"Is this it?", "Is this it?": why do Americans insist on scientific certainty with respect to global warming and its impacts, yet we are willing to suspend belief and embrace an trillion dollar war in Iraq?
Why do we need proof before we will sacrifice consumption habits yet embrace the flimsiest of political arguments in respect to committing the lives of other peoples' children in Iraq.
The West is burning and gripped in a historic drought. The same is true of the Southeast. Is the plan to let the American West burn and wait for sea level rise to manifest, before accepting mandates to change patterns of consumption?
For decades, environmentalists were derided by the economic elite as "Chicken Littles". The mainstream media, concentrated within corporate ownership, refused to acknowledge any claims by the public interest against the growth machine.
During that time, US coastal bays and estuaries turned to goopy muck.
Yesterday, it was 80 degrees (F) in northern Maine, in late October. The Western snowpack is going the way of glaciers. As the New York Times Sunday Magazine pointedly asked, "Is our future drying up?"
We don't protect the environment for the sake of owls, fish, manatees--no matter what the Right says. We protect them because sustainability means we don't have to risk the unquantifiable.
A capitalist economy depends on transparency in the matter of assessing risk and reward. What America has evolved into is something else entirely: markets are opaque and people are fearful. It is called disaster capitalism.
8 comments:
Last night I dreamt I was by a big building, maybe getting ready to go into exile, somewhere. In the meantime, having missed by connection/flight/cruise I was tasked with watering, not the garden, but the “hot spots,” (and not those politically dangerous areas I tell my students about), but combustible areas of the yard. With hose in hand and roped around my shoulder, I had to master the weight and technique. I moved on to water down the building proceeding inside to the interior walls.
S
ahhhhh! the sky is falling...the sky is falling!!!!
come on folks. get a grip.
So it was especially dry in the Southwest this year.
It was flooding in Texas just a month ago.
Just natural cycles with more people living nearby.
I love Not a Moderate's posts. All name calling and no facts.
The "especially dry" west is actually breaking records for dry and on fire. This isn't a one-year phenomenon, but a decade-long decline in rain and a dwindling snowpack that supplies the entire west with nearly all of it's drinking water.
The cities of the Southeast are 2-3 months away from running out of water. They're suffering the worst drought ever.
Although Miami has been extra wet (just like Texas and the northeast) the rest of the State never recovered from last year's drought and Lake O is near the "emergency low" mark and this is the rainy season.
Although some of this is certainly aggravated by too many people in all the wrong places, the rainfall totals, acres burned, and shrinking snow pack and accelerating glacial melt isn't due to people being "nearby."
Nice try though. You keep tuning into Druggie Limbaugh for your dose of "truth." Somebody had to dance to Nero's fiddle.
So we are all calling this person "Not a Moderate" Now....funny. Not a moderate...I hope it floods in Crawford...I guess you don't watch 60 minutes, there was a very good expose on the fires...
"moderate"--will not believe in gobal warming until salt water laps up on his doorstep.
A while back I took a course at FIU south campus, out there at the edge of our prairie. As I parked my car around 5:00 I saw a lightened strike off in the distance. When I left class my car was covered with ash and the air permeated with the smell of “eau de burning couch.” By the time I got home neighbors in my building had already called the fire department thinking someone was sleeping through their smoke detector. Our lives and relationships with the environment are a lot more fragile than we realize.
S
If saltwater ever makes it to my doorstep, my property values will quadruple. I would be in the new "Gables by the Sea". (cool)
Lake Okeechobee is at record lows because 2 years ago, when it was so full it was about to breach the 40 foot tall levies, the army corp. of engineers, scared that any more rain would cause massive flooding, decided in its infinate wisdom to pump out the lake.
Well, now look at what we've got. It was a calculated effort to avoid flooding due to too much rain.
Sometimes, I think all you guys do on this site is complain all day and knee-jerk your way through life.
P.S. - actually I don't listen to Rush, I'm more of a Art Bell fan. Besides, why did everyone jump on the "Right-wing thugs did this bandwagon" when drunk-ass Randi Rhides busted her grill? Tell her to lay off the Jack Daniels and Vicodin cocktails.
Yes my knees are up against my chest...perhaps you recognized me in Publix being carted around?
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