Happy Earth Day...If Your "Truth" Allows It

So today is officially Earth Day...are we still interested in it?  After all, it's only the one planet we know that can sustain life in our universe.  But then again, that pesky former vice-president Al Gore did come out, a little more than a couple of decades ago, with his An Inconvenient Truth book that presented the widely-held view among climatologists that the world is warming at an alarming rate, due to man-made forces.  Ever since then, the issue has been divided on political lines with the Democrats generally supporting measures to counteract climate change and the Republicans in a "convenient" state of denial as they go full speed ahead with fossil fuels.  I remember back in April 1970 when another Republican, president Richard Nixon, was there at the inauguration of Earth Day.  In spite of his flaws, this was a president who understood the fragility of our home planet and supported environmental regulation.  It's sad to see much of this fall by the wayside as people nowadays choose their own "truths" and condemn the "other side" as enemies...

Three Televised Presentations with Compelling Narratives about Reality

A week or two ago I was sitting comfortably at home in my recliner, in a desperate search to find something worth watching on TV...finally settling on a funding drive show on Public Television featuring Dr. Steven Gundry, who was promoting his most recent book titled The Immortality Paradox.  I was intrigued enough by his presentation to check that book out online from my library...I finished it and plan to add it to my Kindle collection of books, I was that impressed.  Yet something in how the good doctor presented his thesis on how the "gut" bacteria in our bodies determine our state of health and longevity gave me pause: Point A logically led to Point B which logically led to Point C...and all led back to repeated affirmations of his main point.  I get the appeal to reason, but something inside me still rebelled because I don't think that reality is that well organized: it's a lot more chaotic and the systems described are much more complex.  Yet I recognize and accept several points Dr. Gundry made and am partially changing my diet to improve my health...

A while back I saw Al Gore's 2006 movie An Inconvenient Truth, which warned in much the same manner as Dr. Grundy with his own topic about the dangers of global warning caused by man-made releases of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.  The logic and reason with which Gore connected the difference sources of evidence for his thesis was very persuasive and compelling...yet once again after initially being swept away by the presentation, I thought that the system that he was describing contained many other factors that would counteract some of the predictions...just as chaos wreaks havoc with weather forecasting beyond a limited time span.  Still, as in Dr. Grundy's case, I do think it is advisable to take better care of our environment, and trying to restrict our carbon emissions is an example of good stewardship of the planet...

And the other night I watched the 2016 documentary movie 13th, directed by Ava DuVernay, which presented its own thesis that the 13th Amendment to our United States Constitution, long celebrated because it officially abolished slavery, is actually flawed in that it contains a clause that makes an exception for criminals...a loophole that has been used ever since against blacks to oppress and exploit them.  Seen in this light, as one piece of historical evidence supporting that thesis is followed by another...and then another, after the movie ended I thought that the conspiracy it exposed was real...yet once again I have to inject the role of chaos into complex ideas that sound true, and which most definitely contain many significant elements of truth.  Racism is a major problem in our society...but it is one of many factors and doesn't account for all the problems that affect us.  Yet the movie was an eye-opener for me and I highly recommend it...

The three previous examples The Immortality Paradox, An Inconvenient Truth, and 13th all deal with very important subjects immediately relevant to our lives here and now.  I'm inclined to defer within each of them to subject matter I don't completely understand...yet I am inherently skeptical of buying every conclusion they promote hook, line and sinker.  Instead I come away with an action plan from each presentation: be kinder to my own body, be kinder to my own planet, and be kinder to others different than myself.  Maybe that sounds too simple, but the way I see it our lives in the end break down to simple acts, one thing at a time...

Just Finished Reading An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power by Al Gore

Back in 2006 Al Gore released his film/book combo titled An Inconvenient Truth, which presented the basics about the climate change crisis facing the world.  Eleven years later the former American vice-president has authored An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power using the same film/book formats.  I just finished reading it and have my own reactions.  First of all, let me stress that I am not a climatologist or any type of scientist, for that matter.  And if you're not a scientist, I really don't need to hear you or anyone else weighing in on what you think about climate change or whether or not it is a problem...I have a computer and can pull up the same links as you to prop up whatever preconceptions I have on the subject...so don't waste your time and mine going down this fruitless path.  Gore presents, naturally, the view that the vast majority of the scientific community has toward the issue: that human-caused climate change...primarily through the burning of fossil fuels...is adversely changing our climate by warming it through the greenhouse effect of increased concentrations of carbon dioxide, and that a catastrophic level may be reached at some time in the foreseeable future if we don't change how we use energy, as well as in other areas of our economy.  The book shows several examples of the effects that climate change has already had in different areas, but doesn't delve adequately, in my opinion, about the indicators that actually give statistics and hard facts on the subject other than a brief reference on page 42 about the Environmental Protection Agency's 37 indicators of climate change.  And although the book's graphic design of varying fonts, colors, and many pictures makes it more attractive to the general public, there is neither a table of contents nor an index to look up specific points.  The book...and I'm presuming the film...is divided into two parts, the first focusing on the problem and the second a sort of handbook to instruct people-at-large how to engage the issue on different levels such as petitions, town hall meetings, interviews, and so on.  One suggestion the author made was to treat dependence on fossil fuels like smoking and to employ the same kind of ad campaigns that the anti-smoking movement has successfully employed.  Uh, well, only one problem: as the book said in another section, we're still 81% dependent on fossil fuels for our energy needs and last time I checked nicotine isn't the least bit necessary for our survival...big difference!  Also, the book in different sections mentioned that under the 2016 Paris Accords on climate change that Al Gore so highly praises, China, a vast developing economic power dominated by polluting, coal-burning plants, won't have to peak their CO2 emissions until 2030 (meaning they'll be increasing them until then) while elsewhere it's stated that we need to turn around our CO2 emissions by the year 2020 to avoid major negative consequences...say what? Furthermore, the author in the second half of the book has turned fighting manmade climate change...which in the book's first half he stresses has been firmly established to be true by strict scientific research and analysis...into a social cause to be campaigned for along with progressive issues that the Democratic Party has embraced, framing it as a partisan political issue that will dissuade Republicans from engaging in a positive way.  And finally, in that second part of the book, they advise what they call "Climate Reality Leaders" not to inundate people with actual facts on the subject but rather to be more personal about how climate change has affected them in their own lives in order to enhance their presentation's emotional appeal...is that really where we want to go on this?

You're entitled to believe whatever you want on the subject, but I happen to think that climate change is for real.  Does that mean that burning fossil fuels is the primary cause? The late Michael Crichton in his novel State of Fear posited that deforestation may be more of a factor and that the scientists have made a false correlation.  Whatever the cause, I want our planet and our life on it to be more sustainable and it makes sense to cut our dependence on non-renewal sources of energy, anyway.  Like a lot of us, though, I think that it's foolish for me to be oh-so-concerned about my personal "carbon footprint" while on the other side of the Pacific Ocean China is churning out the carbon into the atmosphere without any compunction...if this is what "globalism" means then I don't care for it, sorry Al Gore...

Quote of the Week...from Al Gore

The day I made that statement about inventing the Internet, I was tired because I'd been up all night inventing the Camcorder.                                       ---Al Gore

Al Gore, our vice-president during the Clinton presidency from 1993-2001, has for several years been one of the acknowledged leaders in promoting education and action to combat human-induced carbon emissions into the atmosphere that may cause potentially catastrophic global warning in the decades to come.  In 2006 he came out with the film An Inconvenient Truth with its accompanying book...I just finished reading his 2017 An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, which accompanied another film of the same title.  This book merits more than just one brief review, and I plan to discuss it in future articles.  For now, back to Al Gore...

His above quote is a humorous response to the ridicule he received from having said, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiate in creating the Internet".  Note that he never really claimed to have invented the Internet, yet did he go into an angry fit and start screaming "fake news" and personally attacking his detractors?  No, he made a pretty funny self-deprecating joke instead.  It's sad to presently have as my national leader someone for whom such a capacity for humor...as well as humility...is completely alien and unattainable.  And he seems to attract, as likeminded souls, people with a similar deficit in their own personality makeup, not that all Trump supporters are like that...but I think a few definitely are.  Still, Al Gore has shown his own degree of pomposity at times, and it has been at his worst moments in this regard when he has made statements whose silliness resembles comments that the baseball great Yogi Berra used to say, statements like If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure or A zebra does not change its spots or A low voter turnout is an indicator of fewer people going to the polls.  Still, I feel that Gore,  for whom I did not vote in 2000 (and regret that decision), would have beaten George W. Bush in 2004 had he thrown his hat into the ring during that election...I would have voted for him then.  But I think by then Al had already taken on this climate change issue as a personal commitment...I do have a few reservations about how he is promoting it all, though, and will mention these in a future article...

Just Finished Reading Under the Dome by Stephen King

Several years ago, not long after Stephen King's very long novel Under the Dome was first published, I began to read it...but stopped in frustration about a third of the way through.  I was tired of all the political references, with the good guys seeming to support then-President Obama and the bad guys against him.  I also took exception to the way evangelical Christianity was being negatively portrayed in the novel: after recently picking it back up and reading it all the way through, I realize why King did what he did but still feel that he could have done more to balance out the equation on both political and religious fronts.  Since I was already attuned to these issues, I could put them in the background as I read and enjoyed the unfolding story.  Turned out to be a pretty good story, after all...

Just before noon on an October Saturday in the fictional small Maine town of Chester's Mill, a thin, transparent, and impermeable barrier suddenly materializes, separating everybody and everything on both sides of the town's borders.  A plane crashes against the dome as do cars, trucks, and multitudes of birds...many deaths occur in those first few minutes of its existence.  Dale "Barbie" Barbara, the story's chief protagonist (and it contains many protagonists) is close to leaving town after a violent altercation with town ruffians the night before...he just misses getting out in time as the car he was hoping to hitch a ride with doesn't stop as it exits.  So now Barbie has to go back to Chester's Mill, which is full of small-town society and politically dominated by a demagogue, "Big Jim" Rennie, who is a manipulative used-car salesman with no scruples when it comes to enhancing his own power and wealth.  As the dome remains over Chester's Mill, the struggle is on between Rennie's forces and those in the town who want to prevent a dictatorship...

The dome cannot be physically crossed, but the other side is both visible and audible, and radio and the Internet still pass through the barrier.  Barbie is informed by his former Army superior from Iraq that he has been reinstated and promoted to corporal from his former captain rank...and that he is expected to take control of Chester's Mill.  Thus ensues a power struggle with Rennie.  But these characters, although crucial to the story, are just a few of the many that King follows in Under the Dome.  As I said before, it contains many protagonists and subplots...and quite a few villains as well.  I'll leave what happens in this speculative tale to you, the prospective reader, and instead focus on a couple of my own reactions to it...

I can't help but feel that with this story Stephen King was alluding to our planet Earth as a sort of enclosed system that is susceptible to environmental abuse.  The indiscriminate burning of fossil fuels and the release of pollutants into the atmosphere threatens the fragile system that supports our own lives, and like the folks living under that dome, we have nowhere else to go.  I also understand the author's example of how people tend to deny the rights of other species of life to simply be able to live out their own lives...he used the example of kids setting fire to ants with a magnifying glass, regarding them as not really being alive anyway.  What if some alien beings had the same attitude about us that we have toward "lower" creatures?

So in the end, I give a "thumbs up" to Under to Dome.  Be prepared for a long reading excursion, though...it's more than a thousand pages long.  As for the television series, I haven't seen it and don't have any plans in that regard.  There are some sections to this novel that are unforgettable: the strange friendship that develops between Andy Sanders and Phil "Chef" Bushey was totally unexpected.  And Stephen King was brilliant with the dialogue throughout...

Just Finished Reading The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker

Karen Thompson Walker is an editor for a book publishing company who came out with her first novel, The Age of Miracles, in 2012.  The story centers around a nightmare dystopian scenario in which the Earth inexplicably begins to slow down in its orbit, causing all sorts of disasters and eventually threatening the human race...as well as life on our planet in general...with extinction.  In the middle of this calamity, Julia, an eleven-year-old middle-school student, is going through the pangs of early adolescence in her home California town while struggling with her social relationships.  Let's see if I can recognize them from my memories of this long-gone period in my own life: bullying ✓, snobbery ✓, family dysfunction ✓,  puppy-love crush ✓, indifferent teachers ✓, and feelings of isolation, inadequacy, and alienation ✓. Yep, they're all there, except that I wasn't having to deal with the end of life as we know it on Earth...although when I was her age back in 1968 I suspected that one day when I became of age, I would be drafted and sent over to Vietnam to die for my country in that endless war.  Oh yeah, don't forget that while (fictional) Julia and I were going through our typical teenage angst periods, the kids around us all openly pretended as if everything was totally hunky-dory in their own lives (and what's wrong with us)...✓

So The Age of Miracles, to me, came across as a story with a split personality.  On one hand there is the developing drama of a world slowing down and how humanity copes with the increasing problems of ecological disasters, earthquakes, solar radiation, and the destruction of the Earth's magnetic field...to name just a few.  On the other hand, there is the intense personal drama of Julia's life, family, and school.  And then there is the issue of time: as the planet's rotational day lengthens, a conflict grows between those who want to retain the strict 24-hour/day system regardless whether it is light or dark and those who want to adapt their day to keep in harmony with sunrise and sunset...those favoring the latter approach soon find themselves isolated and persecuted by the majority, which to me is the author's commentary on how irrationally cruel people can become when in groups and looking for scapegoats for their hardships...

From the beginning of this story I had my doubts about Karen Thompson Walker's adherence to established science...but hey, it's just a story and I'm not one of those "hard" science fiction readers who are obsessed with discovering "errors" in obviously fantastic tales.  Instead, I try to discern what the author was trying to say.  In this case, The Age of Miracles, the title of which is what early adolescence has been referred to in the past, is more about what kids have to go through during that difficult time in their lives than the sci-fi part.  The impending doom of the "slowing", to me, was just Walker's way of externalizing the internal struggles that Julia was having to deal with, anyway.  In the end, I liked this story and recommend it, but more because of the human angle to it, not the science fiction part.  The author accomplished something crucial to a story: she created a character I could identify with...

Just Finished Reading Fallen Angels by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael Flynn

Fallen Angels is a 1991 science fiction novel by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael Flynn...none of whose works I had read before.  Its premise is intriguing: at some time in the not-too-distant future, society has turned its back on scientific and technological advancement in favor of pro-green environmental extremism and pseudoscience.  In the process, the space program is abandoned...literally: there are two space stations stuck out there in Earth orbit, with no ability to land and resupply.  Meanwhile, with a man-made ice age quickly advancing over the land, the "aliens", as they are now derisively called, become the scapegoats as they send ships from time to time into the atmosphere to "scoop" needed nitrogen from the air.  On one such mission, Alex and Gordon, both conditioned to living in the free-fall zero gravity of space, are shot down by a missile from the ground and crash land on the advancing ice glacier, somewhere in North Dakota.  An underground science fiction fan club..."underground" because interest in science and technology is now considered antisocial and psychologically aberrant...undertakes a rescue operation.  So a whole cast of characters gets introduced as well as those from the various factions of government vying against one another to be the ones capturing the "alien enemy".  The rest of the story traces the quest to find a way to return Alex and Gordon safely to their home in space, but its main theme is a discussion of the merits and shortfalls of different viewpoints concerning how science and technology have affected our environment...with the authors' prevailing judgment coming down in favor of pollution and global warming.  For, you see, their contention is that Earth has been in an ice age for millennia and the only thing that has been holding back the glacier advance has been humanity's development of fire, agriculture, and civilization...thereby causing a heating effect and impeding the ice.  An intriguing idea, I might say...but it's easy to be right when you're writing a book of fiction and, presto, there are the advancing ice sheets after man-made pollution has been thoroughly eliminated.  But I happen to live in the real world, and the ice around the poles is in fast retreat, not advance...

Although some of the assumptions expressed in Fallen Angels sound dubious to me, I greatly appreciated how they paid tribute to the great science fiction writers of the past...names like Theodore Sturgeon, Cordwainer Smith, Clifford Simak, Isaac Asimov, and Ray Bradbury, to mention just a few.  I also liked how Gordon would speak things sometimes half in Russian...after all, the space station is a joint Russian-American project.  And the idea of society "helping" those who hold what it sees as deviant opinions by confining and drugging them is not all that far off from being real: watch the movie A Beautiful Mind to get a hint of what I'm talking about.  But let's not take this all too seriously, and just about every story has its own built-in flaws: if their authors didn't publish them until they were perfect, we'd never have anything to read...

The Doomsday Scientist

A few days ago I was watching the National Geographic Explorer TV channel and a program was on about global warming/climate change, hosted by Bill Nye (the Science Guy).  I think it was just a year old, so we're talking pretty recently.  Toward the end of the show he interviewed a University of Arizona ecologist named Guy McPherson, who predicted that there will be no more human life on Earth by the year 2030.  Yes, that's what he said...we'll be extinct by then, and it will be due to the cascading effects of human civilization-caused superheating of the planet from built-up carbon dioxide as well as methane gas.  The seas will become lifeless and the oxygen will disappear from the atmosphere.  McPherson didn't explain all of his reasoning to Nye, but I did look him up on Wikipedia and saw his blog page, which goes into much greater detail about his somber conclusion on humanity in the near future...

In looking at the current situation we have with increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, McPherson decided to investigate the Great Permian Mass-Extinction of 250 million years ago, when almost all life on Earth was obliterated.  The trigger event for this seems to have been the eruption of massive super-volcanos in what is now Siberia, causing fires over the area and smoke and ashes surrounding the planet.  But the fires then ignited the masses of coal deposits underneath the surface, and Earth went into a long-term greenhouse effect with mass releases into the atmosphere of methane gas, much more potent in its greenhouse effect than CO2.  The oceans and the atmosphere were starved of oxygen and nearly all of the animal and plant species on Earth became extinct.  Now that process back then, as McPherson recognizes, took place over a much longer time span than the global warming going on in our time.  But in both cases, he emphasizes the concept of "self-enforcing feedback loops" that accelerated the process back then and now as well.  For example, global warming melts ice in the far north, but that ice melting exposes holes in the Earth where large methane deposits have been held dormant for millions of years.  Now they are being released into the atmosphere and speeding up the heating.  The more the heating, the faster the methane is exposed and released, which speeds up the heating further...

Guy McPherson does not place much hope in the efforts taken today to restrain carbon emissions, and he thinks a carbon tax is ridiculous.  No, he believes we have already gone too far, and this process leading ultimately to his predicted doom in the too-near future began with human civilization thousands of years ago with the advent of agriculture...

I just heard about this guy last week and already the world's coming to an end?  Uh, please give me a little more time to ingest this!  But McPherson does seem to have his own following, a growing doomsday cult if you will.  His conclusions show to me how someone, if they package their theories in a compelling manner, can pretty much sell anything.  Listen to the folks who are global warming deniers: some of them sound pretty convincing, too.  Look, if we're all perishing in fifteen years anyway, it won't matter, in terms of our habitat on Earth, what I do now with my time or "carbon footprint", and if there is no human-induced climate change, the same is also true.  So in a perverse sort of way, Guy McPherson, with his presentation of impending and certain human extinction, is making the point for folks who want to just forget about climate change and do whatever they want with the environment, for better or...more likely...for worse...

Hotel Room Ramblings

Here I am late at night, sitting in a Hollywood, Florida hotel room watching the Los Angeles Dodgers play the St. Louis Cardinals in the first of their series to decide who gets to go to this year's World Series.  I really don't care who wins...I rooted for each team to lose its previous series.  Still, this is a good, close game (2-2 in the 7th inning).  I think I'm finding myself slightly leaning toward the Dodgers, but I can't figure out why.  About an hour ago I finished up my four-mile treadmill run in this hotel's exercise room (one treadmill, one elliptical...that's it). Oh, and from time to time the lights would go out for a second, right in the middle of my run.  Fortunately, there was a TV on in the room, which would provide a little light during the blackouts.  I guess I'll repeat this tonight, since I'm planning to stay here until Sunday.  My hotel is way out west, smack dab in the middle of what should be Everglades swampland and dominated by water, sawgrass, and alligators.  Instead, there's an Interstate and heavy development running through this thoroughly drained out area.  I don't know how they are capable of swinging this: aren't we supposed to be conserving our wetlands?  I guess the answer is yes, as long as it doesn't conflict with the almighty dollar!  And when isn't that really the case?!?!

Hungarian Sludge Disaster & US Media's Americentricity

Smack in the center of densely populated Europe, an environmental disaster occurred Monday and threatens to spread. According to Dan Bilefsky and Judy Dempsey of the New York Times, in an article appearing in today's Gainesville Sun, a flood of about 185 million gallons of caustic, toxic red sludge covered several towns around an alumina production company in Ajka, Hungary Monday when a reservoir containing the substance broke. The article reports 4 dead and 5 missing, along with hundreds of homes destroyed and thousands affected. And this toxic sludge could spread into the Danube River and contaminate other parts of Europe.

I'm glad that my local newspaper saw fit to print this important story that rivals the BP Gulf Oil Spill for its impact on the environment and the people. I'm glad because, although I do tend to watch the cable news channels a lot over the course of a day, I have yet to come across any televised reporting of this calamity. Instead, all I'm getting is tedious spinning on the various political candidates and nitpicking about this gaffe or the other. Not to mention endless reactions to each dinky public opinion poll that comes out. Hey you "journalists" out there, there is more to the world than just America! But it seems to me that unless our news media can make a direct link between our country and events happening elsewhere in the world, no matter how significant they may be, they tend to be ignored. Maybe there WAS some coverage, but if so it was so sparse that it slipped past me.

As Sister Sarah might put it, go ahead and try to refudiate me!

Koyaanisqatsi and the Pristine

One of my all-time favorite movies is the 1983 documentary Koyaanisqatsi, beautifully scored by Philip Glass. It is a wordless depiction of the beauties of pristine nature in the American southwest, contrasted with the ugliness and pollution of western materialistic culture in the area. The film explains that the term “koyaanisqatsi” is Hopi for “life out of balance”. And its message is clearly that things have gotten quite out of hand with the prevailing philosophy of mankind trying to dominate nature, instead of coexisting with it in a symbiotic relationship (which the Hopis were implicitly able to do).

The first few minutes of Koyaanisqatsi depict the awe-inspiring procession of a day in the southwestern wilderness. Everything seems pristine, untouched by human hands. But just as the viewer begins to expect more of the same, the camera shots shift to construction vehicles and high-tension power lines strung along the heretofore “natural” landscape. And it gave me pause for some reflection.

I remember pretty vividly a few years ago when Florida Senator Bill Nelson stood up on the Senate floor and announced his intention to hold up any bill that authorized oil drilling off Florida’s “pristine” shores, as he put it. His contention was that the natural beauty of Florida’s beaches was an important element of the state’s economy, drawing in much tourist revenue from out-of-state. And the presence of visible oil platforms and equipment would somehow make things “un-pristine”, I suppose. Well, I concur with Senator Nelson with his objection to oil exploration and drilling close to our shores. But just who is he trying to fool with his (repeated) invocation of the term “pristine”? I’ve been to quite a few Florida beaches, and even on the most remote of them, there is a noticeable LACK of anything “pristine”.

In like manner, Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander complained that the pristine beauty of Tennessee’s landscapes would be ruined if windmills were set up to harness the clean energy of wind power there. Hypocritically, Senator Alexander had no trouble opposing Senator Nelson’s desire to protect his state’s “pristine” beauty. But is there really anything pristine left, anyway?

We’re used to seeing photographs of natural wonders, unencumbered by the mark of civilization. But weren’t many of these specially shot at angles and locations designed to eliminate from view the close presence of that civilization? How many times have you seen breath-taking photographs of the Grand Canyon or some other national park? But you know, if you go there in person, you’re liable to have to search out places to recreate that same sense of natural isolation.

I live close to a natural sinkhole named Devil’s Millhopper. It isn’t pristine by any stretch of the imagination, nor was it ever intended to be. There is a wooden path winding down into the hole to its bottom. And circling around it is a dirt walking path. The park is bordered by a busy state highway, a housing development, and a very tall radio tower. A Publix grocery store and its shopping plaza are about a half mile down the road. But given the circumstances, this park does give the urban dweller a feeling of being out in nature. So I don’t think you have to eliminate all traces of human presence to accomplish this effect.

I think that setting large amounts of land aside for publicly-accessible parks can be a good thing. And in some cases, there may be a good reason to restrict the public’s access, especially if the ecosystem there is very fragile and/or contains endangered species. Also, sometimes there may be a particular vista that the area provides which would be ruined by development. But for the most part, we need to apply some reason here, recognizing that while we want to avoid destroying or polluting an area, we also may need to obtain natural resources from it or use it for people to live in. It is here that our federal and state governments, which we as a people have entrusted to protect our environment through regulations and their enforcement, must be independent of outside pressure to “tweak” things in the favor of one interested group or another. No, decisions like this need to be made deliberately and completely out in the open. Hopefully, the new administration will move in this direction.

Monday Newsbreak: 9/15

--An estimated more than 100,000 residents of the eastern Texas coastal areas directly in the path of Hurricane Ike chose not to heed warnings to evacuate and instead chose to stay and try to ride out the storm. At this writing, more than 600 rescues of stranded residents have been made, but only time will tell how many casualties resulted from decisions to remain instead of fleeing to safety. One might have thought that the disaster at Galveston of 1900, when a hurricane killed around 4000, or even the recent tragedy down the coast caused by Katrina just three years ago, would have been enough warning. And it probably was, for most. But for those who did stay behind, their danger is still ongoing, since the area is full of hazards, including downed power lines, debris, and damaged buildings.

--The level of mud being slung around in this presidential race has reached such epic proportions that I can barely continue to cover it. What may have been the final straw with me was the “pig with lipstick” comment Barack Obama made in reference to a failed policy that the Republicans, including John McCain, immediately blew up as a personal attack against Sarah Palin (Obama was in no way talking about her). Never mind that McCain himself had used the expression on a number of occasions with reference to Hillary Clinton’s take on issues. Don’t those slinging the mud realize that if elected, they will have an impossible task of reconciling half of the country with them? Or do they just seek naked power without regard to any sense of decency? And why do I already know the sad answers to these questions?

--As a response to Russia’s recent incursion into Georgia, The U.S. is stepping up its arms sales to allies in the region, including other former Soviet republics. Georgians living in South Ossetia are reportedly being harassed by local militias into leaving that region for Georgia proper. Although I understand how Russia could feel justified in intervening following the initial Georgian offensive against South Ossetia, allowing the persecution of an ethnic group (the Georgians) in a region under its military control makes its expressed concern about how Russian people living in the various former Soviet republics are treated nothing less than sheer hypocrisy. By putting the West on alert against them, this incursion may have been a very big mistake on their part. At least for the manner in which they executed it.

--In Steve Newman’s great feature Earthweek, ice in the Arctic Ocean has now melted enough to create an open, navigable circle of water for the first time in about 125,000 years, according to experts in the field. Of course, I don’t rightly know who would have been around to navigate the area 125,000 years ago! But this sort of information, which should help put to rest the notion that the melting ice is just part of a natural cycle, is going virtually ignored in the media (except by Mr. Newman). This is happening while a global warming denier is helping to catapult one candidate into the lead in America’s 2008 presidential race. Since we like to pretend that the ice isn’t really disappearing in the polar regions, why don’t we go a little further with our pleasant delusions and just proclaim that everything else is going hunky dory across the world? And bring the troops home.

Global Warming and Energy Independence

One of the paradoxes in our society today is the tendency of much of the conservative right to deny the existence of man-made global warming. To hear some of them talk, you would think that the anti-global warming movement is an anti-American socialist internationalist plot. That Democratic former Vice-President Al Gore is one of “them” seems to add fuel to the fires of denial. But let’s look at this a little closer.

It’s true that the United States is often presented as the main target for criticism about carbon dioxide emissions. And carbon dioxide contributes to the greenhouse effect that traps the sun’s heat within the earth’s atmosphere. The burning of fossil fuels, chief among them petroleum, releases a great amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And don’t we depend in America greatly on other countries to supply us with this petroleum? And aren’t some of those countries, like Venezuela, Libya, Iran, and Russia, places whose national interests don’t necessarily coincide with ours? And aren’t we embroiled in a seemingly endless war in oil-rich Iraq, prohibitively costly both in terms of lives, injuries, and the enormous financial cost? Would we have been doing this in a country that wasn’t a major oil producer?

Conservatives and liberals alike say that they want the U.S. to be energy-independent. By that, I mean independent of other countries. We shouldn't be so vulnerable about our energy supplies that we feel compelled to mortgage our future in order to forcibly protect them. It’s high time we finally get serious with alternative, renewable sources of energy. And by that I mean water, wind, solar, and fusion. Sources that would not tax our atmosphere with excess amounts of carbon dioxide emissions.

Unfortunately, conservatives, in their proclamations for energy independence, stress exploration, mining, and processing fossil fuels that are on U.S. territory or under coastal waters, while belittling efforts to encourage renewable, relatively clean energy sources. The way I see it is that all we will accomplish by their suggestions is pollute our planet more while keeping us just as dependent on foreign sources as before. It will take great strides in both technological development and national commitment to get us truly energy-independent.

I haven’t mentioned two energy sources that hold some promise for the future: ethanol, and nuclear power. The problem with using corn-based ethanol for energy is that it threatens to drive up the price of grain beyond the point where people who really need it for food can afford it. And nuclear energy, despite the claims of increased safety, still has the problem of what to do with the enormous quantity of slow-decaying radioactive waste that is a by-product. So I would rather see more development with solar, hydrogen, wind, and fusion as a long-term solution, both in terms of making us energy-independent and raising the U.S. to be a world leader in preserving our fragile environment. I don’t see the point in wrecking the planet and getting us entangled in more wars when the end result regarding energy resources is going to be the same!

Monday Newsbreak: 2/4

--Retired Florida Democratic Senator Bob Graham recently wrote an opinion piece listing issues that our next president will need to address during the next administration. Homeland security, accessible health insurance, and an effective energy policy were some of the issues he enumerated. But Graham also made a good suggestion regarding future presidential debates as well: let each debate focus on a single predetermined topic, in order to keep the candidates from dodging questions and avoiding addressing difficult issues. Bob Graham was one of the early presidential candidates in 2004 who dropped out of the race early due to lack of support. Too bad. Had his campaign taken off, he would have been a much more viable candidate than John Kerry, and would have probably defeated George W. Bush had he been the Democratic nominee.

--Steve Newman's Earthweek newspaper feature revealed that a special vault has been constructed on the remote, far northern island of Svalbard (in Norway) and filled with more than 200,000 varieties of food crop seeds. The idea is to have a gene supply of crops should a global catastrophe wipe out agriculture on Earth. Norway is responsible for this wonderful humanitarian project.

--The Gainesville City Commission, by a 4-3 vote, approved an ordinance to protect the rights of transgender citizens. Although the ordinance was comprehensive, including areas like housing, employment, and obtaining credit, it was the part of this law that allowed people to use the public restroom of their own gender identification (even if they were physically of the other gender), that drew heated opposition to it. This didn't have to happen, in my opinion. Other communities have passed similar ordinances protecting transgenders while making certain exceptions for public accommodations. The fear of abuse of this ordinance that I've heard from others is not that transgenders would abuse the law: it is that people posing as transgenders would abuse it in order to prey upon others. From what I've read about transgender ordinances, though, nothing serious has ever been reported to have arisen from them to this effect.

--In yesterday's Super Bowl, the unlikely New York Giants capped the National Football League season with a dramatic come-from-behind last-minute win over the previously undefeated and thoroughly self-absorbed New England Patriots. New England quarterback Tom Brady was able to engineer a late fourth quarter drive with little pressure from a pass rush that the Giants had been plaguing him with the entire game. The drive was capped off by a touchdown pass from Brady, who set an NFL single-season record of 50 touchdown passes, to Randy Moss, who set an NFL single-season record for his 23 touchdown pass receptions. That gave the Patriots a 14-10 lead, but it wasn't enough, as Eli Manning lead his team back, culminating in a last-minute touchdown pass to Plaxico Burress for the winning touchdown and a 17-14 Super Bowl victory. Considering the arrogance of this New England franchise along with their casual belittling of the video-taping scandal that showed them to be cheating in order to give them an unfair advantage over their opponent, I felt that it was perfectly fitting that their so-called "perfect" season was taken away from them with just a few seconds to go! Time to break out the champagne, Dolphins! As for the Giants, I don't think I'll ever forget the great favor this franchise did for me in defeating the Patriots. I'm probably going to end up rooting for them in years to come, even when they're lousy (the true mark of a loyal fan).