Some of them were
angry
At the way the earth
was abused
By the men who learned
how to forge her beauty into power
And they struggled to
protect her from them
Only to be confused
By the magnitude of
her fury in the final hour.
– Jackson Browne, “Before the Deluge”
– Jackson Browne, “Before the Deluge”
* * *
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a scientific
body under the auspices of the United Nations, set up in 1988 at the request of
more than 120 member governments to provide an objective, scientific view of world
climate change and its political and economic impacts.
It is not a basement full of crazy leftist global warming whackadoos
trying to scare us all into building windmills, as some would have you believe.
You can google it for more information, but for now, just know
this:
The IPCC does not carry out its own research but instead relies
on thousands of scientists and other experts who volunteer without pay to write
and review reports about the state of the environment.
Two years ago, the IPCC warned against the dangers of
continued reliance on fossil fuels. It stated that if we burn more
than 30% of our known fossil fuel reserves, we will cross an environmental
“red line” by the year 2040 that will result in more extreme weather events
such as floods, droughts, heat waves, rising sea levels and so on.
If we burn all of our available fossil
fuels, the IPCC said, humans will find large parts of the planet uninhabitable outdoors.
Did you hear that? UNINHABITABLE OUTDOORS.
When I read that it jolted me out of my chair. The year 2040
is not some unreachable date far out in the future. It's only 24 years from
now. My children will be roughly my age now and my two youngest grandchildren
will only be in their 30s.
That’s why it’s unacceptable that Donald Trump is nominating
a pro-fossil fuels anti-regulation climate science denier to head the Environmental
Protection Agency. [Fox…I place you in charge of the henhouse.] By nominating Scott
Pruitt to run the EPA, Trump is doubling down on his determination to overturn President
Obama’s climate change initiatives and preparing to dismantle much of the EPA
itself.
Ken Cook, head of the Environmental Working Group, a
Washington research and advocacy organization, says, “It’s a safe assumption
that Pruitt could be the most hostile EPA administrator toward clean air and
safe drinking water in history.”
Just for the record, the Clean Air Act was passed in 1970
and signed by that well-known left wing progressive Richard M. Nixon. Two years
later, Nixon signed the Clean Water Act. If there ever was a “war on coal,” it
started then, with regulations designed to mitigate the effects of industrial
waste and the consumption of fossil fuels on the environment.
We’ve come a long way since 1972 but we’re nowhere near the
end of the environmental journey. I suggest you use the google to find out what
the environment was like before the passage of those bills, because we could find
ourselves back there very soon if this nomination is allowed to stand.
We should all contact our senators and tell them we oppose the nomination of Scott Pruitt to head the EPA. For that matter, I'd oppose him to be in charge of a lemonade stand on my block. I'd wonder about the quality of the water he had used.
We should all contact our senators and tell them we oppose the nomination of Scott Pruitt to head the EPA. For that matter, I'd oppose him to be in charge of a lemonade stand on my block. I'd wonder about the quality of the water he had used.
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