"FIRST DO NO HARM"

THEN FIX THE PROBLEM NOW

God Saw the Light and that is was Good. And God divided the Light from the Darkness.-
And God called the Light Day and the darkness he called night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament, and it was so.


Remember when “Christmas in April” was a clever play on words, not the fact that it snowed at Easter and the trees were budding at Christmastime in Washington? When was the last time you saw snow covered cherry blossoms? Can you remember a freakier weather system than what we have experienced lately? Have you seen the “Inconvenient Truth” movie yet?
Have you heard the connection between parts of the Nile Delta and Sudanese water systems drying up contributing to water wars and Darfur horrors and displacements?

I bought a portable DVD player recently. I can use it in the spoiled event I want to watch a movie on a plane that isn’t showing at the in-plane central listings on the screen right in front of me. Then I remember that my dearly departed grandmother was born in the year 1900-- 8 years before the Ford Model T was manufactured, when horses drew carts in the streets of New York, before there was such a thing as an airplane in the common man’s mind. Can you imagine it? Flying like a bird in the air?
In the year 2007 we have things totally unheard of to those living at the time that my grandmother was born; phones with cameras, blackberries, email, portable computers, internet, airplanes, electronic washing machines, electric hair dryers, convertibles, space shuttles, CDs, microwave ovens, electronic fences and garage doors, cameras in phones, to name just a few.

In the year 1960 when I was born, a computer was the size of an entire room and flicked IBM punch cards with holes in them through it. You could not “desalinate” the sea, you couldn’t nuke your dinner in the microwave, you couldn’t email your Mom in 1960. We have had a technological and communications revolution. The Internet has proved more revolutionary to civilization than the Guttenberg press and movable type. In a mere century the world has been amazingly transformed into something barely recognizeable to those who lived a century before.

But it is a mixed blessing that comes with a curse. We apparently are freefalling in a reckless desecration of the earth to birth all of it without much notice except for a few famous “environmentalists” who seem like John the Baptist to be screaming in the wilderness or Ralph Nader screaming at the Pinto or chicken little screaming the sky is falling--- Which one is the more apt analogy?
Sure, Al Gore got an award for his slide-show movie, so scientists think we are burning ourselves alive in a carbon overload that is melting everything to drought, flooding other parts in a dysfunctional greenhouse gone mad. Who actually gets it and how serious is it really doc?

Apparently, people who really know, really know how serious it is. It’s really serious. Take the Earth’s temperature over the last decade or so and you get part of the prognosis. Serious people like NASA scientists and the Harvard egg-head collection referenced by uncle Al in his movie all agree with the rest of the world scientific community apparently- Houston, we have a problem; we are in melt down. Ice caps are looking like my 7-11 slurpee.

Remember my DVD player above. Well, I dropped it on it’s head. It is rather delicately made and there is a laser that reads the DVD track paths unseen to my naked eye so it can project on a screen the DVD. All I see is the movie. I don't see the laser or the tracks. After I dropped it on it’s head, it disturbed the laser alignment and would not read the DVD. It projected instead on the screen “loading, loading, loading” forever and nothing came up. I damaged the laser alignment by dropping it on its head beyond repair. There was a “tipping point” of knocking about I could do before irreparably knocking the laser out of alignment. I had to go back to Radio Shack and get another one which, thankfully, they just replaced.

We are doing the same thing with our planet- only we can’t go back to Radio Shack and get another one, God gave us only one. There is a tipping point in the carbon cosmic meltdown after which the laser will be so out of alignment that it won’t read the DVD. It will be orphaned polar bears frying alive in Aruba heat, Avalon New Jersey the way of Atlantis and no such thing as about a thousand other species who will be remembered only in books if we can figure out how to make books non-combustable or instantaneously flammable and if we survive the melt down according to some. Is this science fiction or real science?

Lets assume that the environmental histrionics is based on real science, what should we do?

Gingrich in a rare moment of non partisan honesty actually applauded John Kerry for his new book, and indicated that there should be a vigorous debate on how best to most expeditiously address the problem. He doesn’t like big government, new taxes or apparently the “Fix” reputed to be “in” about carbon caps. But he surprisingly agreed that the problem is real, urgent and serious. He has a message for the Republicans stonewalling the debate which has to be well beyond whether it is a big problem or not, or whether there is any urgency to the need to address it. The challenge now is how to reverse the carbon overload immediately and stop the meltdown.

The laser knocked out of alignment is the point of no return. It caught me by surprise. We are working in the thinning margin.

The good news is that we are where the people were in 1900 when my grandmother was born in terms of not imagining what we can invent, what technological revolutions can be birthed in another ten to twenty years. Incentivization models, legislative structures, all these things can facilitate it- the best and brightest of the country should now be focused attentively and intensely on how to create it.
It is insane only Japanese companys make competitive hybrid cars.
Our American contribution to the carbon footprint is just piggish. I know insulting people does not motivate them, but come on now.
If this doesn't make you throw your soda can in the recycler I don't know what will.


This is apparently no time for arrogance of legislative posturing.
If there is one thing upon which we all should agree it is basic Stewardship of the Earth.