The November Election was categorized as an indictment of President Bush and his foreign policy. As Republicans were mercilessly pictured arm and arm with the President and hailed as the mongers that had gone to war for oil, there was one conservative Republican who got swept away in an unjust tide. Democrats complain about our dependency on foreign oil, but it was conservative, Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick of PA, who took a courageous stand to break the US addiction to oil.
In July of 2006 Fitzpatrick introduced H.RES. 971. This expressed the sense of the House of Representatives that the Congress should enact legislation to slow, stop, and reverse the growth of the Nation’s dependence on imported oil in ways that provide cleaner air, reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, and enhance America’s competitiveness. The introduction of this resolution was inspired by the 2006 State of the Union Address to the Nation where Bush stated “Americans are addicted to oil.”
Fitzpatrick’s opponent in the midterm election attached him to Bush’s policy and also attempted to link him to the scandals of Bob Ney and Tom Delay. It’s hard to call these two your best friends when you are a Republican who is pressing for aggressive legislation to decrease the country’s use of oil and coal, which are the two biggest resources in the districts of Delay and Ney, respectively.
Leadership is not about who your friends are; it is about what is important to your own character. Mike Fitzpatrick’s defeat in 2006 is not a loss to our congress – it is a loss to our planet. It could as devastating as a 41 square mile piece of glacier falling into the ocean.
Maybe we should ask our concerned Canadian citizens?
This entry was posted on Thursday, January 11th, 2007 at 10:30 am and is filed under Uncategorized . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
January 23rd, 2007 at 11:57 am
What is so blatantly overlooked is that the liberal controlled CONgress, led by Democrats for 30+ years laid the foundation for our dependence upon foreign oil sources. Year after year, and Bill after Bill, CONgress wrote the measures and means to stop offshore drilling, to remove tax credits from new technology ventures, to give gestapo-like powers to the EPA, and to changed business tax laws and reporting requirements (which drove short-term planning & profiteering), and to pack our Judiciary with liberal minded mudges who consistenly vilate the spirit & verbiage of the Constitution.
In addition, CONgrees, along with the [unaudited] Treasury Department have devalued the dollar even to the point of coercng former President Nixon to abandon the “Gold Standard.” Since our money is worth nothing but a hope-filled fantasy, backed by empty promises, it’s no wonder the media works its own adgenda to remove people with historical knowledge of facts, or with the backbone to face them. Is it any wonder that OPEC decided to use the Euro for future transactions?
January 23rd, 2007 at 12:10 pm
I take issue with the assumption that atmospheric man-made carbon dioxide is the cause of the currently observed global warming. This reply is intended as a brief outline of several reasons why I believe that global warming has very little to do with man’s activities.
Most of the carbon dioxide eventually winds up dissolved in the oceans where two major processes take place:
1. Coral organisms convert CO2 along with various minerals into mostly calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate that are insoluble in water. Consequently, the carbon dioxide is tied up in coral reefs and are permanently prevented from re-entering the atmosphere. I have yet to see this important phenomenon discussed in connection with global warming. The coral reefs, including the enormous deposits of fossilized coral is the primary difference between the environments of Earth and the planet Venus.
2. Phytoplankton and seaweeds perform the same function in the oceans that forests, grasses and crops do on land in converting CO2 through photo synthesis into carbohydrates and the oxygen that we depend on for all animal life. Some 35 to 50% + of the oxygen in the atmosphere originated in the oceans.
In connection with the importance of the oceans in controlling our climate cycles, I would like to point out that the Kyoto Protocol ignores the two factors I outlined above. Instead, the pollution of the oceans by raw or minimally treated sewage, and agricultural runoff high in chemical residues should be addressed. In many parts of the world the coral reefs are being choked by such effluents.
Instead of the myopic concentration on minimizing man-made greenhouse gases, at an enormous cost to human-kind, we should switch the priorities to the far more important task of providing clean water and proper sanitation to the whole world. Minimizing greenhouse gases will not make much difference in slowing down global warming, so the expenditure is nearly all wasted. On the other hand, switching this funding to clean water and sanitation will result in dramatic improvement in health for a major portion of the earth’s population.
Other factors contributing to global warming are the long term fluctuations in the sun’s intensity, variations in atmospheric water vapor (the most important greenhouse gas). Add to that the fact that atmospheric greenhouse gasses lag the increase in temperature by around 800 - 1000 years. Thus warming is causing an increase in greenhouse gases, not the other way around.
The observed greenhouse gases are the result of melting permafrost in Alaska, Northern Canada and Siberia, along with volcanic activity.