Why Breathe Filth?

Picture air so thick with pollutants that it's brown like a massive mud cloud spewing filth in your face. To breathe it can sicken you as you gasp for air while your eyes burn and tear.

Even at a distance, where you can no longer see the brown air nor smell its stench, it still invades the sensitive membranes that are your lungs, distributing dangerous pollutants throughout your body. It can potentially shorten your life.

This is real. Coal fired electricity generating plants across the United States bellow hundreds of millions of tons of brown filthy air filled with green house gasses every year. Noxious chemicals spew from their smoke stacks into the wind.

There is so much coal fired pollution, it exceeds the pollutants from all the auto and truck emissions. But we as a society have laws forcing auto and truck makers to slash their emissions to protect us from much of the vehicle exhaust. But there are no such protective laws for coal fired plant emissions. Why?


Because the giant utilities provide plentiful and relatively cheap electricity to Americans. They are also sizeable campaign contributors and these well entrenched corporate giants are satisfied with things as they are.

Beside, they say, coal is abundant, cheap and lies right below our feet. But if you've seen a coal mine, you know what an environmental disaster that in itself can be.

That aside, when challenged by environmentalists, they claim any changes would threaten jobs.

Some day, they say, decades into the future they'll do something about the massive pollution they bury us in. But not now. Meanwhile rapidly growing nations such as China and India follow America's lead and are building new coal fired plants. China is adding one per week!

Given this staggering magnitude of pollution and more to come, 25 years from now will our planet have survived global warming? Will we still have polar ice caps or weather cycles that allow us to grow crops?

The answer could easily be yes for this is a good news story! We may even have far better air quality than we do today. How? By you and I calling for solar and wind powered facilities to replace those coal fired plants.

Entrepreneurs and scientists can already capture and store vast amounts of power from the sun and the wind. Imagine how fast this capability would grow if incented to do so and made mandatory for use by these utilities as they are compelled to phase out the production dinosaurs they build and operate now.

As for jobs, clean energy could employ millions of people much as grossly polluting energy does today.

The giant utility companies offer no rebuttal for they don't need to as they are in control. But I'll make the rebuttal they'll make when public sentiment and environmental necessity pushes them to change.

"The technology is unproven," they'll claim. "You'll have blackouts and businesses will be forced to close and your home won't have enough electricity either." It's a scare tactic. The technology is already proven on a small scale and will never be proven on a large one unless given the chance, and then phased in.

"It'll cost you far more than the cheap, reliable energy you can depend on today," they'll say. In fact, it may be less costly than what you currently spend and as long as there is a sun and wind, it will become every bit as reliable.

You and I and our children and everyone else's children could live in a far cleaner world if only we take a little time now to make our voices heard rather than allow the giant polluters to prevail in our silence.

Dick

Where Is Your Conscience?

Speaking to you as a man who has conducted 166 candlelight vigils for all those who have paid so severe a price in Iraq, and all those who will, where is your conscience?

How can you go on with your life as if this wasn't happening? Where is your compassion?

Men, women and children are being killed in Iraq and for what? What do you think this will accomplish?

More than 6 years ago, the U.S. illegally invaded that nation. Iraqis didn't ask the U.S. to do so nor were they given a choice or a voice. And for all the years since, they have lived under a military occupation.

Over a million Iraqis have been killed, no-one knows how many have been severely injured, 21/2 million have fled their nation and 2 million more hide within it. Nor does anyone know how many orphans there now are.

There are no longer schools for many of the Iraqi children to attend, electricity is a luxury and so are clean water and sewage treatment. Unemployment is 40 - 50%, twice that in the U.S. during the 1930's Great Depression.

Medical care is in short supply because so many doctors and nurses have fled. There is also a shortage of medical supplies because much of it trades on the black market. Does any of this bother you enough to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice?

And what about the American soldiers and their allies? More than 5,000 if them have been killed and perhaps 40,000 of them have been so badly injured, that they now function missing legs or arms or are so impaired, they'll now need a lifetime of care. And for what?

Many of you say "I support the troops," but how do you support them? By leaving them in harm's way? Do you greet them when they return? Do you take an interest in what happens to them or their families?

And what about the U.S.'s nearly 8 year old war in Afghanistan, which has now spread to and endangers Pakistan. Is that something you can't be bothered with even as that war is being escalated by the U.S.? What has that war accomplished? What do you think it will?

In the name of God, where is your conscience? How can you look the other way while all of this death and destruction goes on? How can you be too busy when it's done in your name?

You may say, "There's nothing I can do about it," but have you tried? When was the last time you took any action to stop this carnage? You will never know how much you could accomplish or how important your voice is until you find the courage and the conscience to act!

Dick