Environmental Musings

I don't believe in global warming. Not yet, anyway. I do feel that most evidence supports it, and I don't think that Al Gore is trying to "pull the wool" over anyone's eyes (though I think his statement that "the debate is over" is both ignorant, foolish, and dangerous), but I think we need about another 10 years to really know.

Still, while the pro-Gore nuts are walking around with their noses in the air and the anti-Gore nuts are fuming about anti-Liberal politics, work needs to be done.

With or without Global Warming, there is no doubt that we are killing our planet. Fuck the thermometer, we only need to look at our rivers and the brown haze over Los Angeles to know that.

Not to be such a harp on Gore, but buying "carbon-neutral" CERTIFICATES to offset the energy your way-too-large house uses is not a good way to set an example. Either you want to live richly or you don't. Shut the fuck up.

Ethanol is a crock, and more and more evidence is coming out to support it. Case in point: Presidential not-so-hopeful John Edwards changed his language supporting ethanol from "Yes, let's do it!" to "It's a good way to transition from oil to whatever we end up with." Those are both paraphrases, mind you, but they're accurate.

By the way... ethanol doesn't lower emissions all that much, lowers your fuel efficiency, and drives the price of corn and its replacement food products up A LOT. The only people truly with anything to gain from long-term ethanol use are farmers... who are whole-heartedly behind the ethanol movement. Go figure.

Iceland is switching to hydrogen-only fuels. Nay-sayers state that Iceland can do such a thing because Iceland has near 100% access to geothermal energy, and can therefore pull the hydrogen required from the ground. Everyone else is making excuses as to why they can't. Let's see... the most common element in the UNIVERSE is (gasp) hydrogen, and now people are saying we can't FIND ANY? Good thing no one is trying to run cars off of cigarettes and alcohol, because then those would suddenly become hard to find, too.

I've said this before, but building a physical fence along the US-Mexico border is the dumbest thing I can think of (well, maybe not, but right now it is). This is for a couple of reasons: 1) we have the technology to build a "virtual" fence, and 2) we're destroying an ecosystem. Oops.

Do I agree with Al Gore that the emerging environmental industry will create at least as many jobs as it will destroy (as in big oil, etc.)? Yes. In that aspect, the environmental industry is truly a capitalist one. And why the fuck are we worried about hurting big oil, anyway? If they were in such trouble, they wouldn't be giving sub-par former CEOs nine-figure severance packages.

Every species that becomes extinct is an embarrassment to the human race. Okay, not every. The ones that died out on their own obviously "deserved" it, but the ones that we contribute to... well, we're just stupid.

Environmental groups that don't want companies to profit from saving the environment are full of fucking morons. Hello! Profit is the ONLY way to sustain a movement. Find me a movement that was sustained with pure "heart and soul" and I'll show you a movement that ended with a whimper.

Not really an environmental point, but nature is full of four inescapable things: eating, sleeping, fucking, and killing. So why do we complain when the latter two show up in film, television, and other media? Nobody seems to give a shit about the former two. Maybe I'll start a movement...

In the early 90s, Mazda actually developed a car that got 80 miles per gallon. 80! But, the naysayers kept it off the road because the vehicle was TOO LIGHT and would have been dangerous. Um... motorcycles are legal, you know? $100 says the Big Three and Big Oil kept that fucker off the road.

Vote Eastwood.