We now know that while Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein didn’t conspire together, they did have one thing in common: their power was funded by our dependence on their oil. But even as Saddam’s show trial begins, televisions are watching America’s new national security enemies: Katrina and Wilma. Al Qaida’s 9/11 attacks and the Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship were “powered by” oil industry fortunes and short-sighted global energy policies, the same policies now bringing us global warming and monster storms.
Before making landfall in Mexico’s Yucatan and pounding Florida, Hurricane Wilma was declared the most powerful Atlantic hurricane in history. That we got to a W‑name itself is cause for concern: the first tropical storm of the year gets a name starting with “A” and so forth through the alphabet. This summer has been the “most active hurricane season”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Atlantic_hurricane_season since record-keeping started 150 years ago. We’ve seen so many storms that weather officials have now run through the alphabet: meteorologists are now having to track Tropical Storm (now Depression) Alpha 350 miles north of the Bahamas. In 2004, “five devastating hurricanes ripped across Florida”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Atlantic_hurricane_season, each one coming so fast on the heels of the last that few of us could even name them a year later. As I write, Wilma is pounding Western Florida, one of the fast-growing regions in the country. And of course Katrina devasted New Orleans and the Gulf Coast just two months ago.
Global climate change is here. After decades of political hemming and hawing, only the most slimy of oil industry apologists (and Presidents) could argue that global warming hasn’t arrived. We’ve built a national culture built on inefficient burning of fossil fuels. Developers put more and more people on unprotected sandbars built, maintained and insured by tax dollars. Someday is here and our weather is only going to be getting worse. We could be preparing for the inevitable adjustments. We could be investing in conservation, in renewable energies. We could change our tax codes to encourage sustainable housing: not just getting new development off beaches but also building urban and semi-urban communities that reduce automobile dependence.
Instead we spend billions of dollars on our oil addictions. We’re now waiting for the “announcement of the 2,000th U.S. military casualty in iraq”:http://www.afsc.org/2000/. Administration officials used Katrina to rollback environmental protection regulations in Louisiana. The arctic ice cap is rapidly melting away (the North Pole is now ice-free for part of the year) but oil industry officials point to the good news that we will soon be able to put “year-round oil rigs in the ice-free seas there”:http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1010 – 07.htm.
How many Katrina bin Laden’s and Saddam Wilma’s does it take before we get the news.
Quaker Ranter
A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley
Tag Archives ⇒ energy policies
GWB: “Ah, we did? I don’t think so.”
August 27, 2004
An “unintentionally hilarious interview of President George W. Bush”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/27/politics/campaign/27bush.html is excerpted in today’s New York Times_. One gem concerned global warming. Just a few days ago his secretaries of energy and commerce delivered a report to Congress saying that carbon dioxide emissions (cars, coal burning plants, etc.) really are causing global warming. Well yes, most of us have figured that out already but this is an Administration that’s runned and staffed by oil industry executives and they’ve insisted for years that the evidence isn’t clear. That they’re now admitting the cause of global warming is big and it should certainly auger a overhaul of U.S. energy policies. But when asked why the administration had changed its position on what causes global warming Bush responded “Ah, we did? I don’t think so.”
He also admitted that he had made a “miscalculation of what the conditions would be” in postwar iraq but said he wasn’t going to go “on the couch” to rethink his decision or his decision-making process. Uhh.., Mister President, maybe you should think about this before offering to serve another four years?