We are Frozen in Hatred

"Injecting race into the debate over critical issues facing American families doesn't create jobs, reform our health care system or reduce the growing deficit. It only divides Americans rather than uniting us to find solutions to challenges facing our nation," President Jimmy Carter said yesterday.  Repair and protect our environment should be added to the list of critical issues that won’t be addressed if Americans can’t remove prejudices from their hearts. Absolutely nothing will be accomplished or what is accomplished will be so anemic it will not help anyone.

This statement by President Carter relates to the blog I posted a couple of days ago concerning comments by Stanford Professor Paul Ehrlich.  Professor Ehrlich declared in no uncertain terms that its our behavior not science that is holding us back from restoring our planet.  We all know what is wrong and have the science to prove it but we just can’t seem to change our behavior from self-destructive and selfish to self sustainable and altruistic.  Our egos and self righteousness destroy our ability to provide the common sense solutions to solve the urgently critical problems that face us. 

The United States is now lead by an African American President.  The election was fair and just.  The votes were counted and no one disputes the election. (Some fringe elements pursue the insane notion that he is not a US citizen but to address that is akin to continue to look for WMDs in Iraq).  We cannot allow the citizens of this country who are controlled by “Hate” deny the rest of us our right to a fair chance for excellent health care, a prosperous economy, good green jobs and a healthy environment.  American cannot regress:  A enormous step away from our shameful past of forcing some people to the back of the bus has been accomplished, we can never let it happen again. 

Do the Right Thing for Those Who Follow

"Basically, absolutely nothing is happening," Stanford University ecologist Paul Ehrlich said. "We don't need more scientific evidence that we're screwing ourselves. We need to get beyond the cultural discussions we're having now."

The problem, Ehrlich said, is clearly not a need for more natural science. Rather, it is the need for a better understanding of "human behaviors and how they can be altered to direct humanity toward a sustainable society before it is too late."

“We’re screwing ourselves”, “absolutely nothing is happening”, “direct humanity toward a sustainable society before it is too late." said the 77 year old distinguished professor at one of the most eminent universities in the world.  He has received dozens of ecological and environmental awards. His bibliography spans 30 years and includes sophisticated analysis using all the ecosciences to examine the current state of the world relative to population and ecology. 

Doesn’t really want to make you jump for joy, does it? 

Right to the point. No more debate is needed, we have all the proof we could ever want. The problem is our behavior. We, certainly including me, act like the dogs in Pavlov’s experiment. 

“The phrase "Pavlov's dog" is often used to describe someone who merely reacts to a situation rather than using critical thinking.”  Our use of “critical thinking” has been beaten out of us.  Anyone and everyone who either wants our money, our vote and/or our soul has been after us since the day we were born.  Relentless advertising; first from newspapers, TV, radio and now the net has been used to manipulate us regarding every decision we make. Unfortunately most of the “ends” of our manipulated “means” aren’t beneficial for the environment and thus eventually harmful to us.  

Do we understand why it was so easy to manipulate our behavior toward the “dark side”?  According to Erhlich we don’t have the time to figure out why we went the wrong way.  We need to immediately make a quick u-turn and help “direct humanity toward a sustainable society”.  

Here at the beginning of the second century of the industrial revolution we are now literally facing the cumulative poisons that have been injected into our land, water and air.  Time to push all the self-destructive behaviors out of our souls and   act in favor of those who will inherit this planet.  The benefits our actions will not be felt by us, whether we ever understand why we acted as we did is no longer applicable. As procreative beings we owe to the ones who follow us to do the right thing.

“Roadway” Created in Arctic due to Global Warming

The Northeast passage along Russia’s Arctic coast from North Korea to Siberia is now open.  Calling all pollution spewing, tranquil disrupting, overwhelmingly enormous freighters, your ocean freeway through the previously quiet home of the endangered polar bear is now yours to destroy. Civilization has reached a new level, we all should be so very proud. 

To all the naysayers who believe Global Warming is just a hoax, absolute proof is now just an ocean freighter’s ride away.  "We are seeing an expression of climate change here," said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. "The Arctic is warming; we're losing the sea ice cover. The more frequent opening of that Northeast Passage is part of the process we're seeing."  Ex-Vice President Cheney now that you are retired, hopefully forever, you might want to take a cruise along the Northeast passage.  Maybe if you see first hand what your environmentally destructive policies have created you might change your mind about the existence of global warming. Though we won’t hold our breath. 

The passage opening up this summer due to global warming could of easily been predicted if the United States took time during the last three years to pay more attention. I guess the past Administration was too busy fighting an “oil war” instead of doing what it could to reduce our use of oil. “For the last few years, including this year, navigator Roald Amundsen's famous Northwest Passage has been navigable. Then in 2007, the more crucial deep water channel called McClure Strait opened up and now the Northeast Passage”, Serreze said. 

Now that President Obama is running the show maybe his legislation will, at the very least, slow down the horrific effects of global warming. We need to do what we can to help speed up the process and keep the naysayers and foot draggers at bay.  The selfish are a tenacious bunch so we have to be even more diligent than them unless we want the entire Arctic to become a “roadway’.

Hunting Polar Bears

This story was found in the folder marked: No Hope for Humanity. 

Polar bears are classified as endangered species.  

Polar bears are being killed due to man-made global warming. Polar bears are being killed due to man-made pesticides.  Polar bears are being killed due to man-made high powered rifles so their heads can be cut off and put over someone’s fireplace.

According to the UN over the last 10 years nearly 9,000 polar bear specimens were exported for commercial purposes. These specimens included 2,849 skins, 108 skulls, and 1,249 claws.  Under Canadian law the hunting of polar bears by tourists and the commercial trading of polar bear parts is legal. 

Endangered species have different classifications and that is why Canada’s polar bear hunting laws and commercial trading of polar bear parts is not illegal.

There are three different classifications: Appendix I, II and III.  Polar bears are classified under appendix II but should be put at appendix I so the senseless and horrific hunting will stop. (Hunting for sustainable subsistence by native peoples of polar bears is not controlled and should not be controlled under these classifications).

Please contact the US Fish and Wildlife Department and tell them to change the classification.  Please tell them that hunting and trading body parts of any animal, let alone an endangered animal, is a bad idea.  For some reason I think they probably already know this but apparently unless they are verbally assaulted with this information they won’t do anything about it.

Only about 25,000 polar bears left: May they procreate to their heart’s content and then die of old age.

Orangutans, 3000 die every year

With only 50, 000 left it’s just 17 year until extinction. They have been around for about 10,000 years and up until about 20 years ago there was approximately 500,000 orangutans living in an area from Southeast Asia to Southern China. “We” directly or indirectly killed off 90% of the population due to, you guessed it, deforestation and other human activities.  Now the remaining population lives in Borneo. 

Orangutans share 96.7% of our genes and are smart enough to use tools and teach learned behaviors to their offspring and other Orangutans.  They are so human like It feels like loosing a member of our immediate family.  Just to give you some specific examples the following are some homo sapiens characteristics that the Orangutans exhibit.  They can make rain hats and leakproof roofs out of a leaf found in their natural habitat.  Two different Orangutans learned 30-40 sign language signs both in captivity and in the open wilderness.  Zoo Atlanta has a touch screen computer monitor where the orangutans play computer games.  And finally a 2008 study showed that orangutans are the first non-human species documented to use 'calculated reciprocity' which involves weighing the costs and benefits of gift exchanges and keeping track of these over time.

But are their lives worth more than deforestation?  We apparently decided they are not.  Logging, mining, settlements and road construction take precedent over these extraordinary animals, second to none to humans in intelligence. Some might argue that in the case of intelligence relative to environmental issues Orangutans might even surpass humans.

Indonesia, which includes Borneo, loses 4.5 million acres of forest every year due to deforestation. The Nature Conservancy is currently working with our Federal Government and local governments in Indonesia to stop illegal logging and protecting Orangutan habitats but the situation is dire. A previously unknown Orangutan nest was discovered that could could possibly add some needed numbers to the dwindling population but they still are a very endangered species.

Carolyn Enquist, a scientist with the Nature Conservancy the excellent conservation organization mentioned above, studies the concept of adaptation for plant and animal populations who are effected by effects of global warming and processes that cause global warming. Unfortunately for some plants and animals global warming has already caused permanent damage, partial and/or complete extinction. Lets hope its not too late to save the remaining Orangutans and possibly help them increase their population.

President Obama Can't Wait for Congress

Too many lobbyists representing hundreds of special interests groups fill the halls of our capital persuading our legislators to act in ways good for them but not for us. The Congress will never really legislate in favor of policies that are 100% environmentally beneficial unless there is something in it that helps with their next reelection.  Global warming is too far advanced for President Obama to diplomatically persuade Congress to act quickly.  He needs to light a bonfire underneath their seats or rush ahead and let them catch up.

Proposing limits for greenhouse gas emissions and ambient air quality standard regulations are two specific examples where the EPA is moving like molasses in wintertime and should be moving like lighting. The problem, as previously stated, lies both with Congress’s special interest saturated legislative behavior and President Obama’s overly diplomatic relationship with Congress.  We deserve action now not after environmental disasters become irreversible.

Regulations limiting, not just proposing, greenhouse gas emissions need to be put into law now. Its not good enough for the EPA to simply declare that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare.  Industries that provide energy using “dirty sources” need limitations on the amount of greenhouse gasses they produce.  They need regulations since they will not do this on their own.

In 1997 the EPA created ambient air quality standards for fine particulate matter, soot. Soot causes illnesses costing billions in health care expenditures and approximately 20,000 annual deaths. Its very simple, the less soot, the less illness. Most soot comes from coal fired power plants.  Ambient air quality standards are not good enough, we need regulations to protect us. The EPA is literally giving these plants a license to  murder.  Another frustrating and seemingly malicious facet of this dilemma is allowing more new coal fired plants to be approved under these worthless standards as opposed to having them be approved under strict regulations. It appears as if the EPA is giving these “dirty” plants an unfair advantage over new green clean technology by allowing them to slide in without health protective regulations. 

President Obama shouldn’t let the Congress empowered EPA to work directly against our health and directly for the seemingly impervious lobbyist protected “dirty” energy producers. Clean green technology doesn’t stand a chance if our country continues to be controlled by special interest groups that let the obscenely rich get richer and the rest of us get stuck with higher health care costs and irreversible lung cancer.  We need to make the death of the Bush administration create a environmentally healthy “birth” for us.  

Rainforest Still Disappearing

The rainforest is still disappearing at a an alarming rate despite the massive efforts of many to reduce the rate of deforestation.  In February, 2008, the Brazilian government announced that the rate of deforestation has increased not slowed down. During the last five months of 2007, more than 1,250 sq. miles,(an area equivalent to the size of the state of Rhode Island), was deforested.  

Unfortunately no one involved in the defense of the Amazon can even imagine deforestation being stopped; the only goal is reduce the slaughter of an area with 10% of the world’s carbon stores in our ecosystem.  By continuing to remove the natural fauna one is continuing to release excess carbon into the atmosphere which accelerates global warming. Deforestation of the Amazon is also permanently damaging an area where the the largest collection of living plants and animal species in the world live. To date, at least 40,000 plant species, 3,000 fish, 1,294 birds, 427 mammals, 428 amphibians, and 378 reptiles have been scientifically classified in the region.  The numbers are astounding and they just represent what scientists have named but not what actually exists. 

The main source of deforestation of the Amazon are human settlement and development of the land. 91% of the deforested land is used for cattle grazing and the rest is mostly used for farming.  This occurs despite what environmentalist C.M. Peters stated in 1989, “One hectare in the Peruvian Amazon has been calculated to have a value of $6820 if intact forest is sustainably harvested for fruits, latex, and timber; $1000 if clear-cut for commercial timber (not sustainably harvested); or $148 if used as cattle pasture.” This valuation is in terms of what the worth is for the Peruvian Citizens, not for the corporations like Asia Pulp and Paper who have brutally deforested the land for years. 

Reading through the history of Asia Pulp and Paper is analogous  to reading the criminal history of a brutal and maliciously ambitious drug cartel.  No outside force has been able to stop their continuous onslaught of the world’s most valuable and essential forests.  The company has been involved in illegal logging in Cambodia and Indonesia and hasbroken agreements with 3 major environmental organizations.  

According to the Asia Times Online, “Asia Pulp and Paper's business model is a tactically aggressive one: it turns huge profits by quickly stripping forests bare, exploiting age-old forests and indigenous peoples, and leaving town before the environmental consequences are felt. By the time communities and governments lodge complaints and lawsuits, APP has divested itself of local interests and assets.”

They had agreements with Forest Steward Ship Council, the World Wide Fund for Nature and the Rainforest Alliance.  All agreements were cancelled by the environmental organizations when APP, Asia Pulp and Paper, did not follow through with the original environmental policies stated in the agreements. It appears that APP was just using these organizations to hide behind. They agreed to change it behaviors but its deforestation of restricted lands was discovered and the agreements were dissolved.  Boycotts of APP’s products were called for by various hotel associations.  APP threatened with lawsuits but wasn’t aware of the public support for the boycotts. They were caught red-handed with their entire body in the cookie jar and still tried to weasel out of it.  Even now on the homepage of their website it reads “Care for Tomorrow, we support actions for economic, social and environmental sustainability”.  This situation being similar to members of the last US Administration telling the world that the Iraq war was started to protect our freedom when they originally told us it was to protect us from weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. A bold faced lie. 

Unfortunately in today’s amoral political and economic climate many do not care for the truth even if it causes horrific environmental or other types of damage: If it hurts their pocketbook and popularity they will say anything to protect themselves.  Even though such maliciously powerful and desperate entities are loose in our world trying to deprive us of our environmental freedom we still have a mighty weapon in our possession that can stop them dead in their tracks: our wallets.  If we don’t buy their poison they can’t sell it and if they can’t sell it they will not brutally strip our lands to get it.