High Time
Oh Brave New World That has such people in it….
From SFGate comes a really nice paean to the dawning of environmentally responsible government, which has been so sadly lacking inside the beltway.
Nowhere is the change starker than with Boxer's impending chairwomanship of the Environment and Public Works Committee, where she takes the reins from a conservative Republican who thinks global warming is a hoax.
She vowed to push through global warming legislation next year, taking California's landmark model nationwide -- a move Feinstein proposed in a major speech in August in San Francisco.
Boxer, describing global warming as the challenge of this generation, rattled off the potential dire consequences from a projected 3.7-degree rise in the Earth's temperature, including a melting of the polar ice caps and a 20-foot rise in sea levels along California's coasts. She said she would bring "everybody to the table to come up with a sense of legislation ... because time is running out."
Among the Senate's severest critics of Bush, Boxer said the administration had already extended an olive branch, with a top aide from the President's Council on Environmental Quality contacting her staff indicating a willingness to work together.
"In five minutes, (former Defense Secretary) Donald Rumsfeld resigned, and in 10 minutes we got a call on global warming, so change is in the air," Boxer said.
She acknowledged that she may face resistance even from some Democrats in the Senate and House.
"If I had my way, I would go all 100 yards to do what we need to do," Boxer said. "But if people are willing to go 90 or 80 or 70, we'll find out. But the call from the White House means this is a very different world we're living in."
While throughout the world concern is growing exponentially about the effects of global warming, here in the U.S. a fight against recognizing it at all rages on in the highest realms of idiocy – the White House minions.
Ten states fired a new legal salvo at the federal government Thursday in a long-running court battle over global warming and pollution from power plants.
The states, joined by environmental groups, sued the Environmental Protection Agency over its decision not to regulate carbon dioxide pollution as a contributor to global warming.
New York, California, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin filed the lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Fiddling on insouciantly as ever, the (environ)mentally challenged White House tries to make the world safe for carcinogens in service to industry.
President Bush has re-entered the global warming debate by unveiling his alternative to the 1997 Kyoto agreement on global warming. His plan offers incentives to businesses to voluntarily reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated 4.5 percent over 10 years and to reduce power plant emissions.
Bush's plan is dramatically lower than the estimated 33 percent mandatory reduction sought by the Kyoto agreement for the United States, the world's largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions.
Asian and European nations have strongly criticized Bush's decision in 2001 to abandon the Kyoto treaty, which commits 37 industrialized nations to cut gas emissions. Bush has criticized the treaty, saying it set unrealistic goals and could damage the U.S. economy. But other nations worry about scientific concerns that climate change could lead to severe floods and droughts, rising sea levels and an increase in malaria and respiratory disease.
Hopefully, shortly the U.S.’s role in fighting against environmental dangers will be revisited, and reversed. We can’t afford to wait to stop killing off the many species of our globe – ourselves among them.
From SFGate comes a really nice paean to the dawning of environmentally responsible government, which has been so sadly lacking inside the beltway.
Nowhere is the change starker than with Boxer's impending chairwomanship of the Environment and Public Works Committee, where she takes the reins from a conservative Republican who thinks global warming is a hoax.
She vowed to push through global warming legislation next year, taking California's landmark model nationwide -- a move Feinstein proposed in a major speech in August in San Francisco.
Boxer, describing global warming as the challenge of this generation, rattled off the potential dire consequences from a projected 3.7-degree rise in the Earth's temperature, including a melting of the polar ice caps and a 20-foot rise in sea levels along California's coasts. She said she would bring "everybody to the table to come up with a sense of legislation ... because time is running out."
Among the Senate's severest critics of Bush, Boxer said the administration had already extended an olive branch, with a top aide from the President's Council on Environmental Quality contacting her staff indicating a willingness to work together.
"In five minutes, (former Defense Secretary) Donald Rumsfeld resigned, and in 10 minutes we got a call on global warming, so change is in the air," Boxer said.
She acknowledged that she may face resistance even from some Democrats in the Senate and House.
"If I had my way, I would go all 100 yards to do what we need to do," Boxer said. "But if people are willing to go 90 or 80 or 70, we'll find out. But the call from the White House means this is a very different world we're living in."
While throughout the world concern is growing exponentially about the effects of global warming, here in the U.S. a fight against recognizing it at all rages on in the highest realms of idiocy – the White House minions.
Ten states fired a new legal salvo at the federal government Thursday in a long-running court battle over global warming and pollution from power plants.
The states, joined by environmental groups, sued the Environmental Protection Agency over its decision not to regulate carbon dioxide pollution as a contributor to global warming.
New York, California, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin filed the lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Fiddling on insouciantly as ever, the (environ)mentally challenged White House tries to make the world safe for carcinogens in service to industry.
President Bush has re-entered the global warming debate by unveiling his alternative to the 1997 Kyoto agreement on global warming. His plan offers incentives to businesses to voluntarily reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated 4.5 percent over 10 years and to reduce power plant emissions.
Bush's plan is dramatically lower than the estimated 33 percent mandatory reduction sought by the Kyoto agreement for the United States, the world's largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions.
Asian and European nations have strongly criticized Bush's decision in 2001 to abandon the Kyoto treaty, which commits 37 industrialized nations to cut gas emissions. Bush has criticized the treaty, saying it set unrealistic goals and could damage the U.S. economy. But other nations worry about scientific concerns that climate change could lead to severe floods and droughts, rising sea levels and an increase in malaria and respiratory disease.
Hopefully, shortly the U.S.’s role in fighting against environmental dangers will be revisited, and reversed. We can’t afford to wait to stop killing off the many species of our globe – ourselves among them.
posted by Ruth at 10:30 AM
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