The burning of fossil fuels is warming the planet, melting glaciers and polar ice caps, raising sea levels, causing more destructive hurricanes, floods, and droughts, and increasing ocean acidity. Leading climate experts hold that a third of existing petroleum reserves will add enough carbon dioxide to push the planet past the tipping point of irreversible climate change.
With Climate Change, energy policy and environmental protection shaping up as one of the most important cache of issues facing America's political elites, I've been trying to figure out why DCCC chairman Steve Israel would recruit so many awful candidates with views on the environment identical to Republicans.
Shortly after operations began, we started to experience extreme headaches, runny noses, sore/scratchy throats, muscle aches and a constant feeling of fatigue. Both of our children are experiencing nose bleeds and I’ve had dizziness, vomiting and vertigo to the point that I couldn’t stand and was taken to an emergency room. Our daughter has commented that she feels as though she has cement in her bones.
– Pam Judy 20 July 2011, Carmichaels, Pennsylvania resident
Governments cite “national security” concerns and “official secrets” as their justification for withholding information from the public. Corporations rationalize their secrecy behind concerns about “patent infringement,” shielding their trademarked “proprietary” secrets from competitors. But most of the time, such obfuscation is really derived from the time-honored villains of systemic corruption and what is politely known as CYA in military and bureaucratic slang.
Which brings us to Fukushima.
Something is out of kilter in the ocean.
The problem is found throughout the marine food chain from the base, plankton (showing early signs of reproductive and maturation complications) to the largest fish species in the water, the whale shark (on the endangered species list.)
The ocean is not functioning properly. It’s a festering problem that will not go away. It’s called acidification, and as long as fossil fuels predominate, it will methodically, and assuredly, over time, kill the ocean.
Scientists already have evidence of trouble in the sea water.
Maybe you read yesterday that the water in tens of thousands of West Virginia homes is still polluted. No perp walks for any of the culprits… certainly not in West Virginia. Kiley Kroh reported at Think Progress that 40% of homes in the area of the toxic spill are still testing positive for the chemicals that polluted the Elk River.
Lena Headley lives in in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. She and her husband bought a small farm for their semi-retirement with the mineral rights but not the oil and gas rights. Over the last seven years five gas wells and a transmission pipeline have been put on their land. The effect has been devastating: Pollution of land and air together with destruction of fruit trees and the burning of 10 acres of ground by the gas drillers. Gas wells leak and a spring 200 feet from her house is so rich with gas it can be set on fire.
The derailment of a 101-car CSX freight train on a bridge in a densely-populated part of Philadelphia this past week should be yet another warning to politicians who have become cheerleaders for oil and gas fracking.
The 1970s and 1980s are often disparaged by commentators and historians as years of narcissistic, cocaine-fueled times of political ennui and right wing resurgence. While there is certainly an element of truth to this perception, there are certainly other perspectives that are equally valid. Unfortunately for today, these perspectives have been mostly left out of the narrative. Even in the more complete popular histories of the period, like Bruce Shulman’s The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society and Politics, tend to accept this context.
