In this second week of political theater as the Democrats prepare to take the stage after a week of Republican drama, I am thinking a lot about truth and lies. One of the things that I have seen recently that I cannot get out of my “mind’s eye” is a satellite image of the Northwest Passage that has opened in the Arctic ice.
Satellite images show the recent opening of a navigable route through the Arctic ice cap. For centuries explorers looked for a short-cut above the North American land mass for a direct route from Europe to Asia. A small sail boat has navigated the northern passage. A sail boat with no ice reinforcements on the fiberglass hull has made it through where only one freighter equipped with an ice-breaking, reinforced hull has previously made it through. There is less ice on the northern polar regions of our world than there has ever been since the birth of human civilization.
So what does this have to do with Republican and Democratic Conventions? A lot. Romney got lots of laughs when he said “President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family.” The end of world as we know it is not a laughing matter from my perspective and the scientific knowledge that informs it. More than anything else I want my daughters and granddaughters to be able to have a good life on as predictable of a political and climatological playing field as is possible.
I wish everyone would take the world’s situation with the seriousness it deserves. My heart aches when I think about what we could be doing to slow the changes that are escalating all around us. Our grandchildren will not understand why we allowed this to happen to their world. Playing politics when our world’s climate is destabilizing is selfish, short-sighted, and unforgivable. Making jokes about the change to our world is disgusting. Refusing to act on the change that we know is happening for personal gain, is criminal.
This week as I watch the Democratic National Convention I will be watching for remarks about future worlds that will be very real for the little ones I so love.
Posted with Blogsy
Who could argue with that reasoning? If what didn’t exist, does now..surely that is a monstrous change?
Monstrous is the right term. It is frightening, huge, and out of control.
Sitting in India, I find it amazing that the Republican party in the US chooses to be so blind to climate change. Yes, we owe to the future generations to make wise choices about our planet.
Sitting here in the U.S. I find it nearly impossible to believe that science is now ridiculed in my country, a country that once loved scientific inquiry.
It is very short-sighted to act like climate and environment don’t matter. Nothing else matters more. It is also ridiculous to think that one man can change the course of climate change in 3 short years.
Personally, the RNC has left me cold. I don’t think they made a compelling case for change.
No matter what your personal core issue may be, jobs, education, peace, or a thousand other terribly important issues, none of these truly important issues matter at all if our world becomes unble to sustain our presence on it. Stupidity, or as you more politely say, short-sightedness, leaves me cold. Women working together can and will change things.
When the seas have risen so much that the RNP can no longer ignore the warming earth, they will say, “We never said the earth wasn’t warming. We just said people weren’t causing it.” The truth is, no matter what the cause, people MIGHT be able to slow the warming enough to prevent a disaster. We should have started working on it years ago, and I hope it isn’t too late now.
Sadly, as humans, there is nothing that we can physically do to change or even reverse that which Mother Nature has set into motion. The Earth is changing … humanity is changing … and there is no cause for alarm because this is what we the people have asked for … change.
In the grand scheme of things, in order to change that which is out of our human hands to change, Mother Nature has stepped in to help. These changes are necessary to restore the balance within our world … to shift the male-dominated paradigm back toward one with takes into account both the masculine and feminine aspects of humanity. And this opening in the polar icecap is only the beginning … a preview of the grander things She has in store for us.
There are things we can do to lessen the intensity of the change that is on its way, things that make sense to me. If Germany can get something like 10% of its energy from the sun, then surely the sun belt here at home can do much much better, but we are still ripping up the earth and polluting the seas. Just doesn’t make sense to me.