Carbon Emissions - Dangerous or Not?

The latest crazy person to claim carbon emissions aren't dangerous is Mitt Romney:

"I don’t think carbon is a pollutant in the sense of harming our bodies."

He continued to say "we can agree to disagree..."

Um, no, we can't. Well, I guess he can agree to disagree with himself.

But, to end the debate I propose an easy experiment anyone who doubts the dangers of carbon emissions can do at home: Find the nearest tailpipe and use it like a breathing tube for a few minutes. If after about five minutes you still think carbon emissions aren't harmful I'll let it rest and "agree to disagree".

Tastes like freedom!

Left is Right

Yes, I Photoshopped this. The sign originally said: "Free Tibet".

64% of Americans say Afghan war isn’t worth fighting.

Yet, back in 2001 things were different. Those of us who were against this war were told we hate America. We were only 6% of Americans who thought this war was not worth it.

This is not Photoshopped.
This is what Freedom™ looks like.

This is one among many important issues that we on the so-called liberal fringe have been vindicated on - even if this vindication comes in the form of great tragedy while we endure continued derision and/or invisibility in the media, political discourse and nation at large.

Protests have been spreading around the country as citizens fight back against union busting efforts, privatization of essential industries and the erasure of democracy by their elected leadership. More Americans are realizing that millions of jobs have been lost to developing and third world countries and economic disparity is at the highest it's been in nearly a century and only getting worse with the top 10% of Americans owning 70% of the wealth, 6 banks controlling 64% of our GDP (up from 17% in 15 years), and corporate profits setting new records while actual joblessness remains around 20%. Yet, a small percentage of us who protest WTO gatherings, NAFTA, deregulation of essential industries and financial markets have been called "commies" and other derogatory names. Even the guy who wrote the book "The Supply Side Revolution" and Reagan cabinet member Paul Craig Roberts admits what a failure these "trickle-down" policies have been.

The environment is another issue that us "tree-huggers" have been on the losing side of opinion for a long time. Our current crop of government leadership is doing all it can to defund and eradicate environmental regulations and investment in clean energy. They even mandated the use of Styro-Foarm and plastic in what can only be seen as a childish act of frivolity. In fact, concern about climate change is declining in America. Yet our impact on the environment has never been more obvious. We're causing earthquakes in Arkansas, we're ruining our fresh water supplies and destroying mountains, causing disease and illness from air pollution and so much more.

With more than 60% of bankruptcies due to medical bills in the US, essential industries becoming more and more privatized and profit driven (life and liberty should not be commodities), more subsidizing of the rich while taking from the poor and countless other issues us "radical liberals" yammer on about endlessly starting to affect larger percentages of Americans I wonder when and if we will ever be welcomed back into the public dialogue. Earlier generations of liberals struggled and fought to bring our fellow countrymen the civil rights movement, labor movement, child labor laws, clean air and water, Social Security and Medicaid, labor unions, desegregation, public education and a few other things that helped make our country strong, fair and looked up to. If we start wearing teabags on our head and carrying automatic weapons to protests can we be invited back to the discussion table?

A Prayer From An Atheist

When there are millions out there caught up in chaos, carnage and corruption, why I am unimaginably fortunate to have personal freedom from such persecutions? What did I do to be blessed with this fortunate life? What did the rest of the world do so wrong to be cursed with such suffering?

Is it because I was born American? Born white? Born male? Is it because I was Baptized and ate the body of Christ? Maybe if I still believed then God would give me the answer. But looking out from these rocks at the sun setting in front of me I found it impossible to believe that this majestic beauty was created by the same God that created us in his own image. That God would have built a big casino with air-conditioning and luxury suites.

These are not new thoughts, they are not profound, but after spending four weeks in an island paradise witnessing the total demolition of it's beauty in the erecting of massive resorts for rich foreigners to come and exploit the gracious (and cheap) labor of the locals for our own selfish escapism... these are important thoughts. Ones that seem very rarely to enter the vacuous heads of our over-privileged capitalist minds. Instead I had conversations with guys who were "amazed" at how easy it is to "make a fortune off these people" and how cheap it was to buy up their property. Not a single thought about where these people will go once you buy their property, not a concern about how this beautiful island they are building on will lose it's beauty once it is saturated in all our "luxuries" we cannot seem to live without. Instead of enjoying the inherent beauty of this place and it's people we must bring our posh resorts, our European restaurants, our McDonald's and Starbucks with us so it feels just like home.

We can't enjoy a foreign land without making it ours... Just like we can't enjoy the earth without making it ours.

Hopefully humanity will one day learn to be humane. Hopefully the fortunate few will one day learn it is not necessary to keep taking more fortune from those who have little.

Hopefully our earth will be kinder to us than we have been to it.

Another Climate Crisis

A six-to-one plastic to plankton ratio in our ocean is something that seems surreal but is sadly a reality we have created:

In 2002 [Charles Moore] was startled to discover a six-to-one plastic to plankton ratio in the eastern garbage patch: six pieces of plastic to every piece of zooplankton. This past November he was alarmed even more, finding that 600 miles outside the center of the garbage patch, ocean water samples contained a three-to-one plastic to plankton ratio.

We haven’t yet had a plastic-free sample from anywhere in the Pacific Ocean.

According to Mr. Moore's findings about 80% of the plastic comes from humans on land and of that 90% is household pollution. That means that the majority of this plastic filling our oceans is basically litter.

Baby Laysan albatross of Midway Atoll are literally starving to death. Their carcasses litter the beaches, stomachs bursting with plastic bottle caps, cigarette lighters and other recognizable plastic debris. Jellyfish, which thrive on plankton, ingest tiny bits of plastic along with their food.

Dr. Curtis Ebbesmeyer [founder of Beachcombers Alert] has proposed the thesis that all the food in the ocean contains plastic. That’s the alarming possibility.

Very alarming.