Angry Mother Earth Is Beginning To Draw Media Attention

By James Donahue

January 2005

I remember in 1998 when former Vice President Al Gore was attempting to convince skeptical world leaders about the reality of global warming. Out of frustration he asked one television reporter what it was going to take before people believed it was a real threat.

That happened nearly a decade ago. Since then, Americans have elected a new Republican president who still claims that there is no scientific proof that global warming exists. Not only this, but George W. Bush has succeeded in backing away from American involvement in the Kyoto agreement, forged during that historic time with support from the Clinton Administration, and dismantled years of environmentally friendly government programs in the interest of big business.

The Bush Administration still has its cronies dumping the anti-warming propaganda via the government-controlled media, but a lot of reporters and editors are beginning to ask hard questions.

That is because the radical weather patterns are getting so strange, and so fierce, that they can no longer be ignored or covered up.

This, in effect, is the answer to Mr. Gore’s question. This is what it is taking. The weather patterns, the melting of the ice caps, the fierce winter storms, the intense summer heat, the hurricanes, typhoons, tornadoes and blizzards that are sweeping the land, destroying homes and killing thousands in their paths, are at last causing reporters to look at this problem.

The storms sweeping both the east and west coasts of the United States, causing disastrous snow and mud slides and flooding desert regions of Arizona and Nevada, and dumping record snows in New England are too extraordinary to be ignored.

The record number of tornadoes that swept the United States, including such out-of-the-ordinary places like Southern California and Florida, are making people wonder.

That we had a line-up of deadly hurricanes and tropical storms ravage Florida last year is not something that ever happened in anybody’s memory.

That Europe is experiencing such a mild winter this year that it hasn’t been cold enough to snow, except in the mountains, is not something that happens very often, if ever.

But there is more. Consider the other cataclysmic events; the massive quake, measuring 9 on the Richter Scale that send a killer tsunami that rolled literally around the world, the 6.2 earthquakes in Costa Rica and in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean quake, and the eruption of various volcanoes in various parts of the world.

All of this prompted NBC to air a recent documentary that asked “Is something wrong with Mother Earth?” Of course the story concluded with NASA scientist Dr. David Adamec saying: “The world is not coming to an end, and things are fine.”

And Dr. Chuck Conner of the University of South Florida said it was his opinion that the weather is not unusual either. Also, Conner said, “there’s no causal relationship” between the severe weather and the earthquakes and volcanic activities.

The program was designed to quiet the minds of the brain-dead, but slightly alarmed zombies that comprise the majority of the United States population. The trick was to ease their fears and put them back in their easy chairs with a beer in one hand, watching football games on Saturday afternoon.

After all, we don’t want too many people out there thinking about this kind of thing. They might just get angry and do something radical . . . like write letters, picket city hall, or vote for somebody other than a conservative Republican with his hand in the pocket of big business.

So what happens now?

We maintain that more radical weather and more earthquakes and volcanic activity will make the news in the weeks and months ahead. After a while, even the clever talking heads on our television screens won’t be able to still the anxious feeling creeping up the backs of our spines.

Sooner or later, we are going to have to face reality. The sooner we do it, the less sacrifice we will have to make to resolve this growing global dilemma. We may already have waited too long.