Americans and the Environment
by Jorge Vargas
I will agree with President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela when he said that he does not answer to candidates. I, like him, do not have the time to waste focusing on people who have not yet won anything.
But I will spend time focusing on the stupid comments that stupid candidates make when appealing to the stupid voters who will try to elect them because stupidity is the biggest threat to our planet and, unfortunately, there are stupid people everywhere.
In some places more than in others, however.
Presidential debates in the United States are among the most amusing spectacles known to humanity for one simple reason: in the United States, people still “trust” politicians more so than anywhere else on Earth, so presidential debates turn into contests of “how many stupid things can we say before the voters notice that we are making it up as we go along?”
It's amusing. And the “town hall” debates are most amusing. Like the 'town hall' debate on October 7, 2008 when a person asked if the US should defend Israel if and when Iran attacks. .
Neither candidate had the courage to say, "You know, in fact, there is no real evidence that Iran is actually planning such an action or could if it wanted to. So instead of dealing with far-flung hypotheticals, let's talk about the real problems in the Middle East."
Both candidates gave some answers about Israel the ally and Iran the bad guy, and anyone who knows anything of substance about the region knew that it was more of the same old nonsense from U.S. politicians when it comes to Israel's abuses in the region.
But more amusing still was the question that a woman asked regarding the environment and how both candidates plan to deal with it. Senator Obama rattled off a non-specific answer about clean energy and how nuclear energy should be used carefully.
Mr. McCain's answer was by far more amusing, though it held even less substance than Senator Obama's insubstantial answer.
Mr. McCain - and I will not stop and thank him for his military service (he did not serve my country), but rather I will stop to point out that very rarely in world history has someone from the military actually held a good government - went and suggested the creation of a panel to investigate different options to finding alternate fuel strategies along the lines of what France and Great Britain and Germany and Japan have done.
Now, that all sounds great. A panel, wow. France and Great Britain and Germany and Japan - that's some fascinating stuff there, Mr. McCain.
And maybe it will appeal to the sort of people who are in favor of the continued relegation of homosexuals to the bottom of the social ladder and to the sort of people who would rather two teenagers be married out of pregnancy instead of letting the girl be a single mother and offer her support. I guess the Protestant version of God looks more favorably upon people living a lie than He does at people struggling to live a moral life.
But I fall into neither of those categories. Homosexuals should not be relegated any longer, and there is no more dignified title than that of a single mother. Anyone who disagrees knows nothing about the daily struggles of either.
But enough recriminations against stupid people. Let's return to the issue of Mr. McCain and his feeble understanding of the environment - or his feeble attempt at a lie.
I care very much about the environment. My home stands to be completely wiped out within fifty years if the environment continues to fall apart as it has in the past century. My home and everyone I know in that city, including nearly my entire family, will be forced to relocate or to live in an over-populated city with an Andean water supply that is perennially decreasing due to the melting ice-caps of that mountain range that have long served as a source of clean water.
So I am very serious about the environment.
But Mr. McCain wants a panel. So, let's define that.
He wants to ask Congress to form a Committee - that will take a bit of time - and then he wants that Committee to research other energy supplies - give them three years, since three years from 2008 will not be an electoral year - then they will make recommendations and then the Congress will think about it for a year or two. If Mr. McCain is still president - or still alive - they will accept only parts of the proposal because those are the parts that will not hurt the constituents of Mr. McCain and his party.
In that five year span, U.S. fossil fuel emissions will only have increased. And so will the emissions from Brazil, China, and India, and also from France, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, and Russia, to say nothing of Nigeria and Mexico and Argentina and Chile and so forth and so on.
But that is because Mr. McCain does not actually care about the environment. He cares about immigration - the big, bad Mexicans - and he cares about abortion and he cares about tax cuts for his wealthy electorate.He knows as well as I do that his not-so-wealthy electorate is so uneducated that they will vote for him even without a tax cut. He just can't say that because he has an election to win.
In economics, in trade agreements, in education, in literature, in diplomacy, in politics, and in military strategy, the United States of America is no longer indispensable. In some of those arenas - diplomacy, economics, military strategy, and trade agreements - the world actually wants to dispense of the United States of America.
In two arenas, the United States remains the indispensable nation. One of those arenas is basketball. The other is much more serious and speaks to the unconstrained spending of the Americans and to their overall disregard for Earth - in large part because so few of them have seen anything of Earth aside from their 'America': Pollution.
The United States is the largest per capita contaminant of our environment in the world. That is, frankly, not up for debate. Anyone seeking to withdraw attention from this fact is woefully mistaken.
The United States can do two things: Ignore the environment and set up panels and make of it yet another electoral issue, or the U.S. can salvage her reputation a bit and help the rest of the world in the effort of cutting down on pollution. Note to the United States: we started on this road long ago and if you really want more information on how to cut down on fossil fuel emissions, ask and you will have an answer in a week (no need for a “panel”). So let's not have the U.S. get any illusions of grandeur that by joining this cause, the cause will suddenly have meaning.
It always had meaning and it always had value, the U.S. has just never understood the meaning and never appreciated the value.
The meaning of fighting pollution is this: The salvation and propagation of a species scientifically called homo sapien. The value of that cause is this: absolutely everything that human beings everywhere hold dear.
Those are the stakes behind this environmental issue. That is what is at risk.
The Earth itself will be fine. We run out of food and water, start dying off, go to war, wreak havoc, die of asthma and lung cancer, and so forth. The Earth will not care. Evolution will just get on with it and most of the world's large mammals will die off, along with those reptiles and amphibians - like frogs - that are more dependent on clean oxygen than others.
Different animals will rise up out of our diminished state and they will become dominant. We will be dead, starving, or relegated to unnatural food supplements in ventilated urban centers.
That is what is at stake. Not the Earth. The Earth is not going to blow up.
But our civilization will implode.
And so far, one nation is guiltier than all of the other nations combined. True to form, that nation is shamelessly denying responsibility and turning this into a political issue when it was always and remains a scientific issue.
We know the disease, we know the outcome of the disease, and we know the treatments for it. Some countries are already employing these treatments. Japan is using atomic energy almost exclusively, as is France.
The Europeans are investing on hybrid cars like no one else around. The Brazilians are producing clean ethanol and building hybrid cars of their own. Peru is investing in hydroelectric energy to replace old, contaminating power plants. Even China is starting to take action.
Humanity is rallying to save itself. One of the candidates for the presidency of the United States of America - a nation that openly calls herself the “greatest nation on Earth” - does not have a clue on how to solve the problem and wants to set up a big, fancy panel to give him solutions in five years' time. The other one is making vague statements about alternate energy that he will likely not have the courage to pursue to its utmost extent.
And if the first candidate, who is very old, wins the election and dies, his supposed replacement does not even believe in evolution, so you can imagine what sort of a fix we'd all be in then.
The United States must begin to get serious about the environment now, because it is already twenty years too late.
Until the United States of America does so, and even once the U.S. does so, the rest of the world will continue doing its best to save our species because we all recognize that this is far more important that politics.
But in terms of the U.S., it all really depends on how much stupidity the U.S. electorate will tolerate without realizing that it is being told stupid lie after stupid lie.
I, for one, do not have much hope for the United States to get it right.
I'm just not that audacious, I suppose.
