Climate Change

I rode home with a wingnut today who, hearing about Tropical Storm Epsilon (that's number 26 for the year), proceeded to tell me all about why climate change is a completely natural phenomenon and there's nothing we six billion humans could do about it. I was touched by his loyalty to the party line, to Haliburton and Big Oil. We'll even benefit, he claimed, as there's more heat and carbon dioxide in the air, the plants will grow better and know what, it'll even clean out those nasty coastal cities as the sea level rises. It's part of the Earth's self-cleaning cycle.

I also read some more comments: The United States has reduced its carbon dioxide emissions by more than any other country in the world, they crow. They're right, we've reduced our emission of carbon dioxide by one percent and, since we're the world's largest producer with twenty-five percent of the world's emissions, we've probably reduced more tons of carbon dioxide emission than any other country. This is the same type of spin that tells us, truthfully, that millions of Iraqis favor our presence in the country. Put another way, eighty percent of Iraqis want us out: Twenty percent of millions is still millions.

Where do the reductions come from? Let's see, we've lost a city. Gas hit three dollars a gallon this summer. We continue to export manufacturing and its accompanying carbon dioxide emissions to countries without our piteously inadequate environmental standards. The Bushies brag about the five billion dollars they invest in clean technologies. That's ten bridges to nowhere, people, or about a week's cost of Iraq.

Numbers lie, but they can also tell the truth.