If you develop a rash, don’t medicate it or seek professional help or learn how to keep it from spreading. No, no, no! Just learn to live with it. If your brakes start to squeak, scrape, require extensive pumping or out and out fail, don’t try to fix them; don’t take the car to a mechanic and don’t replace them or do anything to alleviate the problem. No, no, no! Do what the climate change deniers do; ADAPT! As those brakes inevitably progress to total failure learn evasive driving techniques, gear down or open the door and drag your foot on the pavement until the car comes to a stop. In a pinch seek out the nearest tree.
The same holds true to the future of our planet. Why waste time, energy alternatives, money and research on fighting man’s destruction of our atmosphere and planet. Take your cue from an Orange County Register Editorial back in January of this year. The headline was “Fighting warming.” Just below was the kicker, “After Kyoto’s failure, focus on adapting to the climate.” Yeah, the Jersey homeowners in the path of Hurricane Sandy sure focused on “adapting” to the climate.
So “adaptation” is the latest simplistic buzzword for the low information goobers who keep voting radicals into power. The most recent article I’ve seen on the subject was headed, “Climate talk shifts to adapting to changes.” The reporter was AP’s science reporter, Seth Borenstein. The first paragraph said it all. “Efforts to curb global warming have quietly shifted as greenhouse gases inexorably rise. Interesting choice of the word “inexorable” meaning literally something that is impossible to prevent or stop. But, of course, man’s contribution to global warming was anything but inexorable before the Republicans got their dirtied corporate hands on the issue.
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A bill representative of ceaseless efforts to trash the EPA and any meaningful environmental legislation was passed in the House in early April of 2011. The legislation called for the permanent elimination of all authority of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions. All House Republicans voted for it, joined by 19 ignorant, turncoat, corporate-owned DINO’s.
The legislation never became law as an earlier Senate vote offered as an amendment to a small business bill killed the effort on a tie, though Senate Democrats Stabenow, Rockefeller and Baucus tried delaying enforcement in certain areas. Even with Upper House approval, it faced a guaranteed presidential veto. But that made little difference to the GOP. This awesomely irresponsible piece of congressional junk was mostly intended for palm card handouts for the 2012 election cycle and, given the success of House candidates and the nature of their electorate, it worked.
Whatever else you may think about Richard Nixon, he was a rarity in his party. He was, in certain environmental respects, a Republican visionary (there’s an oxymoron). He actually created the Environmental Protection Agency, consolidating several government entities into one. His administration and subsequent legislation concentrated their efforts on virtually all aspects of land, air and water pollution. The 1970 Clean Air Act was a legislative tour de force for its time and still serves as the EPA guide for regulating greenhouse-gas emissions.
Then along came the pathetically inept Ronald Reagan, politically canonized for little more than looking good on a horse. He devoted his waking hours to striping every effective intention from the Clean Air Act and other environmental legislation that the huge corporations told Reagan to oppose. Delay, deregulate and destroy was his environmental mantra and he loaded up his administration with appointees dedicated to doing exactly that. Regulations were not based on climate science, but whether Reagan’s corporate mentors felt like upgrading their anti-pollution equipment. If they didn’t, no meaningful legislation passed. And mostly, they didn’t.
The 2012 Republican Primary Presidential candidates were virtually unanimous in their animus toward the EPA. Most wanted to abolish it altogether or render it impotent. The New York Times has an excellent overview of these idiotic positions in their August 17, 2011 issue. Updating to the present: Exposing the egregious opposition to all things atmospherically pure, John Walke, an attorney and Clean Air Director of the National Resources Defense Council, blogs about what the 113th Congress Republicans are up to on the environmental front.
To call man’s contribution to global warming a threat to our society, as we know it would be an understatement of astronomic proportions. Even tiny Cuba gets it. The results from climate change discoveries on Cuba’s 3,500 miles of coastline by Cuban and outside climate scientists were so extremely worrisome that the findings weren’t initially released for fear of inducing public panic. We’re talking wiping towns completely off the map. You can get a sense of this frightful outcome and the Cuban response here.
We may have passed the point of no return. In mid-May, Reporter, Borenstein wrote a lengthy piece on some pollution levels that have surpassed benchmarks not experienced since the Pleistocene Era. And we blissfully continue to ignore them as man “inexorably” fills the skies with chemical s**t that will “inexorably” leave our children and grandchildren with a mess that will make their lives miserable.
The key sentence in the entire article was quoted from Pieter Tans of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “What we see today is 100 percent due to human activity,” said Tans, a NOAA senior scientist. The remainder of the paragraph indicates that the burning of fossil fuels, such as coal for electricity and oil for gasoline, has caused the overwhelming bulk of the man-made increase in carbon in the air, scientists say. Interestingly enough, the far right-leaning local newspaper has deleted the preceding paragraph from its coverage. When you read the Website AP story, the end of one paragraph towards the end of the story includes “keeping it out of the air.” This paragraph is followed by Tans’ quote. But in my paper, the next paragraph begins with “The world pumps…”
And Republicans are even more dishonest as made obvious in Democratic Representative Elijah Cummings release of a portion of the IRS transcript that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the White House had nothing whatsoever to do with the so-called “targeting” of Tea Party-type organizations. No sign of that story in the paper.
Freedom of the Press in Upstate South Carolina is the freedom to withhold vital information from readers. The Cummings story may be just a day late. We’ll see.
I can only make the same observation I’ve made dozens of times since becoming a member of the PoliticusUSA family. The Republican Party as it is presently constituted, is bringing great harm down on a populace that is suffering because of their obstructionism and knee-jerk fealty to the corporate plutocracy. Just on the issue of our environment, one poll after another, including both Republican and Democratic respondents, wants legislators to concentrate on fixing the pollution problem and seeking out practical alternatives. The elected Republicans pay no attention.
You cannot continue to vote for these Republican extremists. They’re literally killing you and the planet. For more proof, find a copy of the extraordinary “Chasing Ice” documentary.
Raised rural & small town, then lived in N.Y., Chicago & LA. Widely traveled. Returned from world wandering to pursue media life of anchorman/reporter and major, medium and small market talk radio. Highly active in politics. Once worked as orderly & security in Mens Lock Ward for the Criminally Insane at a state institution. Much more rational population than current Teapublicans. Great concern for country run by and for the extreme wealthy. The inhumane current running through this country has no precedent in modern history.
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