Environment
The symptoms for Attention Deficit Disorder are the same as for oxygen deprivation and carbon dioxide poisoning. The United Nations recently funded research to see if this is happening because of Global Warming. The initial symptoms are paranoia, lack of affect, drowsiness, and they go all the way to psychosis and death. We are in the paranoia stage right now, and insurance companies are reaping the benefits. The conditions are worse in big cities and poorer areas. Governments don’t care about either. Dirty air is good for business. Very, very good.
The “slash” left after logging a forest – the branches, leaves, roots, etc.. – adds more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere when it decays than the forest takes away. Government regulations to reduce this slash, perhaps motivating industry to find more uses for the slash in paper and wood products, can bring the U.S. close to being in compliance with the Global Warming Treaty. All we need to do is think, “A BTU saved is a BTU earned.”
We need to designate all the oil fields in Alaska a part of the Strategic Oil Reserve. The existing reserves can keep America going for hours, at best. We need weeks or months, at least. The worse the war on terrorism gets, the greater should be our fuel reserves. The Bush Administration lobbied long and hard to open the Alaska Wildlife Refuge to drilling to produce the oil and gas there. They say it’s important to make the U.S. less dependent upon foreign crude. All the known oil reserves in the world will be gone in twenty years. What happens then? What happens when the new Iraqi government realizes they are sitting on 55% of the known reserves of the whole world and they do what Saddam Hussein was doing, with a democratic government? Does that idea make you afraid?
If Washington was really interested in making America more self sufficient they would do what the Nazis did in Germany during World War II. The entire German economy, and it’s war machine, were all run 100% on synthetic fuels made from coal. They also made all the rubber they needed from coal. The U.S. has the largest coal reserves of any nation in the world. The odds of us running out of fuel are infinitesimally small. It’s bizarre that synthetic fuel from coal has never been mentioned in any national energy debate. Too bad the formula is lost right now, but will miraculously surface when all the oil runs out. Then we can strip mine all the coal and destroy what’s left of America; and burn all the coal and destroy what’s left of planet Earth.
What would it take to double the EPA air quality standards – ie make them two times as strict as they are now. Each state could have allowable air pollution quotas. If they want additional credits they can earn them by planting trees, which costs virtually nothing. Ten years from now a monkey should be able to go from coast to coast and never touch the ground, like it was 200 years ago. We’ll need all those trees to protect us when all the ozone is burned off the upper atmosphere.
Every state in the nation has their own Energy czar. These individuals are officially empowered to reduce energy use across the board. The federal government has no such obligation (other than on federal properties) because this is a “states rights” issue. All they need to do is to require every building to renew it’s energy efficient sticker each year just like we have to get our cars inspected each year. There will be an automatic penalty for every fifty occupants who come down with Attention Deficit Disorder because of insufficient fresh air – two weeks in Miami on a Disney cruise.
Auto manufacturers are able to sell SUV’s because they are classified as trucks. Congress should revoke this classification and live by the rules, or implement the ultra high efficiency technology developed by the Clinton Administration (recently discontinued by the Bush Administration). People wouldn’t love their trucks so much if they knew the auto corporations make a minimum of $10,000 clear profit on every truck they sell. (It goes up to $20,000 for the super luxury $35,000 SUV’s) You can see why they spend so much money on advertising. I’d feel pretty foolish if I were driving one of those vehicles right now, so pleased to have gotten a $2,000 discount off the sticker price. Where’s Ralph Nader when you need him ~ running for President; running away from the facts.
The Greens say energy conservation standards should be enforced by allotting a specific amount of fuel to each state. This can be linked to strong incentives to plant trees, preserve aquifers, conserve water and other natural resources. The federal government is empowered with the ability to retaliate because it needs this authority to motivate the states into conscientious use of our natural resources. Everybody expects the government to do their work for them, by more and more regulations that have so many loop holes they are not enforceable in the first place. Every regulation in the book is nothing but Swiss cheese. We make the cheese, then corporations bank all their ugly profits in Switzerland. Talk about drug money! Shame on the Swiss.
The military is the single biggest user of energy in the world. Yet they are also the most wasteful. Conserving energy at home immediately allocates more discretionary funds for operations overseas in the Asia theatre. Why is the military so wasteful of energy ~ and of out tax dollars that pay for it? Do they want to win the war against Iraq, or win the war against a clean Earth?
The government should begin training American Indian volunteers for fire fighting units. They can be paid by being allowed to re-settle federal forest and wildlife preserves. Wild fires are a serious threat, and must be dealt with by the experts. Probably be a good idea to turn over the border patrol to the Indians, too. Give them free reign to patrol the border on horseback just like the old days. Likely scare the hell out of any drug smugglers or illegals trying to cross the border. Not just the Mexico border; but the Canadian border too – both in the continental U.S. and Alaska. Canadians are a grave threat to the national security; I saw it in movie. Noooo – Indians, they have life too easy now, what with all those casinos the federal government was so kind to allow them on the Reservations. Whatever happened to “white man speak with forked tongue?” or “Christians worship death.” Where’s the Great Spirit when you need him?
Technology – like the Israeli’s walling off Gaza – isn’t always the best solution, especially if the alternative creates good jobs. Would you rather pay ten trillion dollars over the next generation to create and implement a whole new technology to filter water, or put ten thousand people to work planting trees for a couple million dollars? Too bad, no can do – that kind of legislation is considered pork in Washington. No rational scientist or scientific lobby group would support such a proposal because the haven’t a clue how it would work.
Sanctions should be considered against Brazil and other nations permitting the destruction of the rain forests, including lobbying to have Brazil excluded from the International Space Station project. If they need jobs and solid industry to keep the poor farmers from burning the forests, they can be provided. If they need military personnel to police the rain forests, they can be provided. We have ten million illegal immigrants skilled in all the trades, that we can send right back home to do the job ASAP.
The use of federal land by commercial operations should be revamped so the cost to the loggers or cattlemen is the same as if they were leasing commercial land. A sustained effort should be made to re-plant all available federal lands (including military reservations, federal lands, and interstate right of ways) to their maximum sustainable levels. Incentives should be made to encourage states to do the same with their land, especially that used for the “land grant colleges” in every state, and any other properties over which the federal government has any say. Enlist the support of “Adopt-A-Highway” participants and offer tax credits for companies with extensive land holdings who participate. Of course, this program is already in place ~ but no corporations want the bad publicity for participating in it. Nobody likes French fries that are good for you.
A recent influx of huge 20-ft Australian jelly fish has made the Mississippi River delta off the Gulf Coast into a dead zone. This threatens the fish and shrimp industry of the entire region – thousands of square miles of vital ocean ecologies. These jelly fish thrive on the abandoned drilling and production platforms in the Gulf. The government should send military teams to demolish all these platforms, and bill the owners the cost of doing so. The jellyfish are in luck, because all the oil companies bought options on the shrimp and fish trade, making a fortune when they expired and the market was gone. In the modern world, if you play your cards right, you can make a fortune by losing. It’s called the Martha Steward strategy. There are no incentives anywhere for doing the right thing.
On June 14, 2002 there was an earthquake measuring 4.4 on the Richter Scale at Yucca Mountain. That area is one of the most active volcanic zones in North America – over 600 major tremors have been registered in the last decade alone. It doesn’t seem to be a very safe place; especially for the 10,000 years that it will take the radioactive waste to become safe. Congress passed the law by an overwhelming margin. They also approved – also at the unanimous recommendation of the scientific community – to build the superconducting supercollider in Waxahachie, Texas right in the middle of “Tornado Alley.” Well, in that case the American scientists had no intention of completing the project anyway – a working model was constructed in Europe not long after ours was de-funded.
Actually that’s happened a lot lately – the Chinese putting a man in space with our technology; the Soviets have long since built a carbon copy of the space shuttle. I wonder why they won’t commission it now – unless they are afraid to let NASA fly it.
The United States became prosperous on $1 a barrel oil. Now we’re consuming so much oil that third world nations are trying to become prosperous on $40 a barrel oil. America has 1% of the world’s population and burns 30% of the energy. The disproportion is triple that in Texas. It’s a good thing we have a President from Texas so he can set the example for the whole nation. And for the whole world because his influence far, far outweighs what is his due ~ he’s hypnotized the whole world like Hitler did to the Germans; made more effective because we are Borg (refer to the rollover image).
The people in Japan, Europe, and Canada all pay $5 a gallon for gasoline, and have been doing so for a decade. They are all happy, and prosperous, and productive. The widespread angst Americans are experience every day over higher and higher oil prices is a joke to the rest of the world. We’re like a bunch of immature babies crying over spilt milk, and all our allies have no intention whatsoever of helping us out.
OPEC has imposed strict output limitations, driving up the price of oil in America. Saudi Arabia is the only OPEC member that has broken the quotas to produce more oil, but they are sending it all to Japan and Europe. Washington is upset so much they are preparing legislation to open up the Alaska Wildlife Refuge to drilling. They don’t realize it will take ten years before full production is achieved, and that the whole of Alaska’s oil reserves won’t suffice to quell even a fraction in the growth of U.S. demand for oil between now and then.
France gets almost all its energy from nuclear power plants, Japan well over half its energy. Every other industrialized nation is building nuclear power plants like crazy – even Iran. The U.S. hasn’t licensed a nuclear power plant in almost twenty years. We don’t even have the know how to build nuclear power plants any more, even if the public wanted to. We’d have to license foreign engineering firms to do it for us – the ultimate in outsourcing of jobs.
All those fancy Japanese and German and made-in-Japan Ford and Chrysler and Dodge trucks and SUV’s are a Trojan Horse for the Japanese and Europeans who make them. Even for modestly equipped vehicles, they make a clear profit of $10,000 on every truck or SUV sold. They love Americans because we love big ugly vehicles, and because we just love to give them all our money and all our jobs and all our self respect.
The environment is a nuisance to most people – icy snow roads making their drive to work (in increasingly expensive vehicles) difficult; drought making it necessary to water the lawn regularly (and pay extra for the water used); skin cancer from the sun’s UV rays; and so on. People do not regret the degeneration of nature, they will not miss it. Modern entrepreneurs play on this trend to sell people of living in apartments, in the city limits, and safely protected from the unpredictability of nature.
Accepting that the average Joe has a technology threshold, promoting energy conservation has two strikes against it ~ most people don’t realize how complicated the buildings they live in really are, and they would rather have enhanced technological gadgets that are useful to them personally. Thus, learning even a little about how electronic controls maintain their living and working environments puts them right away over the threshold, frustrating attempts to keep up with the Jones with a fancy barbecue or new MP3 player or stock tracking software. Asking them to support even more technology in their homes or offices – on top of all the other computers, fax machines, security scans already there – well, it’s just too much. The third strike is that nobody in “authority” is willing to take this responsibility for them – i.e. facility managers, building owners, the government, the utilities, or engineering organizations.
The sad part is that the most effective energy conservative “technologies” are also somewhat primitive. Different colored roof shingles, an on off control for an attic fan, shades for windows, trees in the yard ~ they’d rather have satellite TV, broadband cable internet access, electronic washing machines, and electronic recline easy chairs. Not to mention regular security upgrades from Microsoft for hackers trying to tap into their home computer, warnings on TV that their credit cards are easy target for thieves, and that even traveling in an airline is risky. All of these trends are promoted by powerful advertising campaigns, respectable companies, and government regulation. Energy conservation has none of these ~ most engineering professionals in construction won’t even acknowledge that energy conservation even exists as a science, because we’re like the IRS to them.