Our World and Everything in It

As I write my 84-year-old mother, who is visiting, is occupied at my kitchen counter checking all my ballpoint pens for use. She wanted some Crazy Glue, and in my search through my junk drawer, I decided to pull the neat little organizer tray out of there. By time I stacked what had fallen out of that neat little organizer tray and piled it on top, it no longer had any semblance of an organizer tray. She volunteered (I think she’s bored) to test all the pens. None of them, so far, are dried up. Which leads me to accumulation and what many of us do with it.

I told her that maybe I could give the excess pens to a nursing home, hospital, office, etc., anything but the landfill. She replied “How about a school?” Right, how about a school? We read about underprivileged kids everywhere that don’t have the money to buy school basics. Instead of this massive waste we’re creating on earth by being a “toss and buy new society” why aren’t we doing more recycling everywhere? Do those with nothing demand brand new? I’m using used stuff all over my house and I’m not underprivileged. Sorry, no pride here. If it works, I keep it shined up and use it. My car is 8 years old. I just don’t think people who get free stuff are all that picky. I’m not talking about passing down junk, but…

Take for instance one of my biggest pet peeves, flowers, shrubs, and trees for sale everywhere this time of year. It’s appalling what happens to most of this stuff. Frank’s Nursery is out of business now, but my mom and I saw them throwing 2-3 year old trees, beautiful trees, in the garbage bin. We asked if we could have them. Nope, something about posting losses keeps nurseries like this from giving those trees away. So as a loss, they are a tax write-off. Fine, but so is donating to charity.

Wouldn’t it be nice to know that all those beautiful plants that overflow everywhere, every spring end up in the garden at some nursing home, children’s play yard, and how about those subdivisions I wrote about that look like you could fry an egg on the sidewalks for lack of trees?

We need to realize when we see all this glorious growth every spring and everywhere that most of the time what took much labor, water, earth, nutrients, and as much as 5 years of time to become a substantial tree or shrub is tossed like garbage for the almighty dollar. True the losses qualify as a tax write-off but does it ever occur to anyone that maybe we should cut back on growing too much of this stuff in lieu of saving the labor, water, and earth for other things like restoration of all the forests that are burning or for more farmland for food sources instead. After all, do we really need every food market, hardware store, department store, and even gas stations selling flowers, trees, or shrubs?

 Since I saw those trees hit the garbage bin years ago, the view of all the flower markets overflowing every spring makes me about as sad as seeing all the road-kill. I’ve raised a tree from a twig. Try it sometime and see if you don’t find yourself caring for that particular tree as if it were your child. To see a twig grow to a tall, strong, glorious tree that shades my yard and me against increasingly hotter summers is not much different than raising any other living thing. We need to take notice, appreciate, and nurture all living things to include the plant kingdom. There may come a time where we will no longer be able to grow anything. We’ll miss the green things.

I have a complaint. My mother’s small engine car uses just as much gas as my large 300 hp car, which is in the shop.  So now I know what the beef is about with the U.S. auto manufacturer’s idea of gas mileage. Some in congress want them to work on that. Thirty and forty miles to the gallon would be nice. I’m driving this little putter of an engine, not very far mind you, when I looked at the fuel gauge and it moved just like my big car. This needs to change. And no, my big car does not have a big tank. I don’t ever remember putting 14 gallons in it even when it was near empty.

I’m curious about what the hybrids will be like in 2008. I thought the little Saturn Sky was a hybrid from their latest commercial, but it’s not.  Darn, I was willing to go look at one of those. We’re seriously lagging in the hybrid market, and what’s out there is ugly. Daimler Chrysler produced a few hydrogen buses for Iceland 3 years ago, but had nothing to show as far as hybrids at the auto show this year and then sold out to private investors. Go figure? With only GM and Ford, hopefully there will be more than just a few hybrid offerings next year. GMC has a few electric hybrids out there right now.

One of GM’s hybrids is a pick up truck. My husband works with a guy who bought one. It’s the exact same truck as my husband’s Sierra with a Vortec engine but it’s electric and gas. The owner drove it up north and got 28 miles to the gallon. In town he says he can feel it switch to electric but doesn’t notice any difference at lower speeds. My girlfriend really wants a hybrid like this because most of her driving is in-town. She says she would never have to buy gas; what a wonderful, wonderful thought.  

One of my blogs was about the forests lost to forest fires and that it was really odd to see the woods of Minnesota burn since the state is noted for its many inland lakes. Then I read that the global warming impact of forest fires in our western states is the equivalent of a more severe hurricane season in the gulf. But hurricanes are over in a few days, forest fires can burn for months. About.com stated: “Researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of Arizona found four times as many large wildfires occurred in Western forests between 1987 and 2003 compared to the previous 16 years.”

Everything about fires has increased due to global warming. The latest fires burned 6.5 times more land, increased from around 8 days to 37 days in duration, and the whole fire season has expanded 78 more days. Here’s the interesting part. You know there are television personalities like Regis Philbin who make fun of a one degree weather change, but most of the increase in our fires corresponds with a simple 1.5 degree rise in temperature out west during the same time frame of 87 to 2003. The slightly warmer temperatures lead to longer, drier seasons that are ideal for a flash fire.

This is the first study that links global warming and forest fires. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “The researchers examined U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service records of every forest fire that burned at least 1,000 acres from 1970 to 2003. They found that of 1,166 fires in that period, four-fifths of them, or about 900, occurred after 1987.” The article went on to say, “Steven Running, a professor in the School of Forestry at the University of Montana who wrote an accompanying article about the report for Science hopes to include Westerling’s findings in a report on the ecological consequences of climate change for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

I don’t doubt that sooner or later science will find a link between all major eruptions on earth such as volcanoes, and earthquakes with the rise in hurricanes, flooding, fires, etc., that are due to man’s impact on this same environment with some form of pollution. We simply haven’t given much thought to our ever increasing world population in ratio to its output of pollution. Imagine if every growing population turned into a capitalist society like ours where demand for everything under the sun in huge amounts is an everyday occurrence. Capitalism to me is more a throw away society than a recycling society right now. It doesn’t have to be that way, however. We’re into supply and demand and haven’t caught on that some of the supply can come from what has already been used. It’s simply not a good thing for the earth to start from scratch every time when there is perfectly good base material out there to be recycled.

This has just given me an idea to blog about what is currently offered in the recycled goods market and for what use. I do know that recycled plastics offer picnic tables, park benches, and even parking curbs out of high density plastic material instead of wood that rots or concrete that eventually cracks. Every Parks and Recreation Commission in all cities should be looking into recycled products like these for all of our recreational areas. It would make all of us feel a little better about all the plastic products we consume and throw away into a trash dump versus the local park or for some future use wouldn’t it? We should see how truly efficient we can be. After all our country should be viewed as a business and isn’t that the essence of business anyway to garner the greatest profit with the least overhead, and the least waste?
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 I just read my National Resource Defense Council (NRDC) newsletter and thought I’d pass on some of the latest news. There is a new plan—again—to sell off some of our national parks. It seems the U.S. is shy of money, (the war), and this is one of the ways this administration plans on making up some of the deficit. So why not sell off some of our national heritage, and to who? … the wealthy of course. Some prime habitat in Greater Yellowstone for bears, elk, and wolves, part of the Greater Cumberland Plateau, all in all 270,000 acres of national forests over 35 states may be up for grabs.
 
     If we sell off all this forest land, continue to have the forest fires that seem to increase every year, strip mine for coal, extract oil from tar sands which also strip mines large swaths of land, and continue the urban sprawl, what do we expect will happen? There is an awful lot going on behind the scenes that everyone assumes has cleared up. Well guess again. The war in Iraq overshadows much.The arctic drilling is not a dead issue either.
 
The Bush administration is eyeballing the Beaufort Sea, a year round polar bear habitat just offshore of Alaska’s Arctic national Wildlife Refuge and Western Arctic Reserve. Does reserve mean anything anymore? I thought we were supposed to be getting past the idea of oil?  Not going to happen until we get an oilman out of office. We have a president that says we need to get away from our dependence on oil and the drills are literally poised to ruin pieces of pristine land everywhere.

Take the tar sands oil development, which is supposed to be one of the most destructive mining techniques of all. The process involves strip-mining large swaths of land and Bush is prepared to offer tens of thousands of acres of it near Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument and Glen Canyon wilderness. The terrain would be irreversibly altered forever.

To keep practice up for war games, the Navy plans on blasting thousands of square nautical miles with what is described as “ear-splitting” mid-frequency sound on sea mammals who are trying to survive in their ocean habitat that we are polluting with mercury and garbage from cruise ships to freighters. Coal mining threatens to strip the Rocky Mountain habitat of grizzly bears by taking 40 million tons of coal out of the Flathead River Valley by the Cline Mining Corporation. I’ve talked about the abuse of land from coal mining where mountaintops are literally removed. The plan will establish waste dumps and settling ponds right on top of the headwaters of the Flathead River in BC. It may be happening in Canada but the trouble is that it threatens wildlife downstream in Montana’s Glacier National Park and poisons the watershed region of the Flathead River.

And finally, the federal government threatens the revived wolf population again. I guess they think the wolves were only useful during the last election for scare tactics about terrorism and continuing the war that no one seems to want any longer. First we let wolves populate, and then brutally kill them off. To me it smells of canned hunts. There is no reason to attack wolves en masse this way. It was seen on TV that wolves are territorial. When a recording of another pack is aired via loudspeaker the experiment worked. Wolves that were predatory in that particular area stayed away. There are many humane ways to do business that this big moral society bypasses. If you really care about the wolves contact Governor “Butch” Otter of Idaho and tell him what you think of him. He wants to take the first shot at the wolves and to eliminate at least 75 percent of them. Ditto for the wolves in Yellowstone Park. Remember that big battle to allow them to come back. We did, and now those in power want to kill them off again. See what I mean about playing games with their lives. They were used for the last election, and now abused by the users.

I think we’re all feeling a little abused these days.

So I threw open the door this fine warm morning and bounded outdoors, coffee in hand, immediately inhaled about 3 “midges” put my hand over my coffee mug really quick and came back inside. There is a bumper crop of those little mosquito looking insects this year. I went back out sans the coffee, kept my mouth shut and tried not to rustle into any bushes. In the recesses of my memory, midges mean fish will be biting but with that VHS disease in the fish it might not matter. I saw in the news recently, that it was a consideration to limit fishing this year if the disease keeps spreading.

And now those cute little Chickadees (small black and white birds) are threatened by the West Nile virus along with beautiful Bluebirds. No one thought much of it when it was only affecting crows but it’s stretched to other species of birds now. My bird feeders have been in place at least ten years and I get a lot of bird traffic, even escaped parakeets and canaries, and I saw exactly one Chickadee this spring. They are usually around all winter and are pretty friendly and sweet. I’ve actually had one peck at our glass door and stare in on us. Not long ago Michigan considered changing the state bird from Robins, which didn’t hang around all winter, to the Chickadee, which was plentiful. Now whole populations are being wiped out by West Nile. I wondered why I haven’t seen a lot of Chickadees for a couple of years. I miss them.

We’re getting all these viruses that start out as not so significant because masses of people aren’t dying from any of them or they only affect a certain species, so we don’t care much.  Well ecosystems are important. Everyone’s read somewhere about the honeybee and how it affects our food supply. Take pause to notice all the species of things that are in trouble:  fish, birds, bees, and just try to remember we are part of the animal chain. There might come a virus that affects humans in the future so have a little empathy for even the smallest things. To me it’s a warning sign.

I just watched the morning news that most people are not all that concerned about the rising gas prices. One of the reasons listed is that the economy is booming, for who though? My husband is working overtime on a regular basis but we’re not feeling the strong economy because food, gas, and utilities keep rising so whatever extra comes in gets ate up.  Why is it the HAVES just cannot get it through their heads they are the only ones that are feeling a boom, that they are the ones with the extra cash to invest heavily in emerging markets to make more money unlike the HAVE NOTS who have very little extra disposable income. But why is it we are not hearing from the HAVE NOTS, about these rising costs, or many of the problems being faced like loss of homes and bankruptcy? I don’t think the news is portraying the middle class realistically in this country. The news about rising gas prices even went on to say there has been a rise in the purchase of gas guzzling cars. Is this true or a skewed look at polls that don’t include a good cross section of the middle class? It appears some of the problem with our day-to-day reality lies within the news and entertainment industry.

Has anyone else noticed that our TV news sources are attempting to entertain us as well? That news and entertainment are starting to look an awfully lot alike? This is not a good thing. It is causing us to view real news and absorb real issues no differently than slogans and buzz words from the entertainment industry. Global warming to many is nothing but a slogan that does not need to be taken seriously. In our minds, no matter how realistic a movie portrays something, we’re able to think, it’s only a movie. Is this starting to spill over into the REAL world? If so, we are on a slippery slope. Studies have been done on chickens, of all things, that when forced to view too much movement, too much sound, no different than watching for example Dancing With the Stars, that they become traumatized somehow and become inactive. Is this what is happening to human beings? Have we finally bombarded our senses to death not to be concerned over gas prices heading to $4.00 per gallon?

Lately, I’ve met quite a few people who have limited the amount of TV and entertainment they are allowing their children to watch. This may be a good thing because now is not the time to become desensitized to facts and reality. There are very real dangers out there from global warming that many are experiencing already. Africans, especially in the low lying areas of Bangladesh are being driven out of their land by rising sea levels due to glacier melts in the Himalayas and intense rain. Half of Bhola Island, on the southern coast of Bangladesh, 20 times the size of Chicago, has been eroded away while many of the interior regions suffer horrible drought. Low lying areas around the great Asian rivers like the Ganges and Meghna are finding saltwater in their soil and drinking water.

I’ve posted occurrences in Africa and other places around the world that are face to face with global warming’s reality already and more than a few times, yet people still argue global warming is a myth. This falls into another category of psychology. It’s called credible threat for which someone won a Nobel prize. The theory is that human beings are not prone to act on anything despite warning after warning unless faced with a believable threat to their well-being. We’re lucky in this country so far so we are not kicking in to action for anyone else. Credible threat hasn’t pushed the envelope on us to any degree yet.

Think about credible threat. People build on water’s edge until wiped out by a hurricane despite warnings it will happen. People keep smoking and ignore warnings for their health until they’re on the operating table. People keep drinking, until their liver gives out. People keep eating until they suffer high cholesterol and type II diabetes. Paris Hilton is going to jail because she didn’t believe their was any credible threat that she would have to. Credible threat seems to be a decidedly American phenomena that encompass gambling for everything, way too much gambling because now is affects lives. We gamble our lives and everyone else’s anymore and think nothing of it because we’ve yet to face credible threat.

What’s it going to take, a giant volcano eruption, earthquake, flood, or hurricane that devastates most of our country before we act? Right now we gamble other’s lives by neglecting any responsibility for our contribution to the world’s global warming effects. If the apathy in this country keeps up it won’t be long the downside of gambling like this will effect all of us. It makes us look stupid, careless, and ineffective as we are easily lead by the ring in our nose to the point we can’t tell the difference between reality and entertainment and the consequences of being apathetic at a time we should be screaming for change.

So there is a beef and seafood recall in Michigan and everyone is up in arms about imported food from China. Their catfish is full of antibiotics. This is laughable because ours is full of PCB’s from its food source. That was on the news years ago. I know. I love farm raised catfish and remember well my options: farm raised equal PCB’s, ocean caught equals mercury. Now I have a third choice. With China’s catfish I get antibiotics. I guess our concern is what quantity of harmful substance is in our food. Is this not a pitiful situation? It never occurs to anyone that these things shouldn’t be there at all? I’m waiting for a national expose on our industrialized farms. I feel like a hypocrite so many times when I watch the media get in a dither over substandard imports while ignoring our own shortcomings. We’re throwing stones a lot lately.

As far as China’s use of antibiotics, our industrial farm raised meat is full of it along with hormones. You don’t honestly think a baby cow or pig ripped from their mother as soon as possible and confined for the rest of their life in a bin where they can’t turn around or scratch themselves, while standing above fumes from the cesspools below where all the droppings, afterbirth, babies that have fallen through the slats, and pesticides that have doused the animals are drawn upward by large exhaust fans, isn’t sick? Heck, they are traumatized and many are barely alive before they become our food. They have to be shot up with antibiotics in this environment. And we think Korean’s are barbaric for traumatizing dogs as meat before eating them. We do it all the time.

Our poor food animals chew on the metal of their bins out of frustration. This is a hell we allow animals to live in; the same lovely farmyard animals we like to introduce our kids to on petting farms. If those kids only knew the hell sweet little “Charlotte the Pig” endured before being slaughtered … This is not right. It’s very hypocritical especially when on the other end of the media it’s been reported that pigs are up on the intelligence scale with dolphins and elephants. They are beyond the intelligence of the Korean dog evidently but are next weeks sickly pork chops anyway. But then again we shouldn’t expect much, we don’t treat each other well either, another whole spectrum of hypocrisy.

If you think, I’ll just eat chicken and turkey; think again. Poultry doesn’t fare any better. Many birds are crammed into one little cage, where they can’t stand or spread their wings, and peck each other horribly out of sheer frustration. The cages above pollute the cages below. The visions we have of farms where animals are in a yard, a pen, or pasture to roam have all but disappeared. The petting farm is a facade of what America’s farms used to be. It will take a monumental movement by people to stop the way our food is raised or should I say tortured to death. Industrialized farming is so wide spread the idea of reversing it is daunting. We’ve used up quite a lot of farmland at a rapid rate with urban sprawl and congress of late has decided bio fuel should be the front-runner for alternatives to gasoline. So available land will go to corn and we will deal with imports.

Pay attention to the new Farm Bill. Call our congress people often. The movement for change must start somewhere. Congress is presently involved with this bill so it will be a timely e-mail or phone call if you do so now. Act out, for a change or nothing will improve. The farming conditions we have in this country are deplorable, immoral against living things, harmful to our environment and us, and shameful for this nation. 

We had problems with tainted produce last year. Industrialized farms are finally being shown in their true light as horrific for the animals, the source of major pollution, as well as, the source of hormone and antibiotic infused meat and dairy. So it is so vitally important to pay attention to the U.S. Farm Bill that is up for debate in Congress right now. It has everything to do with our farms. The same ole, same ole bill will pass again if we do not contact our congress people and let them know we want changes in the bill that will be of the greatest advantage to our farmers, ourselves, and our environment.

 
As my American Farmland Trust (www.farmland.org) newsletter stated about the bill, “Decisions being made now will impact agriculture, the environment and the nation’s food supply far into the future.” It went on to say we all have a stake in this bill. It affects our air, water, and health of our farmlands and forest. It impacts our food choices. Change is needed in the farm bill. The way it subsidizes farmers actually pushes them to overuse fertilizer, which leeches into the Gulf of Mexico and robs water to the bottom of all oxygen. It is a dead zone. Like gulf shrimp? Better talk to your congressman. There is also runoff from over fertilized farmland that pollutes our freshwater with phosphorus and sediment. Newly subsidized ethanol production will cause a glitch of corn by-products that will end up as high fructose corn syrup in every packaged thing we eat. Tired of giving kids Ritalin? Stop the sugar additives! We should be in control of our food.

 
To understand what is needed, it is important to know how are tax dollars are allocated. Instead of subsidies there should be rewards for environmental stewardship on land. There should be finances available and programs to help farmers manage the risk factors they cannot foresee, like increasingly bad weather patterns. There should be full funding to conserve and protect what is left of our farmland, and support for our local farm markets for all types of foods.  Ciolino’s in Monroe is an example of a great farm market with a large variety. Supporting the farm markets leads to new market opportunities for innovation. Finally, we need to invest in renewable energy development on farms and ranches. I can see where funding for this can also subsidize any losses to farmers. If part of their crops are ruined, they will still have income from devoting part of their acreage to wind farming for example.

 
American Farmland Trust’s recommended policies are highlighted in the brochure Farm and Food Policy for All –Farmers, Citizens, and Communities. Go to AFT’s website above or click on the link to the right and visit their farm policy campaign page to download a free PDF version of this brochure. If you are concerned at all about our food supply, our dwindling farmland, imports of foreign produce instead of our own, our clean air, water, and earth, a return to natural farming which means protecting our grazing land from urban sprawl then read about the changes needed to the 2007 FARM BILL. And contact our congress people. They do pay attention. I always get replies from them and find out where they are on the issue. Congress votes on this bill this fall. Let’s not let another FARM BILL go through without our input. Let’s hope we don’t have another summer of tainted food.

 
A good example of what can be done when everyone stays on the ball and makes an effort to conserve farmland happened recently here in Michigan. AFT’s Michigan State Director Scott Everett worked with Liberty Renewable Fuels for an ethanol plant to use 32 acres of farmland that was part of a preservation program, but in exchange for this 32 acre parcel, it was agreed that 75 acres of nearby farmland would become permanently protected and off limits to ethanol production. Liberty recognized that production of corn for ethanol must be countered with preservation of other farmland as a balance. It’s an idea of the exchange that can take place if everyone focuses on the environment from all aspects when doing business.

 
Balance is the key word here. We’ve been out of balance for far too long in this country. The weight of profits from big industry is weighing down our basic rights to pure air, food, and water. The small farms of our supposed “amber waves of grain … and fruited plain” and rancher’s grazing acreage have been in a stranglehold with industrialization far too long. It’s to the point it’s disappearing. We as individuals are not innocent in this. Our urban sprawl evidently was unnecessary. Look at all the empty houses for sale, all the unfilled subdivisions. The use of that land was unnecessary. Every little acre takes a toll. We need to pay attention. The more we learn the more we see how very interconnected we are to everything in our world.

Debates about global warming continue on Capitol Hill, but this weekend, Michael McConnell, director of national intelligence gave a thumbs up for the spy business to do a comprehensive study about the effect of global warming relative to our security. There have been ongoing partisan arguments over the intelligence sector becoming involved with global warming. Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee is in opposition. He thinks other agencies already cover this. Our intelligence is stretched thin with the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, but McConnell thinks it’s fitting that the intelligence sector assess problems of security that could arise if too many catastrophic events take place as a result of global warming. Most of our intelligence agencies were to include global warming effects relative to security through 2025 in a report for next year anyway.

Just a month ago, several retired admirals and generals agreed that climate change posed a serious threat to national security. Some nay sayers about global warming thought that was quite a stretch. But think about it.
There are fires burning out of control in the west, in Florida, and now Minnesota, land of the lakes? It never occurred to me that Michigan might burn also. We’re surrounded by huge masses of water. Yet Minnesota, which is saturated throughout with small lakes is burning. Florida alone lost 250,000 acres. Fires don’t just burn trees; they pollute the air horribly and leave no trees to eat up the excess CO2. They also burn telephone poles, and power sources. Communication is cut. Remember high school psychology? People seek food and shelter on first before they do all else. When homes and all their contents are lost, food and shelter is the first thing sought. No one is thinking about terrorism.

In the 2004 presidential elections terrorism was all anyone was thinking about. When a political poller called me they had a list of about 10 things that might be important to voters. They spoke with my husband and me. On the list of course was terrorism, the war in Iraq, the economy, healthcare, etc. About 7th on the list was the environment. Of course my husband chose the economy for his concern, but when I said environment, the Democrat on the other end repeated “Environment???” in wonderment. I guess it didn’t concern very many people then. I explained that Mother Nature could kill us all in a short period. One million terrorists could surround us but if that ground opens up or that volcano blows, see ya bye. The young voice was silent for a while. Not long thereafter, we got Katrina. What an example.

What this says to me is that global warming is real despite Sen. Inholfe’s waving a list of scientists that don’t believe so. And debates that heated up on Capitol Hill not long ago are giving way to the realization about climate change agency by agency. Admirals, generals, more scientists than not, and now our national intelligence thinks it’s a serious threat. While we have people like Inholfe in adamant opposition of global warming, our House passed a bill this past Friday that is believed to be around $48 billion dollars that concerns global warming. It’s an authorization for national intelligence to estimate the risk factors for national security associated with catastrophic events, like famine and rising sea levels, brought on by global warming.

Remember I keep saying, “move over” relative to other nations being devastated. People become desperate when it’s about survival and will seek any country that will give them refuge. That’s a concern for our national intelligence. They also realize when events like this hit third world countries like those found in Africa, their governments could literally topple. All of sudden we’re concerned about these countries, in connection to global warming catastrophes of all things, where we should have been concerned all along. Many African countries are budding democracies. This is where we should have been instead of Iraq, helping democracy grow throughout Africa. Arab militia have been raping and pillaging there all along. So we have a pretty good idea who will step in as quasi governments if these countries suffer any more natural disasters.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/12/washington/12intel.html?_r=1&ref=environment&oref=slogin.

An energy bill passed in the Senate yesterday that everyone is making much of but it’s not going to have any effect on the prices at the pump, for our heating bills, high electricity costs, etc. It’s long term effects won’t be seen for 5,10, or 15 years. So don’t jump for joy. The U.S. is still dismally behind. While it calls for more use of ethanol in refineries which will help some reduction is CO2 emissions, it also calls for more U.S. oil and gas exploration. I’m sorry but this is not what the American public was looking for.

The only thing better about the Senate bill as compared to the House bill, passed earlier this year, is that it makes no provisions for oil exploration in Alaska like the House bill, and it does want expand more quickly the use of renewable energy sources, like wind and solar power. It also does not offer any liability protection to companies that use a fuel additive called MTBE like the House bill. It is a more expensive bill than the House bill, however.

“Methyl tertiary butly ether (MTBE) was added to gasoline as an oxygenate to reduce air emissions in the state of California as well as other regions. California is experiencing widespread contamination of groundwater and surface waters as well as formaldehyde air emissions, posing a carcinogenic threat to humans. A cost-benefit analysis was needed to evaluate the gasoline blend with MTBE versus alternatives. The analysis concluded that there was no significant reductions in air emissions due to MTBE-blended fuel as compared to non-oxygenated alternatives, but that MTBE presented significant public health risks and costs associated with water contamination. The analysis, presented at two public hearings as well as in various written forms, has led to a ban of the MTBE additive.” http://ucanr.org/delivers/impactview.cfm?impactnum=232.

After reading about MTBE, what is the House thinking? They want to give liability protection to companies that use MTBE, which pollutes even more than the usual gas emissions? We’re trying to eliminate pollution. And no one wants drilling in Alaska; they’ve got enough going on with melting ice caps. As far as both bills, we want to get away from fossil fuels altogether. It’s already been established that ethanol is not a way to go. We have less and less farmland in this country all the time to grow the corn, and corn prices are just going to go up like gas. So it’s a dumb idea to begin with and the Senate bill requires a larger ethanol market than the House bill.

Another thing I find curious is that the U.S. wants to be able to expand the import of natural gas from overseas, because natural gas prices are high or even higher than the gasoline prices that we’re finding at the pump. Why? It’s been said over and over that we have plenty of natural gas. This administration has literally punched holes all over our NW states in search of more natural gas already, but here we go again looking to import fuel from elsewhere and get ourselves dependent on someone else again for our heat—dumb!

Read for yourself http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/congress/jan-june05/energy_6-28.html. It’s not a very promising future for our country’s alternative energy capabilities. It’s nowhere near anything like the Kyoto treaty most of Europe signed. We’re still fooling around with a big bunch of nothing as far as capping our emissions and getting away from fossil fuels. It’s as if no one is noticing 75 tornadoes across 6 states. The east coast this morning is watching for a hurricane as that season begins. The same states that just experienced the tornadoes are flooding horribly with at least 5 levees breaking from the Missouri river. And LA residents are being evacuated due to fires.

The weather gets worse and our government doesn’t seem to get global warming. Start writing our congressmen. Let them know what you want and often because I think they are totally out of touch with the American public. So many of us are doing what we can, simply changing light bulbs, recycling paper, waiting for American hybrid cars, looking into alternatives, while our government looks for more oil and gas. Sometimes I think it’s too late for this country. The wealthy have taken over already. They just aren’t wearing their kingly crowns yet,