progressive on the environment are usually progressive on other issues, so this bodes very well for lots of things.
These numbers do not take into consideration the four Republican Senators who are on "the endangered species list" - Coleman in Minnesota, McConnell in Kentucky, Smith in Oregon and Chambliss in Georgia - or the twelve other Republican house seats that polls show are "up for grabs."
Forget who the President is, if we get these victories locally we can rule nationally regardless of who is in the White House. This will be particularly important if the winner is Triangulatin' Tilly, since she's going to have to be kept on The Path of Goodness the way one keeps a mule at work, so she and Bozo don't sell the family silver to the corporations.
But the bottom line here is: we can have the greenest Congress in history. The logjam can be broken and the Republicans consigned to meeting in a closet with room left over. It is entirely achievable, and no one in Left Blogistan seems to be paying atttention to this fact.