Pyrric Victory: The Environment



When this administration is judged, we will all play witness to the fact that it has waged ceaseless war against mankind with its self serving policies and practices; it is a battle that we have virtually lost collectively and it will be one that is already coming back to haunt us.



The subject is the environment and the “talking heads,” the media heavyweights and the ‘think tanks’ who exist to promulgate special interests and pay no taxes for the privilege will have won their Pyrric victory--a short term victory at the expense of our futures.



If we need any proof of that, all we need do is see the confusion and the doubts that persist whenever anyone brings up the subject of the environment.



As a result, the government has been able to put off clean air/clean water considerations; it has defanged OSHA, and it has given eight year’s of passes to Detroit. It has ignored transportation entirely while promulgating endless consumption and self-interest.

It has failed to adopt a policy of Global stewardship despite the fact that we are one of the leading polluter in the world. If anything, this government had demonstrated an affinity for supporting the status quo at the expense of the people, their health and the health of the planet.



From the very beginning, they have thrown a monkey wrench into the Kyoto Accords. They have enlisted scientists on the payroll to broadside their doubts about Global Warming and they have done little or nothing to take positive action to protect the environment. They have failed to get behind sequestration, they have encouraged the burning of coal who’s effluents include heavy metals and carbon that heats the oceans and dirties the air that we breath. Nor have they thrown their weight behind a policy to promote clean-burning fuels or develop smart alternatives.



As a result, America’s efforts lag the world. Instead of now javing to join the battle at this late date with diminished resources, we might have been able to reverse what now seems assured: the melting of the Greenland Cap and parts of South West Antarctica relating to the Ross Shelf along with the melting of glaciers in South Asia that provide much of the drinking water to that part of the world. At present, unless Draconian measures are adopted immediately, and quite frankly that is an unlikely outcome, my own state, according to projections from the Marine division of the local college, indicate that we will be under water in less than one hundred years. And those projections are conservative!



During the next generation, if we don’t seize the initiative, we can only expect increasing draught, the emergence of new invasive species, destructive patterns of rain and storms that will make Katrina look commonplace, rising coastal tides, loss of flora and fauna, the loss of species and rising temperatures.



There is also data that suggests that a continuation of our policy could also lead to “Snowball Earth” a series of events that might take place according to the best estimates if the underwater rivers that circle the globe—and bring moderate temperatures to most of the Earth—fail and shut down.



Such a development could make Earth mainly uninhabitable for tens of thousands of years. To prevent such a tragedy, we as a people must mobilize our resources and act where our government has failed.



To paraphrase Vice President Al Gore’s words, it is better to be wrong about our assumptions than risk imperiling the earth through inaction.



Les Aaron

The Hubmaster