By now all or most of have seen photos and reports of the heart-rending loss of life and destruction from Typhoon Haiyan in Philippines. The monster storm has affected eleven million people and destroyed 670,000 homes. Blown out towns reduced to grim junkyards of rubble. It seems beyond words. But words and images are all we have on FB so I will ask a few questions and try to connect a few dots. The shock of this sheer devastation has aroused the compassion of the American people, I believe, even evoked memories and images of 9-11. Perhaps just below awareness is the knowledge of dont ask for whom the extreme weathers hits, it hits for thee. But at the same time how many of us are aware of the grim irony of the UN Conference on Climate Change meeting in Warsaw at the same time as Hurricane Haiyan and the outrageous reality that this body will reach no agreement about curtailing greenhouse gases and global warming? This is basically because the United States Congress steadfastly refuses to pass any clean energy legislation commensurate to the clear and present danger of catastrophic global warming despite Super Storm Sandy, droughts, floods and wildfires on our own shores. Why is this, especially since the majority of Americans support its government taking action to fight global warming? One can only conclude that our government values profits over people, profits of the dirty energy sector over the well-being and lives of their own citizens. Will monster typhoon Haiyan be a wake-up call for the American people, will they begin to connect the dots between the staggering inaction of their Congress and the immense profits of dirty energy and the immense donations from dirty energy to members of Congress and the funding of an army of D.C. lobbyists together with the scurrilous global warming science denial front groups to pull the wool over American voters eyes? I leave you with two hopes. The first is that American industry and its leaders and CEOs will wake up to the fact that extreme weather from catastrophic global warming is not good for business. Just look at the towns leveled by typhoon Haiyan. Could any concern do business there? In our globally interconnected system of production and distribution, the effects of extreme weather from global warming threatens to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. The hope is that business leaders in America will finally break with dirty oil and demand clean energy legislation and economy from simple pragmatism and self-preservation. The other is that the good and compassionate American people will wake up to the fact that something is wrong here in the face of the ghastly destruction of monster storm Haiyan and the extreme weather hitting all around the planet and connect the dots to well established science to our burning of fossil fuels despite the deafening silence of corporate, mainstream media. It is only another step for voters to demand from their representatives in Congress to pass rational, common sense, and yes, patriotic legislation to address the destruction of catastrophic global warming by rapidly transitioning to a clean energy economy with the million of good jobs and security that this would afford. Big Oil and dirty energy counts on and has fostered the ignorance, gullibility and sense of despair in the American public about any change to our fossil-fuel energy policy and fighting global warming through the power of their pocket-book along with the shameless right-wing media machine. Our present way of life, economy and civilization and the future of our children and grandchildren rest with us this very day. Will we take back our democracy, seize our rights and power as citizens for our economy, way of life, very lives and future generations? What will you do?
Posted on: Sat, 16 Nov 2013 12:12:18 +0000