ABC's World News tonight with Charlie Gibson crossed a threshold of reporting last week. Unlike some comments left on the program's Website, I commend them for it. It was the first time that I have watched the network news programs discuss the role of a changing climate in determining what is going on with our weather where they did not bring in one of the handful of professional climate change doubters to give "the other side."
Maybe we are suffering from disaster fatigue. Having to watch the aftermath of the cyclone in Myanmar, the huge destruction from the earthquake in China, followed by major flooding in China and then the floods in Iowa that are now working their way down an already swollen Mississippi River will do that. We need to pay attention.
Our government gives them re-assurance, but then they gave the same re-assurance to the victims of Katrina. It does not keep the Mississippi in its banks.
Here in California, we have just had an average rainfall season until it just stopped at the end of February. One result is that fire conditions now are what they normally would be in August. Another is that farmers are plowing up fields for lack of water.
The facts appear to be that the predictions of the effects of global warming are taking place in the manner that they were predicted, but that the rate of change is far, far faster than anyone anticipated.
For several decades, we have been warned about the fact that we would soon be reaching the peak of oil production. That is the point where over half of the oil on Earth has been used. Many say that we have already passed that point.
The easy oil has been extracted. The use of petroleum products continues to rise, especially as developing nations build the transportation infrastructure that we already have in place. The result is that new oil will be increasingly costly while demand grows and we all need to pay more at the pump.
These two seemingly disparate facts are interconnected. The use of petroleum products is one of the causes for the acceleration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere and thus of the warming itself. In the middle of this, the public is being fed political pablum designed to make us feel comfortably full long enough to get us to vote for someone.
The Republicans are telling us that the answer is to drill for more oil everywhere we can as fast as we can without regard for the consequences, environmental or economic. You hear it from President Bush, you hear it from the leadership in Congress, you especially hear it from candidates offering us a quick fix for the problem of the pain at the pump and blaming the Democrats for not doing it earlier.
The Democrats will tell you that the answer is to get us all off of traditional energy sources. They want to take the subsidies away from the oil and gas companies, pay them instead to those who would offer alternative energy solutions. They have little regard for the fact that using farmland to grow crops like corn for fuel rather than energy will drive up the cost of food, will use more natural gas to provide the high nitrogen fertilizers that corn demands. In other words, they are lobbying for farm state votes that would normally have gone to the Republicans.
Both would have us all continue to subsidize the highest cost electrical production method, nuclear, to the point where it can claim to be the lowest cost and wash it hands of having to deal with the medical problems from sloppy uranium mining or the disposal of "spent" nuclear material.
For all of Arizona Sen. John McCain's image of being a maverick, and Sen. Barack Obama's call for change, I do not see either as being willing to stand up and tell us the truth. Unfortunately, I have not seen a third party candidate do it either, and I belong to one of them So, this is what I truly believe. Gasoline prices are never going to go down much. The last time that the world was much warmer than it is now, the Southwest experienced a drought lasting 130 years. Our infrastructure for water is failing. Politicians of both major parties lack the will to do what needs to be done and the people of California have so bought in to the no-more- taxes mantra that they are willing to allow government to fail in its basic duty to protect its citizens rather than raise taxes.
When politicians start feeding us warmed over political pablum, it is time to spit it out and demand action based on some set of facts besides the political calculus of getting re-elected.
"Anytime you have an opportunity to make things better and you don't, then you are wasting your time on this Earth."
~ Roberto Clemente
Wes Rolley is an artist and concerned citizen. Reach him at wrolley@charter.net.
Wes Rolley Wes Rolley is an artist and concerned citizen. The Board of Contributors is comprised of local writers whose views appear on Tuesdays and Fridays.
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