Environment

The trend predates the heavy use of genetically engineered vegetables in America. One possible explanation is that that the richness of our agricultural soil has decreased. It also could be that plant breeders have for generations selected for size, yield, color and suitability for storage, but have not paid much attention to nutritious content. It could be that this focus has led to the inadvertent selection of vegetables that have relatively low nutritional value.

If even America's veggies are getting less nutritious, it's a clear sign that we need to turn things around in our country. (Source: Journal of the American College of Nutrition, 2004)

Last year's devastating hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico should have taught us the foolishness of depending upon oil from the Gulf. Crude oil infrastructure was devastated by hurricanes Katrina and Rita, sending gasoline prices sky high and creating huge oil slicks along the Gulf Coast. With global warming increasing the power of hurricanes that will continue to enter the Gulf of Mexico year after year, the problem will certainly get worse.

The last thing we need to do is have the government spend 80 billion dollars to help oil companies set up more high-risk, pollution-prone oil drilling operations in the Gulf of Mexico. A progressive President would not put up with such wasteful, ill-conceived spending.

Every piece of evidence that global warming is real constitutes a reason to elect a progressive President in 2008. After all, it's the progressives who have paid heed to the science of climate change, and the anti- progressive right wing that has chosen to ignore that science, so as not to interfere with corporate profits.

(Source: Associated Press, Saturday, July 15, 2006)

I grew up watching The Undersea Adventures of Jacques Cousteau. I was fascinated by the marine environments I saw the intrepid French oceanographers of the Calypso exploring, and longed to join them, diving the world's coral reefs.

When I actually got the chance to dive on a coral reef, years later, I was shocked by what I saw. Fragments of the old reef were scattered, here and there, along the sea floor, whitened and dead, blasted by fishermen looking for an easy catch. Diving this wrecked reef, I realized for the first time that the world shown to me by Jacques Cousteau could easily disappear.

In American waters, dynamite fishing is not a big threat to coral reefs, because it's against the law. Yet, many of our coral reefs are still dying. In May 2006, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration added staghorn and elkhorn corals to its list of threatened species. These corals used to be common in Caribbean reefs, but now they are becoming rare. Surveys have found that, in Caribbean reefs, live staghorn and elkhorn coral have decreased by 90 percent.

So, if dynamite fishing is not to blame for this decline, what is? Pollution and irresponsible fishing practices are major culprits, and increasing ocean temperatures due to global warming are also thought to be a contributing factor.

In short, human activities are to blame for the impoverishment of our coral reefs. If we don't change our ways, future generations of documentaries about our oceans won't have much to show but images of the wreckage we left behind.

Progressives support measures to reduce pollution, bring fishing back to disciplined levels, and reduce the carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming. Right wingers don't support these measures. If we want to keep our coral reefs, we need a progressive President to lead the way in their protection.

Coral reefs are more than just wonderful sanctuaries of marine biodiversity. They're great places to see - on television and firsthand. That's reason number 19 to elect a progressive President in 2008.

(Source: Blue Planet Magazine, Summer 2006)

Sewage in drinking water is one of those things that is non-negotiable to most Americans, but not to right wingers like Conrad Burns. Burns, who represents Montana in the United States Senate. Reacting to the news that the United States will need to spend 388 billion dollars to keep sewage out of Americans' drinking water, Senator Burns decided that the cost would be just too much. Burns declared that as long as he is the chair of the subcommittee overseeing appropriations for the Environmental Protection Association, "nothing meaningful will be done" to allocate those needed funds. But, with sewage-contaminated water coming through the taps in their kitchens and bathrooms, how will Americans drink and keep clean without getting terribly sick? Senator Burns suggests using bottled water. "Americans can buy bottled water with their tax cuts," Burns said. Do you get enough in tax cuts to drink only bottled water, bathe only in bottled water, and wash your dishes only in bottled water? I know I haven't. (Source: Sierra November/December 2006)

Republican Congressman Joseph Barton illustrates the kind of disregard for the health impacts of pollution of America's waterways that right wing politicians have brought to our government. When Congressman Barton was told that fish contaminated with mercury can cause reduced mental functioning in those people who eat it, he replied with the flippant remark, "Voters are plenty smart. They keep electing me, don't they?" We need a more serious oversight of the threats that mercury pollution brings to our minds, as well as to our bodies, and Representative Barton's disregard for that need is yet another reason to elect a progressive President in 2008. (Source: Sierra November/December 2006)

What's ironic about the right wing's disregard for the impact of mercury pollution is that mercury poisoning can cause abortion. Yes, that's right, abortion of unborn children. When pregnant mothers are exposed to dangerous levels of mercury, the brains of the children growing within their wombs fail to develop. Put a lot of mercury into the air, as right wing politicians have given big business the power to do, and you'll have otherwise healthy babies being born dead and deformed. If right wingers really cared about the unborn, and not just about restricting women's choices, they would regard the elimination of mercury not a moral issue. (Source: Joni Seager, Advocates for Pregnant Women, February 16, 2004)

By the time of George W. Bush's campaign for re-election, more than 1/3 of lakes in the United States and almost 1/4 of rivers within American borders were covered by special advisories for contamination with mercury, dioxins, PCBs, and other industrial poisons, making the fish that lived in those bodies of water extremely dangerous to eat. George W. Bush responded to this crisis in the environmental security of American waters by coming up with a plan to make it easier for big corporations to pollute America's waterways. For cutting Americans off from the simple pleasure of eating a freshly caught fish, the current Republican staff of the Bush White House might be sentenced to five years of eating nothing but catfish caught in the lower Mississippi River, hoping that a more progressive administration would do something quickly to stop the problem. But, no, not even right wing scoundrels deserve to be subject to the ravages that can come with exposure to polluted water. (Source: Discover, November 2004)

What kind of excuse can the right wing come up with for ignoring the threat mercury pollution poses to the intellectual security of America and to unborn children? Apparently, allowing high levels of mercury pollution across America is part of a program to make sure Americans are tough. The right wing's anti- environmentalist policies are based upon the insane idea that protecting Americans from poisons is a sign of weakness. As Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, puts it, Bush's "environmental policy is based upon the belief that only wimps worry about mercury in fish, kids getting asthma from smog, or fires burning in rural communities." Well, color me wimpy. I don't want mercury in my food. If that makes me weak, well then, that's tough, because I still have the right to be protected from poison, even if it makes the profits of some corporation somewhere a little bit less impressive to stockholders. (Source: Sierra, September/October 2004)

Over the past few years, many scientific studies have independently arrived at the same conclusion: Up and down the food chain, the Earth's oceans are rapidly being depleted of fish. Even the once-ubiquitous cod is now in danger. Some scientists estimate that if nothing is done to change current industrial fishing practices, the cod could go extinct within 10 to 20 years. Think of the cod as the marine buffalo, being wantonly slaughtered on underwater plains.

Biologists bring us a different kind of alarm - a warning about declines in the diversity of the oceans predatory fish - species like marlins and tuna. Researchers measured species diversity in marine hot spots. These hot spots are places in the oceans where fish concentrate because of abundant resources. What they found was that only five healthy marine hotspots remain on Earth - two of these in the territorial waters of the United States. Even at these oceanic hotspots, the number of species represented is dwindling, particularly among large predator fish like tuna and billfish. The diversity in these species has been cut in half over the last 50 years.

The oceans can be a treasure trove of food, but only if we treat them with respect. Unfortunately, respect for the limits of oceanic prosperity is not being observed. At the same time as humans are dumping record amounts of pollutants into the oceans, we are using desperate measures to scoop every last bit of edible flesh out of the oceans as we can. Long gone are the times when we had access to anything like a bounty of food from the oceans. Though our fishing technology keeps improving, our harvests of fish keep on getting smaller and smaller because there are so fish left. It is no longer at all accurate to say that there are plenty of fish in the sea.

Ironically, the very fish that we Americans have the greatest hunger for are the ones that prove most deadly to us. Because fish like tuna and swordfish are predatory, they are like ecological dead-ends for all the poisons we dump into the oceans. Mercury that comes from human sources, for example, gathers in increasing concentrations as it goes up the food chain, accumulating in predator fish in concentrations that could make a person insane - literally, if that person is particularly fond of fish. There's a reason that they tell pregnant women not to eat seafood.

It doesn't have to be this way, of course. We can make more efficient use of our agricultural resources on the land, replacing industrial agriculture that enriches a few corporations with sustainable agriculture that keeps rural communities strong. We could also replace the huge areas devoted to growing animal feed with fields growing food for human consumption. Getting those calories direct to the human stomach would dramatically increase the effective nutritional yield per acre and reduce the need to dredge the seas clean of protein for our dinner plates. The resulting shift in diet would also create a healthier population, saving the United States economy huge amounts of money in lost income and expenses related to lifestyle illnesses. I'm not suggesting that all Americans become vegetarians. A small adjustment in the amount of meat eaten by the average could have dramatic effects.

Of course, all this depends upon the ability of the average American to give a damn enough to want to do something about the problem. It is not at all certain that Americans really do care very much about the oceans that surround their nation. Most Americans think of the oceans as a great place to get a tan, or to surf, and those recreational activities would not be harmed in the slightest if the ocean were completely devoid of fish.

Looking out on the waters from the shoreline, very few people could tell the difference between a healthy ocean and an ocean stripped bare of life. As long as they have a DVD of Finding Nemo to watch, most Americans might not notice the death of the Earth's oceans at all.

Over the years, defenders of the fossil fuel economy have steadfastly denied that global warming exists, in spite of the rapidly accumulating evidence for the reality of worldwide warming and climate change. Aware that their arguments wore increasingly thin, they crafted a second line of defense. They claimed that, if global warming did happen, it would make life better, not worse. Canada, for example, would become a balmy paradise.

This myth of a post-global warming paradise has been destroyed by the reality of mush.

Global warming is here. It has occurred, is getting worse, and is having serious, negative consequences.

One of those consequences is melting of ice in Arctic regions that is so consistent and so profound that it is causing wintertime roads, which used to run at least partly on frozen rivers, to become unusable. Arctic communities are thus becoming quite difficult to reach during the winter. Thus, global warming is endangering the survival of those communities.

If that is what the fossil fuel apologists regard as a paradise, we all ought to be worried when they talk to us about the wonderful world that petroleum will continue to bring us in the future. (Source: Associated Press, November 13, 2006)

Vote for a progressive President in 2008 because the children of Southern California deserve to breathe air that isn't dangerously dirty. Unfortunately, because of the pro-corporate policies of right wing politicians the kids of Southern California don't get the clean air they need.

In recent years, the Southern Californian communities of Los Angeles and Riverside have been ranked as the two cities in America where dirty air puts the most children in danger. Progressives support policies that would reduce air pollution in those cities, and elsewhere across America. Right wing politicians say that air clean enough for our children to breathe safely is just too expensive. (Source: Dangerous Days of Summer, Environmental Defense, 2004)

Let me translate that for you: Republicans in the Bush Administration told scientists at the EPA to alter their research into mercury pollution in order to provide political justification for increased emissions of mercury under the Clear Skies Initiative - and did so in order to create new lax pollution standards that would be pleasing to big energy corporations. Bush's people in the EPA purposefully forced their staff scientists to commit scientific fraud - and Bush continued to push the Clear Skies Initiative, even though he knew that the mercury pollution standards in the new rules would be extremely unsafe.

In the supermarket, when a product is made up of fake ingredients, the manufacturers are required to name the product in such a way that consumers will be able to tell that the food is not for real. The most obvious example is Cheez Wiz. Everybody knows that Cheez Wiz is not real cheese because it's name is so obviously an imitation. When people buy Cheez Wiz, they're not being tricked into eating an industrial simulation of food - they know what they're in for.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if such truth in labeling were required for governmental programs? That way, the so-called Clear Skies Initiative would have to get a new name - after all, the scientific studies behind it have now been exposed as an purposeful fraud by the Bush Administration. What kind of new name can we give to the coal-burning, mercury spewing, air-poisoning set of rules? How about The Kleer Skies Initiative? (Source: Energy Washington Week, February 16, 2005)

In a striking non-coincidence, George W. Bush's appointee to the position of EPA Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation is Jeffrey Holmstead, who used to work at Latham and Watkins, helping corporations evade the requirements of the Clean Air Act.

This kind of corporate backroom influence over the scientific institutions of our government is not merely corrupt. It is dangerous. If the Bush Administration's Clear Skies Initiative is put into action, 600,000 American children are projected to be exposed to mercury poisoning that increases every year.

Our concern shouldn't be limited to the lack of cute characters for computer animation. Biodiversity serves as a buffer against any threats to our planet; the more diversity of species we have, the greater the likelihood that our biome will manage to spring back from a threat. The lower the diversity of species we have, the greater the damage that our biome will sustain when faced with any sort of onslaught. If you want to be selfish about it, remember that our biome is what we eat.

If we had elected Al Gore in 2000, we might have done something as a nation to ameliorate this damage to our biological diversity. All right, it looks like we did elect Al Gore in 2000, but regardless of election fraud that opportunity has passed. A new opportunity has now arisen. Let's take that opportunity by electing a progressive, responsive, reality-driven president in 2006. (Source: Associated Press, November 21, 2006)

A progressive President will enforce environmental laws, not scheme to violate them. (Source: Nature's Voice, January/February 2007)

Scientists engaged in a survey of lakes in nine different regions of Alaska have discovered that, over 20 years, both the number of lakes and the size of lakes has been dramatically reduced. The number of lakes declined by as much as 54 percent, and the size of the remaining lakes by as much as 31 percent, depending on the region surveyed. The reason? Global warming, which progressives have been working to confront for years, but right wingers have refused to acknowledge until reality became so clear they were forced to accept it.

It may not seem like a big deal to some people to see our landscape radically transformed by forces out of our control, but some of us are disturbed by the idea that places where there were lakes a generation ago are now bone dry. If you can't count on a lake to remain a lake, what can you count on? (Source: Natural History, February, 2007)

American progressives have been warning about these problems for some time. American conservatives have been passing the buck and engaging in delay. And now Alaskans are paying the cost. It's time to elect a progressive president and get on the ball, before infrastructure destruction moves past painful and straight on to unbearable. (Source: U.S. Global Change Research Program, "US National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change Educational Resources")

The right wing government has become so obsessed with protecting the profits of big oil corporations that it's become dangerous in many places just to go outside for an invigorating run. Take, for instance, what's happening in Salt Lake City, Utah, where it has become a major health risk to exercise outside.

The problem is that Salt Lake City produces a huge amount of air pollution, and the local geography gives little opportunity for that pollution to blow away to bother people somewhere else. So, the citizens of Salt Lake City stew in their own filthy air. Runner Monique Heileson explains how, during a five mile training run, she "started feeling lightheaded, started getting a little sore throat, finished up the run, went to work. By the end of the day I was coughing, sneezing. I could really feel it heavy in the lungs."

Progressives have been arguing in favor of policies to reduce air pollution in American cities, but right wingers have been preventing those policies from being put into effect. As a result, people like Monique Heileson who want to exercise to improve their health end up just getting sicker. (Source: KSL TV, January 24, 2007)

If global warming were not a genuine threat, then government administrators would not need to work so much to attempt to squelch the evidence that global warming exists, is a serious threat, and is due to some extent to human activity. If global warming were really a hoax, then all those government administrators would have to do to expose the hoax would be to allow government-employed climate scientists to report their results without interference. (Source: Union of Concerned Scientists, January 30, 2007)

No, I didn't make a typographical error. I didn't mean to say that we're going to have a reign that lasts for one thousand years. I meant rain - as in the water that falls from the sky.

Where I live, it's normal for the year to be divided into two halves. In one half of the year, it snows. In the other half of the year, it rains. Global warming, however, is threatening to change that. Before too long, even in the northern states of the USA, the rains could last all year long.

Worse than that, the warming that leads to the permanent season of rains will likely go on for a thousand years, even if people find a way to stop polluting the air with greenhouse gases soon. According to a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released in early 2007, the warming created by human activity in this century alone is likely to last for one thousand years.

Progressives have been pushing for solutions to the global warming threat for decades. Right wingers have been resisting, saying that nothing should be done.

The prospect of one thousand years without a snowman, or sledding, or snowball fights?? Your kids will tell you that's a very good reason to act to confront the climate change crisis. If we don't choose a progressive candidate for President in 2008, that thousand year rain we're moving into could last even longer. (Source: CTV, January 31, 2007)

The Great Barrier Reef should remain great. It won't if we don't elect a progressive President in 2007. (Source: CBC, January 30, 2007)

The Dunkirk Steam Generating Station is emitting so much sulfuric acid because there's a huge demand for electricity. That demand is not being met by cleaner sources of energy because right wing politicians have spent more than an entire generation arguing against the legislation and the funding America needs to develop a cleaner and more efficient energy infrastructure. While progressives have been pushing for clean energy, the right wing has been spending its time working for the rights of big polluters. (Source: Environmental Protection Agency, Envirofacts Data Warehouse)

Alas, 2004 is the last year that the EPA's Envirofacts Data Warehouse reports the details of the pollution coming from the Dunkirk Steam Generating Station. After that, the Envirofacts Data Warehouse goes silent. You just have to guess who kind of foul substances have been coming out of that power plant, and to hold on to hope that the pollution isn't killing too many people.

Right wing radicals have been working to make withhold information like this from the public. Progressives, on the other hand, are pushing to restore government openness and accountability.

Hundreds of thousands of pounds of sulfuric acid from just one power plant in one year. Government secrecy to cover up the release of such vile substances. That's the right wing way we've been living under for years. Wouldn't you rather have the progressive alternative?(Source: Environmental Protection Agency, Envirofacts Data Warehouse)

The science of global warming has become so overwhelmingly convincing that, for the most part, the right wing talking points now make a more restricted argument than they used to. They now admit that global warming is taking place, and acknowledge that there's a lot of evidence that global warming is due to human activity. All the right wingers have to say now is that there isn't anything we can do about global warming, and so we just ought to accept it and adapt ourselves to the havoc that it will bring.

Notice how the right wing position on global warming keeps on shrinking and shrinking as the years go on? Right wing ideology on the environment is kind of like an ice sheet in Greenland in that way. Let's hope that its habitat continues to melt away. Soon, the survival right wing denial might become endangered.

One good way to shrink the habitat of right wing denial of global warming is to evict it from the White House in 2008. (Source: MSNBC, March 16, 2007)

The rivers of the world are an example. According to a report recently released by the World Wildlife Fund, many of the major rivers of the world are so overexploited by rampant development along their courses that they are running dry before they can reach the ocean. The report explains,

"Even the greatest of the world's rivers can no longer be assured of reaching the sea unhindered. These days the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo River, on the border of the U.S. and Mexico, often fails to reach the Gulf of Mexico, its strength sapped by dams and irrigation works diverting water to farmers' fields and city water supplies. The Indus, the Nile, the Murray-Darling, the Colorado, these are but a few of the once mighty rivers that now struggle to touch the ocean."

To right wing politicians, the withering away of many of the Earth's rivers does not seem like a cause for concern. Progressives understand that when something so large as a river has been run dry by human development, it's a sign that development has run out of control. (Source: World's Top 10 Rivers At Risk, World Wildlife Fund, March, 2007)

The fact is that global warming is already causing sufficient increases in sea level to cause localized events around the world. Coastal communities in the south of England, for example are already being forced to make decisions about which areas will receive sea wall protection, and which areas will be allowed to flood.

Acknowledging the threat of global climate change is a difficult choice to make, because it requires us to deal with the consequences of their actions. In 2008, let's remember that it's been the progressives who have been willing to make this difficult choice instead of indulging in fantasies of denial in which Communism is supposed to be the real explanation for the massive amount of evidence that global warming is real. (Sources: Comment on 60minutes.yahoo.com, December 13, 2006; Reuters, March 23, 2007)

Stephen Griles used to work as the Deputy Secretary of the Department of the Interior, appointed to that position by the Bush White House. As Deputy Secretary Griles acted as the top representative of the Bush White House on Dick Cheney's secret energy task force. When he left that post, he took a job at oil corporation ConocoPhillips, where he worked with Donald R. Duncan, the top Washington D.C.

Griles then got himself into a romantic relationship with an Assistant Attorney General working at the Department of Justice under Alberto Gonzales. This Assistant Attorney General, Sue Ellen Wooldridge, was in charge of prosecuting violations of environmental laws. When Ms. Wooldridge became the live-in girlfriend of Stephen Griles, all of a sudden, ConocoPhillips was given the chance to evade prosecution for violating environmental laws and endangering the public health.

What could convince Sue Ellen Wooldridge to halt the impending prosecution of ConocoPhillips? It just so happens that, around this time, Ms. Woodridge, Stephen Griles and Donald Duncan bought a vacation home "together". The vacation home cost $980,000.

Companies like ConocoPhillips make a lot of money by evading the law and doing dirty business on the cheap, polluting our air, our water, and our soil. Progressives understand that the filth of the pollution industry rubs off onto the American political system wherever it grabs a hold. Progressives want to clean up the political system by holding polluters to account. Right wingers claim that the kind of dirty backroom dealing done by Sue Ellen Wooldridge, Stephen Griles and Donald Duncan is just the way the game is played.

In 2008, you get to choose which vision gets your support. (Source: Las Vegas Sun, March 23, 2007)

For the first time ever, Oceana has tallied the number of sea turtles that the US government allows to be killed and injured every year. What they found: The allowed kill of sea turtles is nearly 10,000 every year. The number of sea turtles that are allowed by our government to be injured per year is about 334,000.

This massive slaughter and maiming of sea turtles in US waters takes place with government permission, in spite of the fact that every species of sea turtle in US waters is under legal protection from two federal laws: The Endangered Species Act and the Magnuson-Stevens Act. The Magnuson-Stevens Act requires commercial fishing operations in US waters to reduce bycatch to lowest practicable amount. Nonetheless, the fishery management plans agreed to and proposed by the Bush Administration do not even take turtle bycatch into account.

In US waters, the olive ridley sea turtle and the loggerhead sea turtle are registered as threatened species. The kempÍs ridley sea turtle, the leatherback sea turtle and the hawksbill sea turtle are registered as endangered species. The green sea turtle is listed as endangered in Florida's waters, and threatened elsewhere. The Endangered Species Act requires the federal government to take action to reduce harmful human activities against these turtles to a level that will not threaten the ability of the species to survive. However, the Bush Administration has not been keeping track of the impact of the cumulative allowances it gives for killing and injuring sea turtles, much less studying the impact of those cululative allowances upon the six species of sea turtles in US waters. Furthermore, even when commercial fishing operations go beyond government allowances for killing and injuring endangered sea turtles, the Bush Administration refuses to stop the fishing operations from continuing to kill and injure even more turtles.

The Bush Administration doesn't follow the laws that protect America's endangered and threatened sea turtles, and President George W. Bush doesn't seem to care enough about the problem to reform how the government does its business. In 2008, we need to elect a President who understands enough about the threats to marine ecosystems to bring the government into accordance with the law. (Source: Net Casualties, Oceana, October 2006)

I was thinking about animal welfare and human welfare this morning when I took my kids up to their grandmother's house, taking New York State route 89, which cuts through the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge. There, I saw a pair of ospreys, and stopped the car so that my oldest son could watch as the two birds gathered sticks to make a nest on top of a telephone pole.

This morning, I read a story about a very different kind of osprey. This other osprey is not a bird, but a military aircraft called the V22 Osprey. This Osprey is supposed to have the qualities of both a helicopter and an airplane, making it especially effective at bringing American soldiers into the thick of a battle, and then speeding away. The trouble is the that V22 Osprey doesn't work very well. It's prone to crashes, having killed 30 soldiers and injured others during test flights. The US Marine Corps leadership, supported by right wing politicians, is stubbornly insisting that the V22 Osprey be deployed in Iraq anyway.

So, on the one hand, you have environmentalists who place special value on animals like the osprey. On the other hand, you have right wing militarists who place special value on error-prone, mutlibillion dollar gadgets designed to help people kill other people, like the V22 Osprey.

I have no trouble choosing between these two different sets of values. I'm interested in animals, not in weapons. Progressives are environmentalists, and so they tend to share this preference with me. I'm looking for a good progressive candidate for President in 2008, because I'd like to see a someone in the Oval Office who sees that life for people would be better if our government would spend more money protecting habitat for wild animals, and waste less money protecting the turf of power elites who profit from military spending programs gone wild. (Source: New York Times, April 14, 2007)

Some people have reacted to the latest IPCC report by labeling the scientists a group of wild and crazy fools:

...the fact remains that the promoters of the global warming and climate change movement have intentionally distorted whatever scientific basis there might be and persist in making wild and unjustified claims of achieving levels of certainty that are "beyond challenge" so as to make a mockery of any actual science mis-used to justify the claims of their political and social movement.

The scientists of the IPCC are biased. But the above passage shows a misunderstanding about the sort of bias harbored by climate scientists. Climate scientists actually harbor a conservative bias. Theirs is a probabilistic science, in which theoretical models are built and assessed against available data. A model is typically accepted only if the probability of observations matching reality by chance alone is less than 5%, or less than 1% for claims of strong statistical significance. The bias in this approach is highly skeptical, only willing to embrace a model when the probability of it being wrong is not just low, or really low, but really, really low.

And so we shouldn't be surprised when we find out that the scientific consensus on global warming turns out to be, if anything, too conservative:

"Arctic ice is melting faster than computer models of climate calculate, according to a group of US researchers.

Since 1979, the Arctic has been losing summer ice at about 9% per decade, but models on average produce a melting rate less than half that figure.

The scientists suggest forecasts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) may be too cautious.

The latest observations indicate that Arctic summers could be ice-free by the middle of the century."

(Sources: Jack Krupansky, April 7, 2007; BBC, April 30, 2007)

Why elect a progressive President in 2008? Do it for your lungs.

Do your lungs feel okay? Well, okay then. Do it for the lungs of the people living in the following metropolitan areas, ranked the 10 worst in all of the USA for air pollution by the American Lung Association.

1. Los Angeles, California
2. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
3. Bakersfield, California
4. Birmingham, Alabama
5. Detroit, Michigan
6. Cleveland, Ohio
7. Visalia, California
8. Cincinnati, Ohio
9. Indianapolis, Indiana
10. St. Louis, Missouri

People in these urban areas are suffering. Of course, that doesn't mean that the rest of us aren't suffering too. Even rural areas have to deal with smog blown in from concentrated population centers.

We should all have the right to breathe and not get sick from it. Someone else's profits are not worth our own disease and death. Progressives have been working for that principle for generations, and we keep up that work today. Remember that in 2008, before you take a deep breath and step into the voting booth. (Source: Canadian Press, May 1, 2007)

It's audacious, when you think about it, that right wingers accuse environmentalists of promoting a radical agenda. What's radical, after all, about protecting our ability to survive on the only planet we know that is capable of serving as our home?

I thought about this yesterday as I hung a basket of laundry out on the clothesline to dry. Pick the extremist act out of the following two choices:

1. Taking wet clothes and hanging them out in the sun to dry
2. Taking wet clothes and putting them into a noisy machine that turns them around and around while blowing hot air through them, powered by electricity created by burning the remains of ancient living things

Environmentalism is really about a few basic things that most people agree on: Cleanliness, simplicity, and efficiency. The values of environmentalists are the values of the clothesline, an old American tradition that lead us back from the brink of the radical world created when we pollute the sky in order to clean our clothes.

Americans were using zero emissions solar power generations ago. Isn't it time we reconsidered our reckless abandonment of the traditional approach to energy?

What do birds, bats, antelopes, whales, and turtles have in common? There are migratory species among all these kinds of of mammals that have had their lives turned around by climate change. These animals' biological clocks, tuned over tens of thousands of years to the present climate, don't match reality any more. So, they're turning up in places where conditions can turn deadly for them very easily, and very quickly.

It's not just conjecture to say this. These are the scientific conclusions reported by the United Nations Convention on Migratory Species this year.

The right wing has given us a generation of nothing more than denial of and excuses for global climate change. The progressives have been calling for strong action of climate change all along.

Help set animal migration back on course. Help elect a progressive President in 2008. (Source: Reuters, May 7, 2007)

Anti-environmentalists are willing to say just about anything to stop the protection of America's natural resources. One anti-environmental activist, aligned with a pro-industry agenda in the Republican Party, even tried out the following line: "What's happening out there is nothing less than the eviction of the only endangered species really in Montana, and that's the working Montana family. We're going to have 30 percent unemployment, and long with that comes wife-batterment and child molestation, and all the rest of it. Now, do you think environmentalists give a damn about the fact that kids are going to be molested?"

Environmental protection does not lead to child molestation or wife beating. Only a fool would make that claim. Let's elect a progressive President in 2008, so that we'll have a White House that doesn't make political allegiances with that kind of fool. (Source: Richard Wallace, Ethical Spectacle, January, 1996)

In 1992, George H. W. Bush tried to win re-election by casting owls as the enemy of America. He complained of Al Gore, then running for Vice President, "This guy is so far out in the environmental extreme, we'll be up to our necks in owls and out of work for every American."

Well, it's fifteen years since the first President Bush made that comment accusing Al Gore of being an environmental extremist. Since then, it's Al Gore's position on the environment that has been vindicated, not President Bush's.

It's true that, in the meantime, the Republicans have done their level best to keep the owl threat at bay. Progressives, on the other hands, have kept their attention on other threats, like the threat of global warming.

If you want a President who can understand that global warming is a more serious threat to America than owls, elect a progressive in 2008. (Source: Sierra Magazine, September/October 2006)

This year, the Center for Biological Diversity described the presidency of George W. Bush as waging "a war on wildlife". One of the reasons: As of May 9, 2007, an entire year had passed without the Bush Administration granting protection to a single endangered species.

It isn't because endangered species don't exist. There are currently 279 species recognized as candidates for protection as threatened or endangered species. These species have been waiting an average of 19 years for protection, sliding closer and closer to extinction all the while.

Stop the right wing's war on wildlife. Elect a progressive President in 2008. (Sources: Politicizing Extinction, Center for Biological Diversity, May 9, 2007; Press release, Center for Biological Diversity, May 9, 2007)

There has been a kind of desperation in the camp of global warming deniers over the last several years, as the accumulation of scientific research confirming the reality of global climate change and its link to human activities has become even more monumental in its scope than it had been before. Those who advocate the preservation of the old, pollution-dependent economy have begun grasping at straws.

One of the most pathetic of those straws has been the claim that plants, and not people are to blame for global warming. The line of argument has gone like this:

1. Methane is a greenhouse gas.
2. Plants have been found to produce methane.
3. Therefore, plants, not people, are to blame for global warming.

This interesting argument against human responsibility for global warming has been firmly contradicted by a study released this year that finds that plants are not a significant producers of methane after all, and are thus not responsible for global warming. An earlier study which indicated that plants might be the source for up to 30 percent of atmospheric methane did not use methods to track the actual source of methane, as the more recent study did, and is likely to have been the result of mistaken readings.

The fact is that no scientist has been able to come up with an explanation for how a plant could produce methane. "There's no physical mechanism or way for plants to produce methane," a scientist from Plant Research International explains.

While right wingers are busy trying to find tiny shreds of justification for not solving the problem of global climate change, progressives have been busy looking for solutions. One more myth about global warming debunked is one more reason to elect a progressive President in 2008. (Source: Live Science, May 8, 2007)

Arnold Schwarzenegger wants you to think that he's an environmentally-friendly kind of politician. A couple of years ago, he promised that, under his leadership, "California will be a leader in the fight against global warming."

It all sounded so great, the idea that Schwarzenegger would help lead the fight against global warming, even though he's a member of the traditionally anti-environmental Republican Party. Unfortunately, it seems that Schwarzenegger can't be counted upon to follow up his rhetoric with consistent action.

In May, 2007, Arnold Schwarzenegger announced that, in order to avoid raising taxes on wealthy constituents, he would take 1.3 billion dollars out of a fund for public transportation. The move will result in increased fares for bus and rail lines, closed public transit lines, decreased usage of public transportation, and more cars on the road spewing greenhouse gases into the air. When he talks, Arnold Schwarzenegger seems to be against global warming. When he acts, he doesn't seem to give a damn.

Arnold Schwarzenegger also announced that his government will stop all of its contributions to the enforcement of the Williamson Act, which preserves green spaces and defends the California countryside against suburban sprawl. Schwarzenegger's pro-sprawl agenda means more roads with more cars and more traffic filling up the California landscape. I guess Schwarzenegger wants to give smog a chance.

Arnold Schwarzenegger teaches us this essential lesson: You just can't trust a Republican to do what's right when it comes to the environment. He always was a bad actor. (Sources: Associated Press, June 2, 2005; San Jose Mercury News, May 15, 2007)

One of the reasons that I enjoy being a progressive activist is that it makes me feel good to find people who are interested in doing things to make the world a better place through their own actions, and encouraging other people to do so as well. I found one such group of people this afternoon when I found the web siteOne Hour No Power.

The progressive activists at One Hour No Power are asking people to start with one small simple act to fight global warming. They are asking individuals and businesses to turn off all their non-vital electronic equipment between noon and 1 PM on Sunday, July 1st, 2007.

This one hour is a statement of power, a reminder to ourselves that we have the power to say no to the habit of using energy wastefully. We have the power to slow down, and then stop, global warming. We don't need to use power made by polluting technologies all the times. There are other things we can do.

One hour without power won't solve the problems of pollution and global climate change. One hour, however, is a good place to start. Heck, make it two hours, if you like. After a couple of hours, you just might find that the temptation to flip the switch back on grows smaller and smaller.

When we work together, even one hour without polluting power makes a difference. Keep that notion alive for the 2008 presidential election. When you vote for a progressive President in 2008, you'll be joining the company of millions of other people who believe that the contributions of every person count, no matter how small. Your vote, on its own, may be small, but with others like it, it creates an irresistible force.

On May 15, 2007, Senator John Kerry offered an amendment (S.Amdt. 1094 to S.Amdt. 1065 to to H.R. 1495) that would have required the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to consider the impact of climate change when designing water projects. The impact of climate change upon water projects is likely to be considerable, when it comes to matters such as the effect of storms and flooding. The Army Corps of Engineers has a bad record of taking relevant factors into account when it comes to such matters, and Kerry's amendment sought to strengthen their work.

It was a quite sensible amendment for John Kerry to make, and I am glad to see that all four Democratic senators who were running for President of the United States voted in favor of it. I am disappointed, however, to see that both Republican senators running for President, Sam Brownback and John McCain, ran scared from the legislation.

Neither Senator Brownback nor John McCain voted for the amendment to help the government deal with the impacts of global warming. In fact, neither one of them voted on the amendment at all. They were either too scared, or too lazy, to deal with the issue of global warming. That's not the kind of attitude we need from our next President of the United States. (Source: Library of Congress)

The creator of Some Prepared Remarks has a good point when he writes, "It's pretty amazing that our society has reached a point where the effort necessary to extract oil from the ground, ship it to a refinery, turn it into plastic, shape it appropriately, truck it to a store, buy it, and bring it home is considered to be less effort than what it takes to just wash the spoon when you're done with it."

Progressives emphasize the mutual responsibility we have to use the objects our civilization creates in a less wasteful manner. Progressives' right wing opponents emphasize the right of people to be as wasteful as they want, destroying the objects created by our civilization at will.

For generations, we've tried the wasteful, destructive approach, and it has made a mess of things. Let's give mutual responsibility a try this time around. (Source: SomePreparedRemarks.com)

This year, before plunging into the southern hemisphere's winter, Antarctica turned downright balmy, with high temperatures of 41 degrees Fahrenheit. Imagine going to Antarctica without a coat on, and feeling nice and comfortable, and you've got the right idea of what's been going on there.

The result was patches of Antarctica with a collective surface area the size of California melted, with some of that freshwater melt heading toward the ocean, or lubricating ice sheets, increasing the chances that the ice sheets will break up and fall into the ocean. If that happens, not only will sea levels rise dramatically, ocean currents will be drastically altered as well, changing weather patterns around the world.

We cannot wait around for right wing politicians to finally muster half-hearted plans to lower greenhouse gases a few percentage points decades from now. We need serious action to confront climate change now. No one but a progressive President will have the resolve to confront the threat posed by the melting of Antarctica. (Source: LiveScience, May 15, 2007)

In May, 2007, CBS News sported the inaccurate headline Bush Acts On Greenhouse Gas Issue two days ago. If you read the actual text of George W. Bush's announcement, you'll know why I just used the adjective "inaccurate" to describe that headline. Here's part of what President Bush said:

I'm directing the EPA and the Department of Transportation, Energy, and Agriculture to take the first steps toward regulations that would cut gasoline consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles, using my 20-in-10 plan as a starting point.

Developing these regulations will require coordination across many different areas of expertise. Today, I signed an executive order directing all our agencies represented here today to work together on this proposal. I've also asked them to listen to public input, to carefully consider safety, science, and available technologies, and evaluate the benefits and costs before they put forth the new regulation.

This is a complicated legal and technical matter, and it's going to take time to fully resolve. Yet it is important to move forward, so I have directed members of my administration to complete the process by the end of 2008.

Let's gut the PR mumbo jumbo and cut to the chase: George W. Bush is directing his administration to have written up proposals for regulations on greenhouse gas emissions by the end of 2008, three weeks before he leaves office. He hasn't promised to actually implement regulations. In fact, by his timeline Bush has actively promised to not implement any regulations on greenhouse gas emissions before the year 2009, which is when he leaves office and a new president enters office. Usually, new presidents like to implement their own policies, which means the whole rigamarole begins again. Get it?

As a candidate in 2000 George W. Bush promised to implement regulations to cut greenhouse gas emissions upon taking office. He broke that promise. Now, seven years later, George W. Bush is promising to not implement regulations to cut greenhouse gas emissions until 2009, when another president will take office. I'd like to believe that since George W. Bush has promised this, and George W. Bush doesn't exactly have a stellar record when it comes to keeping his promises, this somehow means we'll actually get a regulation before he leaves office. But I think this time Bush intends to keep his promise to do nothing.

Enough bullshit, I say. It's time to elect a president who will admit the obvious, make a promise, keep it, and do something to protect our nation's long-term environmental interests. (Sources: CBS News, May 14, 2007; Statement at White House by George W. Bush on May 14, 2007)

Climate models predicting disastrous consequences for humanity because of global warming have depended upon assumptions that the ocean around Antarctica would be able to absorb increasing amounts of carbon dioxide as levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increase. Those assumptions were wrong, according to a collaborative study by the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry and the British Antarctic Survey.

Unfortunately, the presumptions about southern ocean carbon dioxide absorption did not exaggerate the likely rate of global warming in years to come. They minimized it.

At the very time when carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere have increased, the oceans around Antarctica have been aborbing progressively less carbon dioxide with each passing decade. That means that hopes that the Earth's southern oceans would help slow the rate of global warming are unfounded.

The result for humanity may be catastrophic, unless work to reduce the extent of global warming starts very soon. Cosmos magazine cites a researcher who works for Australia's national science agency as indicating that, "Stabilising CO2 below catastrophic levels will be more difficult to achieve than was previously thought."

Pay attention to the choice of adjective in their reporting: Catastrophic. When you think about the potential consequences for not voting for a progressive President, one ready to deal with global climate change, in 2008, and you need to start thinking about catastrophes. (Source: Cosmos, May 18, 2007)

When they hear about global climate research that suggests that global warming will magnify the intensity of storms, right wing apologists for inaction huff and puff, protesting that such effects won't be seen for generations if at all.

They're wrong, and that's not just my opinion. It's proven by scientific research conducted jointly by the British Antarctic Survey and the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry. Their research shows that storms in the oceans surrounding Antarctica have been intensifying and shifting in their courses to create more turbulent surface waters since 1958.

The Earth's southern storms have been warning us about the consequences of climate change since 1958, and right wing politicians still won't heed to the warning. In 2008, vote for a presidential candidate who has enough sense to heed the decades of warnings about global warming. Help elect a progressive President. (Source: Cosmos, May 18, 2007)

It's a small inconvenience, in the large scheme of things, but it is one more little reason in our long list of reasons to elect a progressive President in 2008: Officially designated state flowers and state trees are likely to leave their home states and shift to different habitats as a result of climate change. As some areas get wetter, others get more dry, and most places in the United States get warmer in the years to come, many plants will no longer grow in their traditional ranges, and will shift to new ranges or wither away.

For example, in Delaware, both the state flower (the peach blossom), and the state tree (the American holly), are likely to have a lot of trouble growing in the future. That's the conclusion of a fifty-state review by the National Wildlife Federation. The review found that, while some state flowers and trees will be able to stay put, many are likely to move out of their sponsor states altogether, if global warming heats up as expected.

Thirty states could lose their state flower or state tree, or both. It took state legislatures long enough to pick state flowers and state trees in the first place. They shouldn't have to do it again. Electing a progressive President in 2008 will help prevent this embarrassing problem from taking place by instituting policies that can slow down climate change, and maybe, eventually, bring temperatures back to normal. (Source: National Wildlife Federation, Gardener's Guide to Global Warming, 2007)

You've heard the astonishing predictions of catastrophes resulting from global climate change provoked by increases in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a team of talented scientists assembled by the United Nations, has shocked the world with its detailed, research-based, assessments of extreme damage to human civilization that are likely to result from global warming.

In spite of all the evidence, and all the research, right wingers continue to dismiss global warming as a fantasy. Scientists, they say, are biased when it comes to global warming. Well, yes, scientists do have a bias. Scientists have an inherently conservative bias in their rigorous methods that leads them to err on the side of dismissing ideas such as global warming. It is in spite of this bias that the scientific bias has concluded that global warming is real, is largely caused by human factors, and presents a grave threat to human civilization. Effects of global climate change that are even more serious than the scientists predict are therefore quite possible.

A new study by Australia's national science agency supports this idea with cold, hard facts. The Australian scientists have found that carbon dioxide emissions have increased at an even greater rate than what the scientists working on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change described as a worst case scenario.

That means that everything you've heard about the future of global warming was wrong. It's going to be even worse. (Source: Cosmos Magazine, May 22, 2007)

When judging the character of Mitt Romney's presidential campaign, it's useful to consider the headline of one of the press releases his aides issued this spring: "In Case You Missed It: Governor Mitt Romney's Message Resonating With The American People". Yes, that's the actual title.

It's not an accident that voters just might not be able to tell that Mitt Romney's message is resonating with the American People. Mitt Romney's message is too far off target with the real concerns of American citizens to have a chance of resonating.

Take the issue of global warming, for instance. Americans who pay attention to the news are very concerned about global warming, and with good reason. With every passing year, there's more cause for concern about the future, and more real damage taking place in the present. Global warming is an obvious fact, and it's a significant impact upon people's lives right now.

Mitt Romney, however, just hasn't seemed to notice. I did a Google search for the phrase "global warming" on Mitt Romney's campaign web site, and only two pages came up. One of those hits was a complaint by a reader that Mitt Romney wasn't saying anything about his plans for dealing with environmental threats. The other was a short news item in which Romney complained that "some in the Republican Party are embracing the radical environmental ideas of the liberal left," and protested that "Kyoto- style sweeping mandates, imposed unilaterally in the United States, would kill jobs, depress growth and shift manufacturing to the dirtiest developing nations. Republicans should never abandon pro-growth conservative principles in an effort to embrace the ideas of Al Gore."

Oh, dear. Has Mitt Romney still not figured out that the whole point of the Kyoto protocol was that it was a cooperative effort between nations, not imposed unilaterally? If Mitt Romney still doesn't accept the reality of the global warming threat, I guess he thinks that scientific research is just another one of those "ideas of the liberal left".

In case you missed it, Mr. Romney: The grave threat of global warming has now been accepted even by George W. Bush. Get on the problem, or get off the ballot. (Source: MittRomney.com)

Right wing apologists for the wasteful, outdated fossil fuel economy accuse progressives of being alarmist about global warming. When progressives say that climate change will provoke warfare over dwindling resources, the right wingers say that it's just a fantasy.

The truth is that warfare provoked by deprivation linked to climate change is not a fantasy about the future. It's happening right now.

Jeffrey Sachs of the Earth Institute at Columbia University writes, "The severe decline in precipitation in the African Sahel during the past 30 years seems to be related to both anthropogenic warming and aerosol pollution. The violence in Darfur and Somalia is fundamentally related to food and water insecurity. Ivory Coast's civil war stems, at least in part, from ethnic clashes after people fled the northern drylands of Burkina Faso for the coast."

The climate-provoked violence that right wingers deny will ever happen is already a reality. Right wing ideology on the environment is so stuck in the past that it argues that the present will never take place in the future. (Source: Scientific American, June 2007)

You know it's hurricane season when the speed of the spin on global warming coming out of the Bush White House reaches gale force.

The headlines in the newspapers read: "Bush Calls For Plans To Fight Global Warming".

The truth: George W. Bush is calling upon world leaders to delay for a year and a half before even talking about doing anything about global warming.

Bush says he thinks global leaders should have proposals for how to fight global warming by the end of 2008. However, global leaders already presented Bush with a plan they agree upon for how to fight global warming, just a few days ago.

George W. Bush said no. He didn't want to act on global warming with other world leaders.

So now, Bush comes out with the supposedly bold proposal of just thinking about global warming for another 18 months, after which, not so coincidentally, it will be time for Bush to leave office.

That's not a bold proposal. It's an old proposal. The only thing Bush is really calling for when it comes to global warming is more of the same: A whole lot of nothing. (Source: NPR, May 31, 2007)

Maybe you're the fun-loving type who doesn't take a natural interest in politics. Maybe you'd prefer to take a trip to the beach than watch a presidential debate.

If so, I propose to you the idea that you're making a false distinction between fun and politics. The truth is that, politics is necessary in order to preserve the ability to have fun.

Here's an example: In Spain, the tourist industry is in trouble because Spanish beaches are being swarmed with huge numbers of jellyfish. The jellyfish are reproducing in immense numbers because the fish that are their predators and competitors have been stripped from the Atlantic ocean by overfishing. Also contributing to the problem is climate change. Jellyfish grow and reproduce faster in warmer waters.

Local authorities are trying to organize armadas of boats to scoop up the jellyfish as they move toward popular beaches, but it's not at all clear that their efforts will solve the problem.

Beaches covered with slimy, stinging jellyfish are no fun. How, can the problem be solved, though? Politics has to be part of the answer. Individual actions are not enough clear an ocean of jellyfish, or bring back the fish that are on the verge of being driven extinct. An organized, large-scale solution is needed, and creating organized, large-scale solutions is what politics is for.

Of course, not just any politics will do. Some kinds of politics are part of the problem. Right wing politicians have defended the ability of immense fishing operations to strip the oceans of fish for the sake of profit. For decades, they have opposed doing anything about climate change, even denying that the problem exists.

Progressives, on the other hand, have been urging action on the problems of overfishing and global warming for years. If political power had been in progressive hands, problems like jellyfish swarming the beaches of Spain could have been avoided.

It might be too late to salvage the Spanish beaches this summer, but we still have the summers of the future to think of. Vote to protect a day of fun at the beach. Help elect a progressive President in 2008. (Source: Associated Press, June 9, 2007)

One of the problems in the public perception of global warming is that people have yet to make the connection between changes in the climate and changes in their own lives. Warming, as a concept, seems mild. If it gets warmer, after all, then can't we just use more air conditioning to stay cool inside our houses?

A more attentive consideration of the relationship between weather and our lives reveals many more serious impacts from increasing global temperatures. Consider, for example, thunderstorms.

Thunderstorms and our transportation infrastructure don't mix well. I was reminded of this last summer, when I was trapped by the weather several times while trying to fly across the country on business.

Severe thunderstorms, with high winds and large hailstones, were a problem across the United States last week. Many of my flights were significantly delayed, and some was cancelled, due to these thunderstorms. One time, there were so many travellers with cancelled flights that, by the time I tried to find a hotel room, they were all booked, and I had to try to sleep on the floor of the airport.

With continuing increases in global warming, we can expect to see a lot more people sleeping on the floor, trapped in airports overnight. More stormy weather, as is expected with continuing global warming, doesn't mean just damage to structures on the ground. It means the grounding of air travel.

The airline industry is already proving unable to deal with the level of thunderstorms that exists at present. How great will the chaos in our travel infrastructure be with increased storms due to global warming?

In spite of decades of mounting evidence of a coming significant shift in climate, right wingers have counseled inaction. It's been the progressives who have pushed for the kind of action that could have begun to reduce the impact of the climate crisis a long time ago.

The Audubon Society has just released the results of an analysis of its annual Christmas Bird Count plus the Breeding Bird Survey. Their findings indicate that the populations of 20 previously common bird species have, on average, declined by 50 percent over the last 40 years.

Birds like the shrike, the field sparrow, and even the grackle are seen far less often now than they were in the past. The specific reasons are different for each species, but include global warming, habitat destruction, insect outbreaks, and the increased number of forest fires that are occuring with the acceleration of climate change.

These birds are like canaries in a mineshaft. Their decline warns us that the Earth is growing less able to support animal life. We humans are animals too, so this trend ought to concern us very much.

For decades, right wing politicians inspired by an industrial ideology have done whatever they could to obstruct solutions to the ecological problems that we face along with the birds that used to be common in our backyards. Progressive activists, on the other hand, have been calling for responsible action to confront the impoverishment of life on Earth before it's too late.

Look to the skies and listen to the birds at Christmastime. Then, vote to elect a progressive President. (Source: National Audubon Society, Common Birds In Decline, June 2007)

For the sake of life on planet Earth, the United States needs to elect a new President in 2008 who is not politically dependent upon right-wing religious groups like the Southern Baptists. When the Southern Baptist Convention met this year, they decided to pass a resolution declaring that there is not yet sufficient reason to think that global warming is caused by human activity, and so controls on carbon dioxide pollution ought not to be mandatory.

On what basis did the Southern Baptist Convention make this decision? The Southern Baptist Convention has no scientific credentials. It's a religious organization that bases its vision of reality upon the teachings of a book that's about two thousand years old, claiming to be the holy teachings of a divine being and his prophets.

What did Jesus have to say about global warming? Absolutely nothing. The writers of the Bible knew next to nothing about climatology, much less the events to come in our own time, due to the impact of future technology that they could not imagine. The Bible and its teachings are thus profoundly out of date as a sourcebook of instructions about how to interpret and cope with global warming.

That obvious fact does not dissuade the Southern Baptist Convention from proclaiming religious truths about global warming, of course. That's because the Southern Baptist Convention is not just a religious group. It's also part of the Republican political coalition, and as such, is motivated to justify the actions of its Republican allies in corporate America. Never minding what Jesus is supposed to have said about a rich man and the eye of a needle, the Southern Baptists are politically aligned with the rich and powerful.

So, if the rich and powerful leaders of American corporations need the Southern Baptists to proclaim religious edicts about the science of global warming, the Southern Baptist Convention is happy to do so. America needs to break free of the binds that this profit-based faith have placed on our ability to react to the defining crisis of our time.

George W. Bush issued a proclamation back in 2002 that the Navy could go ahead and use ultra-powerful sonar detection technology, even though it's quite likely that the suped-up sonar interferes with the ability of whales throughout the ocean to communicate with each other, thus ruining their navigation and destroying the coherence of their social groups. So much for Bush's family values. The thing is that there's even reason to believe that the sonar can KILL whales, which have very sensitive auditory systems that they use to perceive their murky underwater environment through echolocation (We know, Mr. Bush, it's a big word - say it slowly).

Bush justifies destroying the set of environmental regulations by citing national security needs - he says it's important for the U.S. Navy to be able to detect the latest generation of quiet enemy submarines. In this post-September 11 world, after all, we must be willing to sacrifice... Oh, BULL! Does King George the W really expect us to believe that a bunch of Al-Qaeda terrorists have the latest generation of quiet submarines, or any submarines at all, for that matter?!?! What a bunch of baloney! We need to protect against super hi-tech enemy submarines, huh? What enemy does the United States have that possesses such technology? This project is just another example of the kind of military pork barrel spending that Republicans love to stuff the budget with.

Oh wait, I know what you're thinking: You never know. Better safe than sorry. There COULD be a terrorist super hi-tech quiet submarine attack, and if it COULD happen it is our DUTY to do EVERYTHING to prevent such a thing from EVER occurring, no matter what the cost. Of course, there's no evidence that such an attack has been planned, or that it is even possible for terrorist organizations to get a great big expensive hi-tech submarine that can only be detected with the Navy's latest super-duper whale-pulverizing sonar, but it COULD happen, and if it COULD happen, then it's our patriotic duty to let George W. do whatever he wants, right?

Wrong. It's always been wrong, and it's high time we started to reverse the wrong. (Source: Washington Post February 28 2005)

Congressman and Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich has joined a small group of members of the House of Representatives who are willing to take the American government beyond merely talking about global warming. Representative Kucinich and his allies are supporting H.R.2635, the Carbon- Neutral Government Act of 2007.

The United States Federal Government is the largest single consumer of energy in the country. So, reduction of energy consumption by the federal government could significantly slow down the rate of global climate change we will have to endure.

With that in mind, the Carbon-Neutral Government Act would require the federal government to assess its energy usage, and then take significant steps to reduce its energy usage, with the goal of reducing energy and investing in environmental projects to counter carbon emissions to become carbon neutral.

Thanks to Dennis Kucinich and his colleagues who have co-sponsored the Carbon-Neutral Government Act. They are:

Henry Waxman (original sponsor)
Bruce Braley
William Lacy Clay
Elijah Cummings
Paul Hodes
Stephen Lynch
Carolyn Maloney
Betty McCollum
Eleanor Holmes Norton
John Sarbanes
Chris Van Hollen
Diane Watson
Peter Welch
John Yarmuth

No thanks go out to the three other members of the United States House of Representatives who are running for President and have not co-sponsored this legislation.

Republicans Duncan Hunter, Tom Tancredo and Ron Paul have not given their support to the Carbon- Neutral Government Act. Yes, Ron Paul included. That shows you the difference between a genuine progressive politician and someone who once in a while adopts a progressive pose for the sake of political gain. (Sources: Library of Congress; House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, June 12, 2007)

Fred Thompson seems to suffer from the same compulsion to distort science for political purposes that afflicts George W. Bush. In March, 2007, Thompson got on the radio and offered up the following analysis of global warming:

"Some people think that our planet is suffering from a fever. Now scientists are telling us that Mars is experiencing its own planetary warming: Martian warming. It seems scientists have noticed recently that quite a few planets in our solar system seem to be heating up a bit, including Pluto... This has led some people, not necessarily scientists, to wonder if Mars and Jupiter, non signatories to the Kyoto Treaty, are actually inhabited by alien SUV-driving industrialists who run their air-conditioning at 60 degrees and refuse to recycle."

Fred Thompson's point is that he believes that global warming on Earth is due to non-human factors that are simultaneously affecting all of the planets in the solar system. The suggested non-human factor that Thompson alludes to when he refers to what "scientists are telling us" is the sun. Thompson refers to the claim from a Russian scientist at the Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory that fluctuations in the sun are causing global warming on both Mars and the Earth.

In order to promote that claim, Fred Thompson engages in some not-very honest rhetoric that purposefully leads people away from the facts. Take Thompson's claim that "quite a few planets in our solar system seem to be heating up a bit, including Pluto". Let's accept, for the moment, that this claim is true. Does it still justify Fred Thompson's belief that global warming is not due to human activity?

To make such a conclusion would be akin to a doctor examining a patient with symptoms of an appendicitis, but then remarking that a lot of the other people in the waiting room appear to be sick too, but don't seem to be suffering an appendicitis, so therefore this particular patient doesn't have an appendicitis either. When you follow the entire argument that Fred Thompson implies, it's obviously absurd. But then, Thompson doesn't make the full argument. As so often happens in politics, Thompson just makes a few points, leaving out the connecting ideas between them for his audience to fill in without the benefit of full consideration.

The primary unstated premise of Fred Thompson's commentary is that if two or more planets are experiencing a warming climate, the same thing must be causing the climate to warm. Another premise that Fred Thompson suggests but does not explicitly state is that, because there is a warming climate on Mars and Jupiter as well as on Earth, and there are only humans on Earth, but not on Mars and Jupiter, humans cannot be the cause of the warming climate of the Earth.

To repeat the analogy of the doctor's office, this suggestion is like a doctor seeing three patients with severely upset stomachs, one of whom ate a burger with mayonnaise that had been sitting out in the sun for the entire afternoon, discovering that the other two patients did not eat anything with mayonnaise all week, and then declaring that the first patient could not have gotten food poisoning from the mayonnaise. Both the fictional doctor and Fred Thompson are engaged in some very sloppy thinking.

Besides, the available science doesn't really support Fred Thompson's implication that the sun, and not people, are to blame for the warming climate on Earth. For one thing, though Fred Thompson says that scientists are observing an increasing global temperature on Jupiter, that's not really true. What scientists have observed are increasing storm activity on Jupiter that fits into climate models of Jupter that already exist, and have no necessary connection to warming Jovian temperatures at all.

Then there's the matter of the shrinking polar ice caps on Mars. The claims of that Russian scientist that the sun is to blame for warming on Mars have been debunked. Jeffrey Plaut, a NASA scientist who works on Mars projects explains, "It's believed that what drives climate change on Mars are orbital variations."

Anyway, shrinking polar caps are not the same thing as global warming on Mars. After all, the poles are just two small regions on the planet of Mars. "Recently, there have been some suggestions that "global warming" has been observed on Mars. These are based on observations of regional change around the South Polar Cap, but seem to have been extended into a "global" change, and used by some to infer an external common mechanism for global warming on Earth and Mars. But this is incorrect reasoning and based on faulty understanding of the data," says Steinn Sigurdsson, of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State University. Sigurdsson concludes, "The observed regional changes in south polar ice cover are almost certainly due to a regional climate transition, not a global phenomenon, and are demonstrably unrelated to external forcing. There is a slight irony in people rushing to claim that the glacier changes on Mars are a sure sign of global warming, while not being swayed by the much more persuasive analogous phenomena here on Earth."

As for the suggestion that climate change on Earth in particular is due to changes in the energy the planet is receiving from the sun, climate physicist Charles Long, who has studied the interaction of energy from the sun and the Earth's climate, says, "It doesn't make physical sense that that's the case." Long has noted a period of dimming of the energy from the Sun, due in part to aerosols in the atmosphere, during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The Earth's average global temperature didn't decrease during those decades. It increased.

In order to establish a credible scientific theory that changes in the sun are the cause for warming climate on planets throughout the solar system, it would be necessary to find warming happening on all the planets, not just a few planets. Furthermore, the climate warming would have to be observed taking place at a rate relative to the distance of the planets from the sun. That kind of evidence for the solar theory of climate change does not exist.

The math to back up Fred Thompson's claims about solar activity being the cause for Earth's climate change just isn't there. Michael Mann, a meteorologist at Penn State University who describes the solar theory of global warming as "one of the last bastions of contrarians", explains that the amount of observed change in the sun is inadequate to support the ideas proposed by people like Thompson. He says, "The small measured changes in solar output and variations from one decade to the next are only on the order of a fraction of a percent, and if you do the calculations not even large enough to really provide a detectable signal in the surface temperature record."

Fred Thompson has the fame that enables him to get on the radio and comment on subjects like global warming. Thompson may hope to use such opportunities to gain positive attention from voters. However, for the careful listener, Thompson's comments expose him as the kind of politician who fails to think carefully about the issues of the day, but merely browses for tidbits that are politically convenient for him, happy to use discredited ideas and sloppy logic to persuade people to follow him even though he doesn't really know where he is going. (Sources: National Review Online, March 22, 2007; Live Science, March 12, 2007; Real Climate, October 5, 2005)

On June 25, 2007, a United States Senator rose to the floor to complain about diminishing support from President George W. Bush for the development of energy efficient automobiles. The Senator stated,

"Incredibly, cars in America today get less mileage per gallon than they did twenty years ago. Meanwhile, hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and fully electric cars are at or nearly at commercialization, yet there is not enough incentive for consumers to buy them or producers to make them on the mass scale necessary. For fiscal year 2008, the Administration requested just $176 million for new vehicle technology research Ð an amount that was less than what was requested five years ago."

The Senator who made this statement was not a Democrat. This statement was made by Republican Senator Richard Lugar.

When a United States Senator feels that he must publicly criticize the leadership of his own political party, you know that there's a serious problem. Senator Richard Lugar admits that the Republicans have been doing the wrong thing on energy efficiency, and that the progressives have been advocating the right course all along.

In 2008, we need to elect a President who has been promoting the kind of investment in energy efficient automobiles that right wingers have only recently started to talk about. (Source: Press Release from Senator Richard Lugar, June 25, 2007)

I got a shockingly clear glimpse into the right wing version of reality as I read a comment left by one of the Irregular Times readers, a supporter of Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul:

"The people behind the iraq war and the people behind global warming are not necessary the same people but it is the hysteria that is the same. We all knew that we had a problem with extreme islam but did the mad rush to do something NOW, help our cause? Let us not leap with the same hysteria into a 'fix' for global warming."

This person acknowledges that rushing into the invasion and occupation of Iraq was a mistake, and says that the same mistake is being made with the effort to start undoing human contributions to global warming. There are several problems with this analogy as made above:

1. The problem with Iraq, in so far as it existed, had nothing to do with "extreme islam". The regime of Saddam Hussein was not Islamic in character. The problem that was perceived by some had to do with weapons of mass destruction, not Islam.

2. The problem of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was never proved. The reality of global warming and the role of humans in contributing to it have been proven.

3. Fixing global warming won't require a war, or any other form of killing of human beings. The invasion and occupation of Iraq have killed tens of thousands of people, and maybe even hundreds of thousands, through direct acts of violence.

4. The rush to invade Iraq and the supposed rush to confront global warming are have not taken place on anything like a similar time scale. The problem of global warming has been an important political issue for at least two decades. During that time, no significant federal action has been taken. The rush to invade Iraq took place over two years.

Right wingers have been pushing the path of denial on global warming for much longer than genuine prudence calls for. Only the most extreme anti-environmentalists could call a movement that began in the mid 1980s and has yet to produce any significant federal legislation a "rush".

In the face of mountains of evidence, right wing extremists still insist that there's no proof that global warming is taking place. Well, here's one more piece of proof to place on top of that mountain: The mountainous country of Bhutan is suffering from malaria for the first time in history.

Malaria is a disease with a limited range because the species of mosquito that carries the malaria parasite into the human bloodstream only lives in warmer climates. Bhutan, with its historically cool mountainous landscape, had thus been a refuge from malaria - until now.

With global warming, Bhutan is warmer than ever before. With that warmth has come the suffering of malaria.

For the sake of the people of Bhutan, we Americans need to elect a President in 2008 who has a proven track record of working against global warming. We need to elect a progressive. (Source: Associated Press, July 2, 2007)

The link between climate change and increases in warfare is not just a speculation about the future. It's an established historical fact.

A new study examined the circumstances of 899 wars fought in China over the course of over 9 centuries. They found a correlation between temperature changes and the frequency with which wars were fought. The authors of the study suggest that changes in agricultural productivity related to these shifts in climate created social strains that made warfare more likely.

This historical correlation suggests that climate change is likely to lead to increased warfare in our own future. If we can decrease the extent of climate change produced by human industrial activity, we stand a good chance of increasing the chance for peace.

It just so happens that progressives are both for peace and for the environmental measures needed to reduce the impact of climate change. For this reason, America's national interest will be best served by electing a progressive President in 2008. (Source: Live Science, July 9, 2007)

The world has a serious peat problem.

Peat bogs are formed when communities of plants slowly sink down into wet terrain, and new generations grow on top of their predecesors, keeping the top up in the air. Peat is a valuable material in the horticultural industry because it is rich in organic material and holds water well in garden soil.

The problem is that peat is often not harvested sustainably, so that peat bogs are destroyed. That's bad news for the environment, because peat bogs are significant carbon sinks, taking carbon dioxide out of the air, and fixing it in the form of layer upon layer of accumulating peat. When peat is harvested unsustainably, that fixing process is stopped. Furthermore, greenhouse gases are released by the exposed soils that were once covered by peat. Even worse, some peat is burned, releasing once-fixed carbon dioxide right back into the atmosphere.

The problem of unsustainable peat harvesting has been known for quite some time, but has been largely ignored. English botanist David Bellamy wrote, "We criticise people from the third world countries for not conserving their rainforests, but when it comes to our peat bogs which are actually a rarer habitat than the tropical rainforest, we are doing a much worse job."

This year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recognized the role that peat bogs have in regulation of the climate. As the world faces the growing crisis of climate change, the problem with peat will need to be addressed, and only a progressive President will have the environmental resolve to act.

(Sources: The London Times, November 25, 2000; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Fourth Assessment Report; Wetlands International, July 11, 2007)

One of the troubles with the right wing's wait-and-see approach to reacting to global warming is that global warming appears to have several self-reinforcing feedback loops. So, the more that the Earth's climate warms, the more triggers of additional warming will be set off.

For example, there is a gigantic frozen peat bog in Siberia, the size of France and Germany combined. As the climate warms, that peat bog is melting, more and more each year. As that peat bog melts, it releases huge amounts of methane into the atmosphere.

Methane is an even more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. So, as the extra methane emerges from the melting Siberian peat bog, global warming can be expected to get even more extreme.

Before you vote for another right wing candidate for President, ask yourself: How many more years are you willing to let that peat bog in Siberia melt before you'll be willing to do something about global warming? (Source: New Scientist, August 11, 2005)

On July 16, 2007, the Mitt Romney for President campaign released an advertisement it calls Ocean. When I heard about this advertisement, I thought that it might be about, you know, the ocean.

I was surprised. To this point in the campaign, Mitt Romney has almost completely ignored environmental issues, pretending that the threats to our environment don't matter much.

Of course, most Americans are very aware of the threats to our environment. We experience those threats on a daily basis, in the form of sicknesses caused by pollution, in the form of landscapes degraded by unsustainable exploitation, and in the form of the many impacts of global warming we're already experiencing.

Anyone who pays attention to the ocean as something more than a playground is aware of the increasing peril in which the Earth's oceans have been placed. Huge dead zones resulting from polluted runoff are turning once-fertile ocean waters into a lethal soup that kills almost everything that swims in it. Immense jellyfish swarms swamp beaches around the world as the marine food web tilts out of balance. Around the world, fish populations are crashing and coral reefs are being bleached white.

Could Mitt Romney be seeking to address the lack of environmental substance in his campaign? Could Romney have prepared an advertisement that deals with the grave threat of the ecological collapse of our planet's oceans?

Sadly, the Romney campaign is not at all about the ocean crisis. It's about videogames and television and movies and the Internet.

In the last line of the Ocean advertisement, Romney says, "If we get serious about this, we can actually do a great deal to clean up the water in which our kids and our grandkids are swimming."

Of course, when Romney says that, he's not talking about actually cleaning up the water. No, I searched Mitt Romney's campaign web site, and it turns out that the Romney campaign doesn't have any materials dealing with water pollution. In fact, there isn't a single place on the Mitt Romney presidential campaign web site where Mitt Romney states any commitment at all to fight pollution. The closest he comes to that is acknowledging, on a campaign blog, that some people ask him about mercury pollution sometimes. Romney doesn't offer a policy for dealing with it, mind you. He just admits that sometimes people ask him about the issue.

When it comes to the issue of the severe depletion of once-rich populations of fish, Mitt Romney is silent. The only time Mitt Romney even mentions fish on his campaign web site is when he talks about going fishing.

Mitt Romney has a hell of a lot of nerve using the metaphor of cleaning up ocean water in a campaign advertisement when, in fact, his campaign is startlingly silent on the issue of the ocean crisis. (Source: MittRomey.com)

It seems like a small reason to choose a candidate for President, with the immense powers at stake, but it is a reason nonetheless: The Casey's June beetle is in trouble, and the Republican government is refusing to do anything about it.

The Casey's June beetle (Dinacoma caseyi Blaisdell) is currently living on just 600 acres in nine separate locations in Palm Springs, California, although it once had a much larger range. This remaining habitat is threatened by plans for construction.

The Bush Administration, through the Fish and Wildlife Service, has refused to intervene to protect the Casey's June beetle. That inaction has taken place in spite of the Endangered Species Act, which requires endangered species to receive protection.

In order to deal with the problem, entomologist David Wright, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Sierra Club filed a petition and began a lawsuit to compel the government to comply with the law and develop a plan to protect the Casey's June beetle. In response, the Fish and Wildlife Service has acknowledged that the Casey's June beetle is imperiled, and merits protection under the Endangered Species Act. However, the Fish and Wildlife Service is refusing to give that protection, placing the Casey's June beetle in a long line of species that are in danger, but won't be considered for actual protection for years, if ever.

The Casey's June beetle is a small animal, but it interacts with many other animals and plants in its ecosystem. If the Casey's June beetle is in trouble, then many other forms of life are likely to be in trouble as well. Preserving the Casey's June beetle is about a lot more than the beetle itself. The effort is about saving an associated ecosystem that is giving way to golf courses and suburban houses.

A golf course or a house can be built in many places. The ecosystem associated with the Casey's June beetle, once destroyed, may never come back. In 2008, we should elect a President who will direct the Fish and Wildlife Service to devote adequate services to protecting that ecosystem. (Sources: Center for Biological Diversity, July 5, 2007)

Southerners tend to take their regional heritage very seriously, seeking to preserve the South as they know it from corrupting forces. Southern voters ought to be upset, therefore, at the results of a recent study that suggests that Southern heritage is facing a new threat, not from Yankee carpetbaggers, but greenhouse gases.

Bruce Allen, a researcher from Ohio State University, has been conducting surveys of bottomland hardwood forests in the American South. The results of his surveys indicate that the growth of vines in those forests is significantly higher than it has been in the past. As a result, the combination of the trees found in those forests is changing. As vines grow up their host trees, they alter the ability of the trees to compete, and change the structure of the canopy itself. "There are now so many vines that they're starting to change the makeup of the forest," says Allen. Before long, Allen indicates, people could walk through the Southern bottomlands and see forests that their Southern ancestors would not recognize.

The heritage of the South is about a lot more than just the confederate battle flag and singing Dixie. Part of Southern heritage is the region's natural heritage, the backdrop of field and forest that generations of Southerners identify as uniquely theirs. That natural heritage appears to be changing, perhaps for good.

The new rampant growth in vines, Allen says, is consistent with increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Vines in particular are known to grow more vigorously when exposed to higher concentrations of carbon dioxide than normal. As atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have risen, Allen suggests, so has the rate of vine growth in Southern bottomland hardwood forests.

Carbon dioxide is also a contributor to the global rise in atmospheric temperatures. So, one important way to preserve the natural heritage of the South, is to fight global warming. To fight global warming, we need a progressive President who doesn't deny that the problem exists. (Source: Ohio State University Research News, July 17, 2007)

The environment is often described as something remote, and untouchable, useless. It is better understood as nature, that which pervades, prior to and underneath all of our human creations. Unreconstructed, we humans are part of it.

We depend on nature, not just for physical resources, but for the survival of the health mind. It was with this in mind that Walt Whitman wrote, "After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on - have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear - what remains? Nature remains."

Gardeners, unite against global warming.

Dandelions are one of the most common garden weeds, and while I don't mind them myself, most gardeners work as hard as they can to pull the stubborn plants from their garden plots. Suburban home owners also struggle against the appearance of the yellow dandelion flowers in their lawns.

A new scientific study suggests that the frustration of American gardeners and suburban homeowners with dandelions is only going to get worse. When scientists elevated the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide to the levels forecast for the year 2100, they found that the dandelion flowers growing in their experimental patch produced one third more seeds, on average. Those seeds also developed more floating power than ordinary dandelion seeds, with additional fluffy hairs on each seed, to carry it further along in the wind.

Carbon dioxide doesn't just affect dandelions. It's a greenhouse gas. As levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rise, global temperatures rise as well.

Progressives support the fight against global warming, proposing measures such as increased fuel efficiency standards and the development of alternative energy infrastructure in order to slow down the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide that results from human industrial activity. Right wingers oppose controlling carbon dioxide, refusing to deal with the problem.

The upshot is this: The right wing agenda will make it more difficult to keep dandelions out of your lawn and garden. The progressive approach, on the other hand, will keep dandelions more manageable. If you're one of those people who can't stand dandelions, help elect a progressive President in 2008. (Source: Los Angeles Times, July 18, 2007)

Don't like poison ivy? Then the choice is clear: Vote to elect a progressive President in 2008.

Here's why: A recent study found that, when poison ivy plants are exposed to elevated levels of carbon dioxide in the air, the poison ivy grows larger and faster than it otherwise would. This increased growth takes place without diminishing the concentrations of urushiol, the toxic substance in the poison ivy plant's tissues. Therefore, under conditions of elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide, each poison ivy plant produces more urushiol than it would under normal conditions.

"The amount of urushiol produced per plant increased significantly", the researchers explain, concluding that "its ability to recover from herbivory, and its production of urushiol, may be enhanced in a future, higher CO2 environment".

For those city folk who have never suffered from exposure to poison ivy, consider the following symptoms, described by the University of Connecticut's Integrated Pest Management program: "Symptoms usually appear hours to several days after exposure. The skin itches intensely and may burn and swell. A rash with watery blisters develops. The rash may appear in streaks. Sometimes a secondary infection may develop in the open lesions." Poison ivy can cause serious suffering that lasts for days on end.

Levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide have been rising for generations, as a part of the general elevation in industrial activity, and are expected to continue rising as human beings use more fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide doesn't just accelerate poison ivy growth, of course. It's also a greenhouse gas, contributing to global warming.

Progressives have been struggling to get the government to fight global warming for three decades now, pushing for the development of alternative energy sources and for more efficient use of fossil fuels, through higher requirements for miles per gallon in passenger vehicles, for instance. Right wing politicians have denied that there is a problem, in spite of steadily mounting scientific evidence that the progressives are right.

With this new study, we know that programs to fight global warming will also help control the rampant growth of poison ivy. So, if you don't like suffering from poison ivy, the choice for the 2008 presidential election is clear: Vote for the progressive candidate. (Sources: University of Connecticut Integrated Pest Management program, 2002; Weed Science, July 2007)

An anti-pollution resolution passed in the House of Representatives yesterday. H. Con. Res. 187 recognized the importance of the Great Lakes as the largest surface freshwater system on Earth, and source of drinking water for 30 million Americans. The resolution also recognized the serious problem of ammonia pollution in the Great Lakes, creating dead zones and fouling lake beaches. Finally, the resolution called upon the state of Indiana to stop the plan of British Petroleum to dump 1,584 pounds of ammonia into Lake Michigan every day.

Picture what 1,584 pounds of ammonia looks like and smells like. Now picture that being poured into Lake Michigan every day, day after day after day.

It's not just a problem for Indiana. The effects of the ammonia dumping, which include huge mats of rotting, stinking algae sucking the oxygen out of the water, travel through all the Great Lakes, through the Saint Lawrence River, and out into the Atlantic Ocean.

Now, picture 26 Republicans in the House of Representatives voting to endorse the plan to dump that ammonia. The Republicans who did so are:

Joe Barton of Texas
Sanford Bishop of Utah
Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee
Roy Blunt of Missouri
John Boehner of Ohio
Kevin Brady of Texas
Dan Burton of Indiana
Steve Buyer of Indiana
Chris Cannon of Utah
Eric Cantor of Virginia
Michael Conaway of Texas
John Culberson of Texas
Jeff Flake of Arizona
Virginia Foxx of North Carolina
Trent Franks of Arizona
Jeb Hensarling of Texas
Doug Lamborn of Colorado
Dan Lungren of California
Kenny Marchant of Texas
Gary Miller of California
Michael Pence of Indiana
Ted Poe of Texas
Edward Royce of California
John Shadegg of Arizona
Michael Simpson of Idaho
Mark Souder of Indiana

(Source: The Library of Congress)

The Government Accountability Project has uncovered documents that reveal that President Bush allowed White House lawyer Phil Cooney to edit a government scientific report on climate change. Cooney is not a scientist. In fact, Cooney's career has been built upon representing the interests of Big Oil corporations. His last job before joining the Bush Administration was as a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, serving as the leader of a team dedicated to fighting a public relations battle against the growing body of scientific evidence that global climate change is due to human activities.

Borrowing a tactic from Creationists, Cooney's changes to the government scientific report were made in such a way as to make it appear that the scientific community has less consensus about human causes of climate change than it really does. The falsified report has been used by the Bush White House and Republicans in Congress to justify their inaction in dealing with global climate change. So, the Bush Administration has dealt with the gap between its policies and the latest scientific information by censoring government science to reflect its policies, and then claiming that science supports its policies. If that doesn't give you a reality-based whiplash, nothing will.

In response to these revelations, the Bush White House has pursued a twofold strategy of shameless justification and cover-up.

On the one hand, Scott McClellan, the top PR official for the Bush Administration, says that it's no big deal when industry lobbyists are given juicy White House jobs and allowed to censor scientific reports in accordance with the needs of their corporate clients. McClellan says, "Everybody who is involved in these issues should have input in these reports." So, by this logic, lobbyists for cigarette manufacturers ought to be given the opportunity to censor government-funded research on the dangers of smoking and lobbyists from automotive manufacturers ought to be able to cross out sections of government reports on vehicle safety and reliability.

On the other hand, President Bush has issued an order that no journalist be allowed to talk to Phil Cooney. Why, it's as ifÉ as ifÉ as if President Bush has something to hide. What was the White House's excuse for protecting Mr. Cooney from reporters? The White House merely stated that, "We don't put Phil Cooney on the record. He's not a cleared spokesman."

I find that defense of Cooney's silence a wee bit ironic. Consider:
1. Cooney is allowed to edit scientific reports for political purposes to send a misleading message to the American public.
2. Cooney is not allowed to stand in front of a microphone to explain his actions.

The Bush White House policy on public statements from officials like Phil Cooney seems to be that they're allowed not only to send statements out to the public, but are authorized to do so by secretly inserting their own self-interested statements into documents created by other people. When it comes to these officials standing up and speaking as themselves, without the mask of government documents to obscure their identities, the Bush White House says that's not allowed.

On July 26th, Stephen Johnson, George W. Bush's appointee to head the Environmental Protection Agency, told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that a decision about whether to allow California to establish tougher standards for emissions from automobiles would be delayed for several more months, until December at the earliest. That means that it will take the Bush EPA at least two years to respond to California's request for permission to establish clean air standards stricter than federal law.

Senator Frank Lautenberg from New Jersey called the move "foot-dragging". That's generous. There's a great deal of evidence that the Bush Administration is trying to kill the new California emissions standards, sending government employees out to Congress and state governments to gather support for denying permission for the clean air measure.

At the latest hearing with Stephen Johnson, Senator Barbara Boxer of California explained, "Top officials at the Department of Transportation, with the help of the auto industry, lobbied members of Congress and governors to oppose California's waiver request. DOT Secretary Peters herself was part of this unprecedented, unprincipled use of taxpayer dollars to tilt the scales of another agency's decision-making process, even before public comments were considered."

Republicans tell voters that they're against big government, and that they're for states' rights, but the way that the Bush Republicans are using big government power to try to smash California's efforts to control emissions exposes that claim as a blatant lie. The Republicans are quite happy to use the power of big government to deny the power of states to regulate pollution. (Sources: Reuters, July 27, 2007; Statement of Barbara Boxer Hearing, "Examining of the Case for the California Waiver: An Update from EPA", Thursday, July 26, 2007)

In making a choice between the right wing candidates for President in 2008 and the progressive alternatives, it's a good idea to take a look at the kind of society already supported by their ideologies. For the right wingers, Texas is a good representative. There is no red state that is any redder than Texas, home to the many of the most extremist right wing politicians in all America.

Texas also stands out in another sense. It has the dirtiest power in all America. Measured in terms of the amount of carbon dioxide emitted, Texas ranks first in the nation. Texas relies on what the Environmental Integrity Project terms "large, old, and inefficient electricity-generating facilities". For big, outdated and inefficient power, it seems that Texas is the place to go.

Now, if you could think of a region that exemplifies progressive values, which region would you choose? New England and the West Coast are generally regarded as the most progressive parts of the country. It just so happens that these regions also have the cleanest energy footprints. Not a single one of the 50 dirtiest power plants in America comes from New England or the Pacific Coast states.

If you want dirty, outdated, inefficient power in America, then you want to elect a right wing candidate for President in 2008. If you want clean, up-to-date, and efficient power, help elect a progressive President in 2008. (Sources: Environmental Integrity Project, July 26, 2007; Reuters, July 27, 2007)

A team of 50 scientists and economists has worked for two years to come up with a Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment. It's a study of the likely effects that climate change will have in the Northeast United States. The study predicts that, by the end of the century, if greenhouse emissions continue to increase, fueling further climate change, the Northeast will deal with the following consequences:

- Average temperatures in the winter will increase from between 8 to 12 degrees, and temperatures in the summer will increase between 6 degrees to 14 degrees
- Northeastern cities will face a much larger number of days with extreme heat
- New York City will face what is currently a 100-year flood every ten years, and cities like Boston and Atlantic City will face such floods every two to four years
- New England will suffer from yearly doughts, and droughts will become more frequent throughout the rest of the region as well
- Milk production will be dramatically reduced
- Many varieties of fruit will no longer be able to be grown in the region
- Northeastern forests may be decimated by loss of trees not able to adapt to the new conditions
- Ski resorts will have to close in all but the northern edge of the region
- Historic fisheries will be lost (Cape Cod ma