Walls Crumbling With Pledged Support

The American Clean Energy and Security Act passed through the U.S. House of Representatives in June 2009, with a vote of 219 -212. With 44 Democrats opposed and only eight Republicans in favor, it shows exactly why our demise as a so-called great nation is assured. However, to delay the demise, the Senate immediately issued a pledge of support by year’s end.

This bill would attempt to cut America’s greenhouse gas production and would include provisions for creating alternative energy sources, cleaner technologies and provide more efficient building standards. In other words, help wean our dependence on coal and foreign based carbon energy reserves.

Much can happen in a matter of months. The change agent administration continues to damper hopes for a U.S. led alliance regarding a proper diagnosis of our planet’s failing health, along with that failing health’s connection to global warming. Instead of the Senate’s passage of a climate change bill that would, in part, help in the creation of alternative energy sources - one might think of wind as a viable alternative energy source - we are now given a bag of hot air. This comes in the form of words stating that “... a bill signed by the president on comprehensive energy by the time we go in December is not likely.” So says Carol Browner, the administration’s energy czar. In a nutshell this means the U.S. Senate will not act in any way, shape, or form to address the issue of global warming, an issue that continues to bring forth disturbing news on a daily basis. While the earth speaks, we fail to listen.

The latest healthcare development can be summed up in one word: division. As in a country divided over a no-brainer, divided by design. How could we possibly manage a discussion about climate change when we have healthcare to discuss? How could we possibly discuss a plan to save the ocean while we’re busy creating an empire of war? The manufacture of tanks and bombs and guns continues, unabated, as any desire to help the planet is held in check.

While the oceans fill with acid, while increased desertification leads us toward a scorched earth, while skies in foreign lands are filled with drones (the ultimate form of cowardice), our country is filled with zombies.

Political leaders, seeking political insurance, pay lip service in one breath while they outright lie in the next breath, promising green energy jobs and a brighter tomorrow with future fuels. A Senate that pledged support just months ago now finds itself lacking the spine to get the job done. But how could they develop a spine or find the intestinal fortitude to stand up against the military industrial complex? Or the pharmaceutical industry? Or the coal and oil industries? The alternative energy market, just like the environment, picks a number and waits.

Keep in mind that while our tax dollars pay the salaries of this inept group of so-called political leaders, coal and carbon-based energy and pharmaceutical dollars continue to float above and below the table’s surface, landing indiscriminately in the back pockets of those bags of hot air, regardless of political affiliation. So long to a climate change bill. So long to meaningful healthcare reform.

America, one of the world’s great polluters and an even greater energy consumer, once again leads the way. Land of the free. Home of the brave. In its ongoing efforts to undermine the Kyoto protocol, the American government, by its inability to act has brazenly told the rest of the world that it will not reduce greenhouse gas emissions. One shudders to think what our government would look like today if it weren’t controlled by the Democratic Party. Hope and change still has a long way to go.

To better understand, or begin to understand, how coal (it’s clean, in case you’ve forgotten) and carbon based energy influences political deciders and ultimately decides the law of the land, one should have a basic grasp of elementary math. We have been led to believe that emissions reduction will be harmful to the American economy, to our way of life. Job loss associated with attempts to control America’s insatiable appetite for black crude will hinder economic growth.

It’s far easier to remove a mountaintop for coal retrieval than it is to turn off a light switch. It’s far easier to bomb a country “into the stone age” than it is to lower the national speed limit. It’s far easier to institute and maintain a global war on terror than it is to educate the masses on energy conservation, thereby forcing us to take that all important first step in caring for the planet.

When the hope for a climate change bill that could lead us on the path to easing the stress of a sick planet loses out to troop escalation in foreign lands, we are not only a doomed nation, but a doomed civilization.

As we become more stupid in our addiction to foreign energy supplies, we continue to be led by a change agent who’s inability to bring people together because they refuse to be led together will ultimately become his political downfall. The cost of energy is a strange creature.