Not Braking The Doomsday Train

By James Donahue

Radio and television naysayers Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are among the latest climate-change deniers to gain public attention. Both men have scoffed at former Vice-President Al Gore’s 2006 documentary that warns if carbon emissions are not capped, the world will suffer extreme global warming and eventually get too hot to support life.

Many world scientists believe Gore’s report, as do many key public figures. This is especially true in Europe where the effects of a slowing Gulf Stream in the Atlantic, caused by fresh water from melting ice, is already having a dramatic effect on the climate.

Sadly, most world leaders including the media are so involved in the dramas of financial meltdowns, resolving terrorism and dealing with catastrophic events, they are ignoring the extreme changes in weather patterns and putting the challenge of finding non-carbon energy sources on the back burner.

While headlines deplored two extreme blizzard snowstorms that crippled the Mid-Atlantic coast including Washington D. C. and New York City, and a third unprecedented storm dropped heavy snow along the Gulf Coast from Texas east to Georgia, Limbaugh and Beck used their airtime to mock the concept of global warming.

“Where is Al Gore now?” asked Limbaugh. “Why isn’t the media all over this?”

Indeed, there has been a deadly silence among most mainstream American journalists concerning the serious implications of these and other weather anomalies that have been occurring not only on the North American continent, but all around the world since Gore’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” was released.

Just as the Gore film predicted, storms, hurricanes, summer heat waves, winter cold snaps, droughts and flooding rainfalls have been growing more and more intense. The ice caps and great glaciers of the Earth are melting, the ocean levels are rising, low-lying islands and seafront properties are flooding, once prime farmland is turning into desert, and entire towns are being destroyed by mudslides.

Strangely, while Vancouver, British Columbia is importing truckloads of snow to accommodate world athletes gathering there for the Winter Olympics, the people along the East Coast are trucking away tons of unwanted snow just to open roads and dig their way into their homes and shops. Doesn’t anyone think there is something wrong with this picture?

It appears that world political and industrial leaders also are turning a blind eye on this growing threat.

Does anybody remember the big climate change meeting held in Copenhagen in December? Even before the meeting opened many experts were identifying it as a “last ditch effort” to head off a catastrophic world weather disaster. They said it was going to take extreme measures because we had already waited too long to put a cap on the carbon emissions spewing into the atmosphere.

After a week of speeches and talking about the issues, representatives of 105 nations from around the world emerged with a “Copenhagen Accord” drafted by the United States, China, India, Brazil and South Africa that recognized climate change as “one of the greatest challenges of the present day.” The accord was “taken note of” but not adopted, and it did not win unanimous approval.

There was an agreement, however, for participating countries to produce plans for cutting emissions significantly by January 31. That date has now passed and a report by the BBC notes that only 55 countries, about half of those present, met the deadline with planned carbon emission controls.

One of the senior negotiators at the summit, Chandrashekhar Dasgupta of India, said the targets set by the 55 were “pathetic” and fell far short of what is needed to make any difference whatsoever.

It is obvious that big business, and the human desire to gain wealth and power at the expense of all else, has blinded world leaders from seeing and understanding the burning real issue of the day.

Indeed, if we fail to save our planet . . . the Mother Earth who provides for our daily needs . . . our planet will die and become a wasteland. And all of the wealth and power acquired by the kings of frail humanity will not save even the most important of the humans from the fate that awaits us all.

All of the wealth in the world cannot buy a cool drink of water, a loaf of bread, or a comfortable place to lay ones head if these things no longer exist.