Give it up Al Gore

First, let me say that I was in the 4-H Earthkeepers a hundred years ago when I was a kid. And, I try to recycle, take shorter showers, and decrease my carbon foot print. Although I have to admit that I am happy as hell with my drafty old, energy in-efficient house, because it probably saved my life several weeks ago when the gas stove got left on without a flame all night and no one in the house died -- not even that dam rat (see "A Beginning). In any case, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool environmentalist. I believe all of the ecology (that's what we called it when being an environmentalist was a sub-set of hippy) imperatives. But give it up Al Gore. Even if everyone believed that humans are causing the planet's atmosphere to change, they don't care. "Global Warming" is too amorphous, out there, someone else's problem, and, according the conservative talk show hosts and senators, it's mostly the fault of the Chinese and a little bit the Indians, both of whom will take over the earth and impoverish us if we limit our precious carbon emissions. Carbon emissions are second to precious bodily fluids, which the communists already poisoned with fluoride. I could go on. I spend a couple of hours in the car today listening to my favorite array of XM Radio channels: America Right, Air America, and Fox Radio (fascist/progressive/fascist) and then flipping back to CSPAN radio where Al Gore was testifying about Global Warming.

Two things seems obvious: we cannot change the damage we are doing, because no one will do what is necessary. And the oceans are rising. So, we have to focus on environmental issues that are close to people's homes, literally in their back yards, killing their children. And we have to figure out what we're going to do about low-lying cities and communities. Both of which need to be positioned as national security issues.