Our World and Everything in It

I was looking on the Internet for websites to find out how our political candidates stand on the environment. Fortunately, I received my League of Conservation Voters newsletter in the mail today. The LCV has a new Presidential Candidate Profiles Website. It has the most comprehensive analysis of the candidate’s positions on global warming, energy, and how they’ve voted in the past. It also has Operation: Spotlight. Real interesting. The objective of the LCV is to target 14 states with a total of 159 electoral votes to elect environmentally friendly legislators in those states.

Unfortunately, Michigan is on the list of the 14 states that need a change in order to be environmentally up-to-par. I say unfortunately because we are surrounded by the world’s 2nd largest freshwater supply, and we can clearly see the fight for freshwater is in America’s future after this summer’s droughts. While our current legislators work to get a multi-state compact signed to keep our water here where it belongs, we have a Republican Senate that is not too terribly friendly to the environment. So we fight to keep freshwater here, and then do nothing to stop the industry pollution that threatens it? No sense to it at all. I know we have the Great Lakes Legacy cleanup thing going. You know where they dumped all the dredged up toxic sludge from the first project? Right near my house near Pt. Mouille game reserve, various protected wetlands, and another DNR game reserve all on the banks of Lake Erie again. It’s all just getting moved around. 

As far as our federal congress, a small group of Republican Senators has already blocked the House’s new energy bill. The LCV sites Senator Sununu for standing “with a minority in the Senate that sided with big oil and big coal to block a measure that is good for jobs, good for the economy, good for national security, good for consumers and good for the planet.” The power behind the lobby of big polluters is a force to be reckoned with. The LCV website is very informative as to who and who isn’t being bought by big energy, oil, lumber, coal, etc. According to the LCV, among the top candidates who are up for re-election or looking to move to the senate and receiving massive contributions by polluters to stop any progress forward to protect our earth, our health, and the lives of everything on the planet:

• Heather Wilson (NM)            835,512
• James Inhofe     (OK)             636,965
• Pete Domenici   (NM)            567,928
• Steve Pearce     (NM)             547,415
• Arlen Specter    (PA)              546,303

What’s up with New Mexico? I know it has plenty of open land. It’s a shame its legislators are being backed by dirty money, by that the LCV means polluter’s money, because New Mexico has a lot of open space. It could be an ideal place for solar or possibly geothermal energy. And it is one of 5 states fed by one river threatened by global warming.  Three people on that list will vote against the environment. Where’s the sense? If New Mexico runs out of water, watch them eyeball Michigan. It’s irresponsible. Add up that column above and it totals $3,134,123.00 to keep polluting. And it’s very early yet. Imagine the contribution total by November, 2008. It’s a sad statement considering the same money could be invested in alternative energy sources creating a win win situation no matter how the future progesses. 

 Check out more of “Operation: Spotlight, exposing the influence of dirty money in Congress” on the LCV website. This is valuable info. Politicians have scorecards for their voting history for specific environmental bills year by year. If you’re concerned about the environment, it is essential to know the candidates.  This is a must see checklist for doing your homework before elections: http://www.lcv.org/      

 http://www.lcv.org/OperationSpotlight/home.html                

 (The photos are from Defenders of Wildlife, defenders.org.)

Todays Detroit Free Press had a huge article about global warming wreaking havoc on thousands of animals. It said 3000 flying foxes dropped dead falling out of trees in Australia, butterflies that lived in high altitudes of our continent have vanished, and many more species will disappear in our lifetimes due to global warming. Knowing I’m part of the human population that has created this makes me ashamed. Yet we have state’s governors working themselves into a frenzy to obliterate every last wolf if they have their way.

There has been a campaign for quite some time to stop the aerial killing of wolves. It started and continues in Alaska. Many Alaskans want it stopped, and people all over the country have petitioned Alaska to stop it. Alaska has a new governor and it’s become even worse for wolves there. The issue has finally made it to Alaska’s ballot to stop aerial hunting once and for all.

Defenders of Wildlife disclosed that Alaskan officials earmarked $400,000 in public, or taxpayers dollars, to launch a campaign of lies trying to defend its aerial hunting policy. It’s the wilderness for God’s sake. Where are these animals supposed to live? They serve a purpose, a very important purpose.

The Discovery Channel aired a special from Yellowstone Park. A ranger took the TV cameras to watch wolves. The park is thriving due to their return. The ranger showed rows of different types of brush and trees that were being eaten down by animals the wolves feed on. He pointed out how the wolves helped balance the park in many ways. They are a good thing and welcome there.

As far as livestock, there was a special on the National Geographic channel not long ago that chronicled researcher, Shaun Ellis, who has literally given his life to the study of wolves. He has proven that wolves are family oriented, stick together, and have their own territory. Wolves that might attack rancher’s cattle were deterred by simply broadcasting the howl of another family of wolves. The new invading wolves stayed away for good not wanting to disrupt the territory claimed by the other wolves. I think human beings could benefit greatly from studying wolves. They “RESPECT” one another, yet we shoot them from planes and helicopters.

There is another serious viewpoint to the politics of these wolf hunts. This inhumane hunting practice undermines the efforts of others. Our own Senator Carl Levin created a bill to stop the clubbing of baby seals in Arctic Canada. Why would Canada listen to us about seals when like barbarians, we hunt wolves this way? It isn’t about the hunters or hunting. It’s about the politics of being a horrible example to the rest of the world, and where our credibility takes another bite. America does this all the time. We point out wrongdoing elsewhere and have garbage in our own back yard to clean up, including wars, and threats of wars.  Who will listen to a people who allow these things to happen? All we’ve done to exact change in this country in the past 7 years is to vote. When we do see demonstrations against politicians anymore, we are looking at other countries, not America.

This wolf witch hunt hit me and hopefully many others at a time when I am just fed up with killing. I’m already disheartened that so many animals we grew up with, that have been around for our lifetimes may just disappear. As humans we have done enough damage to the earth and everything in it. Yet we pursue more killing and once again it’s coming again from our leadership.  It’s a leadership that is so out of touch with citizens that it pays no attention to petitions and outcries from the public. Isn’t this thirst for blood getting a little stale? In retrospect, the wolf commercials from the last election certainly depicted the wrong villains.

And there are worse than Sarah Palin, Gov. of Alaska, Idaho’s Gov. Butch Otter has worked his gun toting constituency into a frenzy against wolves. That state launched a ballot initiative to remove ALL wolves. What type of intelligence is this? And it comes from a governor of a state? It’s a lynch mob who uses technology to try to wipe out an entire species of animal. They obviously haven’t bothered to learn about or care enough to explore all venues for control, if control is even needed. It looks like sport hunting to me. Wyoming wants to follow this mob. The Bush/Cheney administration is pushing to hunt them in our, “OUR” national parks too.

It’s easy to see our states are no longer united. When federal legislation that was put in place by us and preceding presidents for protection of these animals is repealed by this determined, uncaring machine of a government, then the states will each have their way. This is just an example of how divided our states are already and will become even more so in the future if we keep dismantling the federal government like extreme right wing ideologists would like and have pretty much done.

I don’t like the face of this so-called moral, but militant, hostile America. I like the old vision of open plains, majestic mountains, clean water and air, animals in their natural habitat and citizens that actually act like moral beings. The message that we, “will know them by their deeds” has been neglected for far too long. The proposed deeds of this handful of governors without conscience and the Bush administration says much about their inability to have empathy, or concern for living in harmony with nature, a basic sin for this country from the beginning.

Representative George Miller of California has introduced the PROTECT AMERICA’S WILDLIFE bill, (PAW) Act HR 3663. Write, e-mail, or call your reps and tell them you want this bill supported. It will ban the use of airplanes and helicopters to kill wolves nationwide.

http://www.rallycongress.com/letter2congress/698/?gclid=CNmHspeIlJACFQdfgQodXEeO5w.

http://www.yellowstone-natl-park.com/wolf.htm

www.defenders.org/

http://www.blogsmonroe.com/world/?p=52

So Al Gore went to the Whitehouse today. Interesting isn’t it? I would love to have been there to observe. President Bush honored the Nobel Prize winners and Al was among them. Considering the Bush administration altered reports of global warming (read my blogs below), and there was that voting outcome back in 2000…things could have been awkward.

Apparently, Al had nothing to say to the press as he left. There is very little coverage about the meeting. I just know it was probably uncomfortable since the president is still punishing NASA who complained about censorship. He cut their funding by a hefty percentage, yet is giving plenty of money to the space station project. Lack of those funds has shelved a state of the art satellite that would allow scientists to accurately measure the amount of direct sunlight that hits the earth at one time. It’s in a warehouse somewhere. The satellite would also allow meteorologists to more accurately predict bad weather a lot sooner. Really sound judgment here–space station and/or trip to Mars trumps an accurate picture of what’s happening on earth regarding solar heat via the new satellite.

A good article that speculates about the meeting today is:
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/10/16/101926/97.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5h8nwMDNrp_DbQkdrAynlv0NN_RYg

My blogs about altered reports of global warming:

http://www.blogsmonroe.com/world/?p=94.

http://www.blogsmonroe.com/world/?m=200611

It’s really funny to me that scientists from around the world declared global warming to be real and that we are the cause of a lot of it, and people–senators, judges in England, all types, argued and some are still arguing the point, but once again capitalism and the old pocketbook is the catalyst for change in America.

Rising oil prices have industry scrambling to invest in energy saving technology. Wind is taking off so fast, GE, one of the biggest producers of wind turbines, are strapped to keep up with demands. Four billion gallons of ethanol were produced last year. We have 100 ethanol plants already, although I don’t like this trend. Wind good, corn NOT.

The MSNBC article I read stated that it’s no wonder. Industry consumes 1/3 of all energy. Without cutbacks, their profits get squeezed. Since there are some government incentives to invest in alternative energy sources, high oil prices are just the catalyst needed to drive industry into conservation ur umm going green, never mind that without massive change we suffer bad, bad consequences. Fires, floods, tornadoes, no matter, the real motive is profit.

I say, whatever works! I’ve read other articles that predicted the retail and industrial market is what will drive environmentalism forward. Those articles speculated that governmental policy in this administration would not likely be the catalyst, duh. The article also said what I blogged about before, there is more and more capital available for going green.

It’s a very encouraging article about how companies are cutting costs, making changes that are driving the market forward. This is good folks. The more interested industry is, the better the innovation gets, and the lower the cost to us.

Read: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12040418/.

Now we’re finally getting solid documentation that man is indeed having a great impact on the environment. The NOAA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, found that humans caused nearly ½ of the bad weather we experienced last year. This is not a U.N. conspiracy like some like to call environmentalism. This is that voice on the weather band on your car audio: “This is NOAA weather and hazard” at least that’s what it sounds like. This is our national weather service that did the study spanning 1998 to 2006.

The NOAA ran 42 different tests using data of weather conditions relative to human activity and El Nino’s. The article I read on MSN went into detail how they did it, why it took awhile, and the not so surprising results. At least a growing majority of us are seeing and believing. It’s a pretty good weather page from MSN.

Look at some of the weather reports on there for just this past week:

A cyclone hit the coast of Bangladesh with winds up to 155 mph.  At least 425 people were killed, 1000 fishermen, and hundreds more are unaccounted for. The summer floods there just killed 1000 people.

Vietnam flooded last weekend. 100,000 people have no food. They lost it all, 190,000 houses are submerged. The flooding has been going on for a month with over 250 dead.

A major 7.7 earthquake in Chile “crushed cars, damaged thousands of houses, blocked roads and terrified people for hundreds of miles around Wednesday. Chilean authorities reported at least two deaths and more than 150 injuries.

The quake, which struck at 12:40 p.m., shook the Chilean capital 780 miles to the south of the epicenter, and was felt as far away as the other side of the continent — in Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1,400 miles to the east.”

The next day the northern part of Chile was hit with huge aftershocks of 6.2 and 6.8 injuring about 100 people and killing 2.

Atlanta’s out of water.

This is a wake up call. The longer we wait for policy, the more it’s not going to be pretty. On the NOAA weather site they have listed the major catastrophic weather events going back to 1990. I did the same about 2 years ago, and wouldn’t have now that I see how nicely they’ve compiled it!  I went back to 1990 and printed a list of all catastrophic events per page for each year to 2001. 1990 barely filled a quarter of a page. 2001 was 2 ½ pages printed no double spacing. I don’t think I used NOAA, but another International Weather Service that had the events by year but not in a neat little list.

Check out the NOAA website yourself and scan the climate events. There are many recently and as you scan down to 1990 it dwindles to about 2 or 3 events. That’s a scannable eye opener. Every line scanned represents a catastrophe somewhere in the world where someone died.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20481186/wid/18298287/.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/hazards/index.php.
 

I have to say I did not catch all of last night’s CNN “Planet in Peril.” I was into animal rights before the entire environment needed help too. So I was too squeamish to watch the abuse of beautiful creatures, especially those close to extinction. I’ve seen enough. I belong to all types of animal rights groups and read their mail. I don’t sleep well when I see something too extreme, and I mean for a long, long time. Even years later I can picture something horrid I forgot about. Memory is a funny thing. It doesn’t go away easily.

This should be pretty good. I watched the one on the Science Channel. It answered quite a few of the questions I’ve heard floating around and showcased some of America’s most energy efficient cities like New York. I will be blogging about that soon.

 CNN appears to be more accessible to the general public than the Science Channel but I still think that every major network should keep the environment in our faces until we realize duh, it sustains us, we should take better care of it than stripping it bare of everything and leaving a trail of pollution.

As a quarter million people flee the fires of the Santa Ana winds in southern California, Atlanta’s water supply dwindles and without relief will be gone by January, and floods and tornadoes have steadily pummeled the middle of our country. It’s a little obvious something’s up. Is it global warming and how worse can it get? A lot.

In light of all that’s happening, I searched global warming on the internet and there was a whole new cache of naysayers. Something set them off and I’m thinking it was Al Gore getting the Nobel Prize. I was a little surprised. I checked again today and the opposition has leveled off. Looks to me like the fossil fuel industry turned up the heat against going green. For a few days their bloggers put out a surge of propaganda like: Global warming is a U.N. conspiracy. Watching the news about California tonight, I don’t think so, and when are we going to start thinking about the other guys, especially other Americans?

Global warming affects the entire population of the world and everything in it. Isn’t it wiser to err on the side of caution if things aren’t certain? Besides what’s wrong with cleaning up after ourselves, the outcome of which would be:

The oil money that feeds terrorism will literally dry up.

We get away from fossil fuels for good. No more of the landscape will be destroyed with incessant stripping and drilling.

We could get agriculture involved. Instead of subsidizing them for loss, part of their land will be set aside for wind and solar farms bringing in alternative income.

A new economy gives everyone a chance at new jobs. New investments can be made in the stock market. New people will be able to offer new innovation to sustain us for years to come, creating more jobs.

Disease will dwindle. Clean up the air, earth, and water and possibly ease someone’s suffering.

Low utility bills or none at all. Trying to cut back on energy use, my last combined gas and electric bill fell even more. I paid $103.00 last month for my gas and electric. I’m home all day. The PC is going, TV is on, and an air cleaner. I haven’t taken everything off of standby yet…another TV, Roomba, printer, stereo, DVD player, etc. But by changing my light bulbs, unplugging the old fridge in the garage, adding two overhead fans in the house, regulating my window coverings, and hanging my laundry out on a line, what a difference!

Finally, if we do heat up all at once, chances are our power grids won’t hold up. So we’ll be miserable. Wouldn’t it be better to use that which is going to fry us to cool us? Solar energy could run our a/c units, keep the fridge going, and many other things like boil water.
 

Today is blog action day. And I don’t want to talk about the environment per say, post the latest news, or try to convince anyone man’s part in global warming is real. Today I would simply like to thank the thousands of volunteers of many, many organizations that give their time, energy, and passion to helping the environment and every creature in it, including humans that won’t get off the couch to save their own lives. To these volunteers and spokespeople we owe you our lives, many of us  just don’t realize it yet.

Volunteers for the environment are tireless in their efforts. I’ve been to meetings where the person holding that meeting drove an hour at night, leaving family at home, to offer a presentation of information about what is happening and what can be done, only to have 8 people show up.  They have to pack it all up and drive an hour to go home to a household already asleep. Yet they are never daunted in their determination to inform possibly one new person. That’s dedication, discipline, and selflessness.

While we sit in our comfortable living rooms there are countless organizations of people like Greenpeace on board ships in the freezing cold to stop whale hunts, or fisherman using nets that trap dolphins, others like Earthjustice, Environmental Defense, and NRDC holding oil drills at bay in some pristine part of our country, or The Sierra Club lobbying in state’s senates against industry pollution, or Waterkeeper Alliance that has joined Sierra Club’s fight against CAFO’s. Their volunteers took 3000 plus photos of CAFO’s and produced DVD’s to expose that industry’s pollution.  There are the many, many meteorologists that have ventured to the N. Pole, Greenland, and Iceland in small boats to get photographs and gain first hand knowledge of crashing ice falls from glaciers not 50 ft. in front of them in order to inform the masses about what they’ve seen, and the brave and undeterred efforts of the scientists who testified before congress that they are fed up with being censored by the Bush administration relative to reports of global warming. They’re brave, bold, and forthright while much of the population flounders in a sea of apathy.

Take for instance what is called “junk mail.” It’s tossed without a thought. But in those envelopes are the voices of those that I’ve just described that are trying to get the truth out, trying to stop the insanity of pollution, trying to stop further fossil fuel endeavors, or simply trying to save the lives of animals that have no one to speak for them. It’s valuable information that took research, time, effort and skill to produce with the hope one more person will open and read the contents in lieu of being tossed without conscience or concern. Ditto for the many TV networks like The Discovery Channel, Science Channel, and Sundance that dedicate themselves to saving the environment by showcasing the marvelous inventors, scientists, and engineers from around the globe that have solutions for our ailing earth already.

To all the wonderful, passionate, faithful people that see the Almighty in their surroundings and fight to save and nurture what we were given as a blessing, I want to say thank you heart and soul. The road you travel is new and like any other time in history, your fellow humans are not quick to follow a new revolution. Go with peace and passion in every step because most assuredly you have one Traveler that will remain by your side always. Nature is Earth’s Metaphor for God and you “get it.” Bless you. Keep the faith, keep up the fight.  
 

Just a reminder to people that say global warming won’t affect them, and for people who think global warming is only a theory and the increasingly troubling weather patterns are just a fluke, one year ago on Friday the 13^th, Buffalo, New York was hit by a so-called fluke. Call it what you want, 3 people died, 400,000 had no power, and 100 miles of interstate highway came to a halt stranding thousands because 2 feet of heavy snow snapped tree limbs, power lines, and telephone lines.

There has never been a fluke like this in Buffalo’s weather history since weather record keeping began 140 years ago. And Buffalo has some pretty messed up weather, so this is quite a statement! We’re having an awful lot of flukes that seem to be appearing closer and closer together. Pay attention as Mother Nature ups the ante. Bad weather may not be hitting your neighborhood right now, but eventually environmental conditions will change everywhere. We’re going to experience the very bad before it gets better and that’s only if we act immediately, which doesn’t seem to be the case.