those gases

When I was in high school, I was in the ecology club. This meant pretty much nothing, except that all of the weird kids and "death rockers", as we were known, met in the biology room at lunchtime once a week and talked about what we could do at our tender ages, with no money, to help save the environment. Our club wasn't organized very well, so after a couple of months, it was just a guaranteed place to sit during lunch and we talked about music instead. We did however, get in touch with organizations like the Surfrider Foundation and Heal the Bay and we did beach cleanups and tried to start a recycling trend on campus. This was in California in the early 90s, so we weren't looked on as complete freaks, as much as we would have been if we were in say.....Texas.

But looky what's happened today! Thank the heavens for this gem of information. Guess what everybody?! The Bush administration has decided that greenhouse gases and global warming can largely be attributed to human activity! I can't believe it.....I mean who saw that coming?? Here I was, cruising along in my heavy polluter of a car, using CFC products wherever available and pelting all of those pesky "earth friendly" freaks with Alaskan oil drilling pamphlets, hoping they would all just wise up and get into bed with big business like they should, and now I'm to be told that perhaps they were right? This is an outrage and I, for one, demand to know who intends to be responsible for this kind of slander.

I find it curious and a bit ironic that this sort of epiphanic information has come to light when all along, our nation's leader has widely ignored and even eschewed what people with things like eyes and brains have known for years. He went so far as to categorically oppose a multi-national treaty, that would give us the opportunity to band resources and combat the problem on a more global scale. Big oil and big money also, apparently, have big blinders as well.

We are now 8 years behind on the development of renewable energy sources, forward-thinking legislation and solutions that help industries of all sorts maintain quality and preserve the environment at the same time. Any strides the United States has made during this administration have been fought for tooth and nail against a man who doesn't even have a command of his own language. I am overwhelmed with joy that each passing day takes me one day closer to the end of the Bush era. I think there are 400 and change days left and I mark them all off in the calendar of my mind, with glee. My own misgivings about Bush aside, however, I mark off the days until we put a new person in the oval office who will pay mind to what the role of the United States has in the world and not what role the world has in the United States. Even on such paltry issues as the environment, we really should pay better attention and make an effort to get along.