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Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Fascinating ad

There was a fascinating--to me--full-page ad in The New York Times yesterday from The Cato Institure and some 126 different doctors and scientists, as represented, disagreeing with then-President-Elect Barack Obama's quote from the election last year.

That quote, from November 19, was that "Few challenges facing America and the world are more urgent than combating climate change." He went on to say "The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear."

The scientists and doctors response: "With all due respect, Mr. President, that is not true."

So, okay, climate change or global warming may or may not be a scientific fact.

You know what? I can live with that.

But do you know what else?

It doesn't matter.

What does matter is that polluting the only planet we have to live on is wrong. It's dumb. It's virtually suicidal.

If you see what corporations, in particular, have done to our water, air and land, in even their mild cases, it will show that the way we have lived in the last 100 years isn't sustainable.

--We don't have unlimited electrical power from our power plants

--We don't have enough room for our waste

--We can't go on soiling our air and land and water and still have clean air to breathe, water to drink and soil to grow plants and crops

--We can't go on coaxing our soil with pesticides and have problem-free crops to eat or water without those pesticides. (This doesn't even mention the bees we need).

So the way we've lived isn't sustainable. We need to change. We need to pollute less. We need to develop clean, sustainable, supportable solar energy and good, mercury-free batteries to store the power.

And we need to get busy doing it, climate change or no.

Link to the original ad:
http://www.cato.org/special/climatechange/cato_climate.pdf

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