Global warming VS GOD (619 hits)
Category: Science & EnvironmentalRating: 0.83 on 6 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by King TwEE <Twee_666.at.hotmail.com> (View user info) at 2003-08-30 14:23:51 EDT
These are some snippets (is that a word) from an interview with Bill Moyers which I found interesting in a depressing sort of way.... like it or not belive it or not...
Grist: In the year and a half since the launch of your PBS program "NOW," you have done extensive reporting on the Bush administration's environmental record. At a time when most news outlets have focused on war and recession, you and your team have been among the few journalists who've consistently taken a hard look at these policy rollbacks. What has been motivating you?
Bill Moyers: The facts on the ground. I'm a journalist, reporting the evidence, not an environmentalist pressing an agenda. The Earth is sending us a message and you don't have to be an environmentalist to read it. The Arctic ice is melting. The Arctic winds are balmy. The Arctic Ocean is rising. Scientists say that in the year 2002 -- the second-hottest on record -- they saw the Arctic ice coverage shrink more than at any time since they started measuring it. Every credible scientific study in the world says human activity is creating global warming. In the face of this evidence, the government in Washington has declared war on nature. They have placed religious and political dogma over the facts.
Grist: Can you elaborate on their religious and political dogma?
Moyers: They are practically the same. Their god is the market -- every human problem, every human need, will be solved by the market. Their dogma is the literal reading of the creation story in Genesis where humans are to have "dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the Earth, and over every creeping thing ..." The administration has married that conservative dogma of the religious right to the corporate ethos of profits at any price. And the result is the politics of exploitation with a religious impulse.
Meanwhile, over a billion people have no safe drinking water. We're dumping 500 million tons of hazardous waste into the Earth every year. In the last hundred years alone we've lost over 2 billion hectares of forest, our fisheries are collapsing, our coral reefs are dying because of human activity. These are facts. So what are the administration and Congress doing? They're attacking the cornerstones of environmental law: the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, NEPA [the National Environmental Policy Act]. They are allowing l7,000 power plants to create more pollution. They are opening public lands to exploitation. They're even trying to conceal threats to public health: Just look at the stories this past week about how the White House pressured the EPA not to tell the public about the toxic materials that were released by the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center.
Grist: Doesn't it seem inevitable that this tremendous discrepancy between the Bush administration's actions and words will be exposed?
Moyers: There is always a backlash when any administration, liberal or conservative, Democratic or Republican, goes too far. In this case, all the scientists that I respect and all the environmentalists that I listen to say to me, "What's different this time, Moyers, is that it could happen too late." Let's say by 2008 the consequences of all these policies become clear and the public rises up in protest. We don't have between now and 2008 to reverse the trends; it will be too late then.
Grist: What do you mean by "too late"?
Moyers: Every policy of government that is bad or goes wrong can ultimately be reversed. The environment is the one exception to the rule of politics, which is that to every action there is a reaction. By the time we all wake up, by the time the media starts doing their job and by the time the public sees what is happening, it may be too late to reverse it. That's what science is telling us. That's what the Earth is telling us. That's what burns in my consciousness.
Consider the example of Iraq. Once upon a time it was such a lush, fertile, and verdant land that the authors of Genesis located the Garden of Eden there. Now look at it: stretches upon stretches of desert, of arid lands inhospitable to human beings, empty of trees and clean water and rolling green grasses. That's a message from the Earth about what happens when people don't take care of it. No matter what we do to Saddam Hussein, Iraq remains a wasteland compared to what it was. American policy makers see only the black oil in the ground and not the message that all the years of despoliation have left.
User Reviews
Submitted by jimbobjoe (user info) at 2003-08-31 16:46:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
+2 for being right
As far as this being a Bush bashing post or what not, the bitching about
his policies is trying to ensure he does not get re-elected.
Useless you say, worthwhile I say. More importantly, the basis of the American
political system is bitching. We bithced that the English taxed us, people got mad
and we started a country. Any more evidence needed? Thanks, Didn't think so.
Submitted by eonblu (user info) at 2003-08-31 02:43:36 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
good post
Submitted by Nator (user info) at 2003-08-30 18:18:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Sounsexy00 I'm glad you missed the point. It would probably spontanously combust your brain.
Submitted by Sounsexy00 (user info) at 2003-08-30 16:15:57 EDT (#)
Ranking: -1
Shit. i do't really know how i feel about Bush and his Administration but if i see another Bush bashing post..... get over it already. He's in office and unless you want to redo the past 4 years, then you cant really do anything about what he's done by bitching.
-Hads
Submitted by Jimmy23 (user info) at 2003-08-30 16:07:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
dolphins kick whales ass.
Submitted by Nator (user info) at 2003-08-30 15:56:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
I like whales.