by Pj Cioffi

Created on: April 22, 2008

I enjoy reading articles and listening to right wing conservative explanations as to why global warming doesn't exist. This is because I am a great fan of science fiction. For some reason, the hole in the Ozone Layer, the legacy of acid rain and the melting of polar ice caps is some kind of elaborate rouse created by godless communists. For some reason the higher incidents of skin cancer and the increasingly unstable nature of floods and hurricanes is simply Mother Nature. All of this is a vast conspiracy meant to promote...I don't know, a cleaner environment?

If you ever wanted to time travel to a closed minded age in which science was measured only by opinion and possibly religion, you no longer have to. The society in which we live, where we want to consume everything in sight at all times wants to pretend that we can close our eyes and make all our problems go away. And, thanks to raging consumerism, we now have so called "experts" who site so-called "experts" into believing whatever we want to believe.

The truth of the matter is that the majority of the world-wide scientific community agrees that global warming is a potentially catastrophic problem that is compounded by unchecked pollution in established industrial nations and is further threatened by developing nations. But don't take my word for it. Take a trip to Elizabeth, New Jersey and take a whiff. Find any industrial city and feel the coal dust in your nose. Now think about that fact the China is building coal fired power plants every single day. Socialism isn't creating the crisis here, rampant consumerism is.

There are solutions to this problem that actually can help grow our economy. A few years ago, the Kyoto Treaty was signed by dozens of countries, not including the US. The Treaty created a Cap and Trade system in which limits on carbon emissions were created. Countries could sell their surplus of cap room for cold hard cash while the environment was protected as a matter of consequence. US, as has been the case far too often, was left out in the cold. Instead of opening up a brand new market, we accepted more loans from China. Instead of being a leader, we were left with our sagging economy, and laughed at.

Again, it's not too late. Our president is finally coming around to the idea of cap and trade, and we have an opportunity to create the greatest technology in the world in terms of geothermal, solar and biomass energy. Let others keep their heads in the sand about this issue, let us be the leaders like we used to be. Only, don't be mislead by uninformed opinions that global warming doesn't exist - it's a great insult to your intelligence.

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