[Sosfbay-discuss] Earth Day and Morgan Hill Times

[Wes Rolley]

My most recent column for the Morgan Hill Times.. It should run on Friday.

April 22, 2009 is Earth Day. It is almost 40 years since the first Earth 
Day celebrations in 1970. That gives ample reason to look back to the 
beginning of this event and to look forward to what much be accomplished 
in the next year, as Earth Day turns 40.

The first Earth Day was the idea of Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson. 
The first national celebration (1970)  became a bi-partisan affair with 
two CoChairs. Senator Nelson, a Democrat and California's Representative 
Pete McCloskey, a Republican. The politics of the environment, and 
specifically that of climate change, is now such that any show of 
bipartisanship would probably not be possible.

Even from the perspective of only a decade,. Sen. Nelson felt the need 
to respond to rumors that the environmental movement was dead.

“So long as the human species inhabits the Earth, proper management of 
its resources will be the most fundamental issue we face. Our very 
survival will depend upon whether or not we are able to preserve, 
protect and defend our environment. We are not free to decide about 
whether or not our environment 'matters.' It does matter, apart from any 
political exigencies. We disregard the needs of our ecosystem at our 
mortal peril.”

Once again, we are being told that the environmental movement is dead. 
It would seem that all of the movement is going another way. Never 
before have environmental issues been so clearly a matter for partisan 
politics with a significant split between Republicans and Democrats on 
the issue of climate change... no I would rather use a more accurate 
term... climate disruption.

There is no better time that Earth Day to consider the implication of 
that change of language. To call what is happening to this planet as 
“climate change” is to imply that it is gradual and might even be 
benign. There are those who claim to welcome it as bringing warmer 
weather to the colder climes where they live.

In fact, earth's climate is changing at a rate that is unprecedented. 
Fluctuations that once took a thousand years are happening in less than 
a century. In fact, as scientists accumulate more knowledge, they find 
that there are factors, such as the release of methane now trapped in 
Arctic permafrost, which will force even more rapid changes that 
originally forecast... changes that will make Al Gore's Inconvenient 
Truth look as if he had been wearing rose tinted glasses.

Neither will these changes be benign. We are on the brink of a new 
series of water wars in California. The nation has not yet grasped the 
extent to which they depend on California grown food products. Without 
the water, there is no alfalfa. Without alfalfa, there are no cows. Got 
milk? It will be evident all too soon.

We are fortunate to live in a community that is beginning to take this 
seriously. Morgan Hill is making an attempt to reduce it's carbon (C02) 
contribution to the atmosphere. Our city government even sponsors carbon 
dieting clubs. That is a small step for Morgan Hill. We need a giant 
step for mankind.

Earth Day in Morgan Hill is now an annual event with an Art and Science 
Fair. I hope that the emphasis is increasingly on science. In fact, I 
would love to see the MH Times devote as much space to learning as they 
do to athletics. Just to run one story a month on student intellectual 
achievement. That would be a start.

We seem to live in an era in which there are two cultures, one that 
recognizes the role of science in understanding our physical world and 
one which is all to willing to put aside science when the answers it 
gives are threatening to dearly held beliefs.

Ads from American Petroleum Institute tells us that we need to drill 
more for energy freedom since we have enough oil and natural gas in 
North America for 60 years. They don't tell us what we will do then. 
That's OK. They will have our money and the Earth will be a little 
warmer. We are not good at dealing with a future that is over six months 
from now.

It is time to stop listening to the liars, the lobbyists, the 
ideologues. They are the ones who found science so inconvenient that 
they convinced Congress to do away with the Office of Technological 
Assessment, not because they wanted to save money but because they could 
not control the answers.

You don't have to go somewhere special on Earth Day. The environment is 
where we live, and work, and play. Stop anywhere. Look at a tree, or a 
cloud. . Think a while about what you want this earth to become. It is 
in your hands.

-- 
"Anytime you have an opportunity to make things better and you don't, then you are wasting your time on this Earth" Roberto Clemente

Wes Rolley
17211 Quail Court, Morgan Hill, CA 95037
http://www.refpub.com/ -- Tel: 408.778.3024