George Fiddles While Earth is Burning

George fiddles while earth is burning
April 23, 2001

On Earth Day, George W Bush fiddled with the environment-friendly rhetoric: “As we celebrate Earth Day on this April 22 2001, I encourage Americans to join me in renewing our commitment to protecting the environment and leaving our children and grandchildren with a legacy of clean water, clean air, and natural beauty.”

During debate in the Presidential Election, he read off from his cue card: “I am really committed to clean water and clean air and cleaning up the new kinds of challenges, like global warming.”

Less than 100 days since his inauguration, he did more damages on environment than any other Presidents including Ronald Reagan, who believed that there was no such thing like global warming.
1. He shocked the world declaring that he would abandon his campaign pledge of regulating carbon dioxide, the principal culprit of the global warming.
2. His Administration would not abide by the international treaty on climate at Kyoto agreement that requires the US of cutting emission 7 percent from 1990 benchmark.
3. He would rescind a Clinton Administration’s decision that would have limited arsenic in drinking water to no more than 10 parts per billion.
4. He slashed in his first budget on wind, geothermal and hydrogen energy by 48 percent, on solar energy by 54 percent, and committed to more nuclear power initiative.
5. He proposes limiting on the ability of environmental groups to enforce the Endangered Species Act and authorizing the Attorney General an only source of the judicial action.
6. He wants to rip apart the Arctic National Wild Life Refuge in Alaska in order to place oilrigs and pipe lines, as he is in hock to the oil industries in terms of the campaign funds and self-interest.

George knows to celebrate the rich blessings of American natural resources, but appears to be negligent to take stock of its stewardship of nature’s gift, when one looks at what he proposed, implemented, and advocated the environmental policies of destruction and commercialization on its natural treasures.
George and his Republican corporate barons do not believe in the study that most of the global warming in the past decades has been caused by human activities, primarily the burning of oil, gasoline and coal, which produce carbon dioxide and other gases that trap heat in the atmosphere.

They seem to be oblivious on many strange things are happening around the globe.
According to the study by the Byrd Polar Research Center of Ohio State University, the ice cap atop Mount Kilimanjaro, that inspired Ernest Hemingway and has floated like a cool beacon over the shimmering equatorial plain of Tanzania, is retreating at such a pace that it will disappear in less than 15 years.
Another study by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in Geneva showed that the global warming is widespread from Montana, Europe, Peru, Tibet, Africa to Arctic, melting glaciers on the top of Swiss Alps and shrinking sea ice in the Arctic, and the climate changes has brought about droughts, floods, heat waves, cyclones, tornadoes, violent storms and spread of cholera and malaria in the continents.

For George and his ilk, oil is lifeblood of “ American democracy” that they were awarded by a gang of five justices in the US Supreme Court, and George wasted no time to push through licenses for oil and gas drilling in the remote northern Alaska which is known as America’s Serengeti, a frozen sanctuary to a wealth of animals, including caribou, wolves, musk oxen, three species of bears, foxes, thousands of migratory birds, and American Indians.
Even though George insisted that the drilling area is about 8 percent (1.5 million acres) in the coastal plain of the Refuge, opponents of the plan brought the devastating effects of the air pollution in the Prudhoe Bay located to the west of the Refuge.
Three decades ago, the Bay was explored for oil and gas that has expanded like a wild fire in every direction and into the Arctic Ocean, where nitrogen oxide emissions in the air now exceeds 56,000 tones a year, twice the level of air pollution over Washington DC.

Opening the Refuge is just the first flash point. BP Exploration and Philip Alaska—two of the biggest oil firms operating in Arctic—admit that they are setting their eyes on the Beaufort Sea and in the vicinity, because the Refuge is thought to be capable of producing not enough oil to solve the energy shortage in the United States.
Americans consume about 19 million barrels of oil a day, 8 million of that as gasoline, and they use nearly 7 billion barrels a year and import slightly more than half of them from around the world. Since Alaska Refuge estimates holding 5 to 16 billion barrels total, it only covers only 5 years of import oil at the most, that is hardly long-term solution without going deep further into the more exploration with more risk of destroying the pristine environment.

When Galileo in 1600s suggested that the earth was round, he was branded a heretic and imprisoned for his scientific discovery, as in the 1990s scientists determined the burning of fossil fuels had an adverse effect on climate change, oil barons called the science flawed.
Though the damaging effects of fossil fuel today are no longer in dispute, the current political climate under the Bush Administration promotes oil exploration to help reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil and on the other hand protects the oil industry profits.
Everyone knows that carbon dioxide does not float away in a day or two to nowhere, but remain in the atmosphere for over 100 years, and George wants to continue to feast like a glutton at the table of the world resources, because he won’t be around to shoulder the blame as his ravenous fellow citizens drive around with gas-guzzling SUV kvetching high price of gas.

The root problem is people do not feel that the global warming is universally dangerous and harmful to everyone on earth, until flood, drought or tornado hit their own communities.
Some of evangelicals dare to attribute the natural catastrophes to the God’s will and advocate more devotional prayer rather than to persuade for moderate consumption of irreplaceable natural resources.
In the great industrial societies, like US, Canada and other western developed countries, which have benefited so long from the rapacious devouring of resources and the indiscriminate release of pollutants, people have been heavily nurtured, educated, and programmed in the capitalistic system to aspire for maximum consumption of every available resources during their life time, as they love to have “all-you-can-eat” buffet and end up getting fat, sick, and croak.

Conserving energy is a non sequitur in the corporate society where the unrestricted consumption is valued as the lifeblood in the ever-expanding economic structure.
As the spiritual values in the developed countries thrives on the eschatological concepts in Christianity, the corporate society would feed on its own body in the end when it does not have anything left to consume and take everyone on earth for cannibalism including George, his ilk, and 10-million Americans who voted for him.

In short, George W Bush is an environmental nightmare not just for American gluttons but also for all creatures living on earth.