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Forget about global warming

Matt Zalaznick
Vail CO, Colorado

Those of us Americans too lazy to recycle or save water justify our inactivity by insisting global warming’s not real.

We can quote piles of reports debunking the claim that we’re going to make the Earth uninhabitable for our own and countless other species. “Hey,” we say, “there are as many scientists who say the recent warmth is just a natural cycle.”

Forget whether those guys graduated from the same college as the tobacco industry scientists who for years insisted there was no clear connection between smoking and cancer. Global warming is not the only reason to recycle, conserve or end our reliance on gasoline and pollution-spewing power plants; just like getting cancer isn’t the only reason not to smoke.



Global warming isn’t the only threat to a happy, prosperous and exceptional future.

But politicians, such as W., and many of the Republican presidential candidates, say we need to do more research on climate change before we take drastic measures on the alternative forms of energy some believe are the only way to save the planet.

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We need to catch our breath, they say, before we spend the billions of dollars on a comprehensive alternative energy project when the Defense Department needs to start more civil wars in the Middle East.

While somebody in W.’s administration is probably trying to figure out how to get the Iranians to start annihilating each other, we’re using up all our water and poisoning the air. Plus, our dependence on Middle Eastern oil has the nasty side effect of hijackings, bombs in the subways and other forms of catastrophic terrorism.

Longshot presidential candidate Tom Tancredo had a point when, in one of the recent Republican debates, he debunked global warming by saying the dubious phenomenon is almost beside the point, and that there are plenty of other good reasons to develop alternative energy.

There are, for instance, the terrorists our oil consumption directly and indirectly arms, trains and sends on suicide missions. Our addiction to oil also is what keeps us obsessed with affairs in the Middle East, and our policy there has been a total failure: We’ve been forced to prop up oppressive regimes, go to war and stir up boundless animosity toward ourselves.

And there’s the pesky little fact that the oil’s going to run out.

Forget global warming for a second; aren’t more people concerned about whether we (our descendants, actually) will be able to breath the air a century from now? Forget about whether last year was the hottest ever, or would we prefer our grandchildren have to experience water and food riots?

We’ll go to war to topple a dictator who wasn’t a danger to America, but Congress ” Republicans and Democrats ” wants to give subsidies to the dirty coal industry that’s a clear threat to our health (because, they say, global warming may just be one of a number of theories that might explain Colorado’s dwindling snowpack.)

Our government will go off chasing terrorists who didn’t exist in Iraq until we started bombing, but won’t put pressure on the auto industry to give us more miles per gallon and more breaths of clean air per century (because climate change might not be the real reason the seas are rising).

Doesn’t make any sense.

Or maybe it does ” as a political tactic. And Karl Rove is probably the master of the bunko bogeyman. Global warming, he says, nuts! If there’s no global warming, he reasons chubbily, then there’s no reason to build all those hybrid cars or put solar panels on the White House.

If there’s no problem, Rover woofs, then nobody ” especially not the White House ” needs to be a role model to inspire Americans to take action against environmental degradation that’s only a ploy of the left to make Republicans look bad or distract the American people from the decay in “moral values.”

The country needs better leadership on the environment but Republicans, to distract Americans from their utter failure on the issue, make fun of how much electricity Al Gore uses.

Hopefully Al Gore, who doesn’t seem like he’s going to run for president, will have a role ” environment czar? special advisor for climate change? ” in Hillary Clinton’s administration.

Because I just figured about why most Republicans in power (except maybe for Arnold Schwarzenegger) refuse to do much about the environment. We can’t do anything about it ” because global warming must just be a part of intelligent design.

Assistant Managing Editor Matt Zalaznick can be reached at 748-2926, or mzalaznick@vaildaily.com.


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