Wednesday, December 09, 2009

What you didn't read in your papers yesterday



Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries [and 18 languages] take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.

Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year's inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world's response has been feeble and half-hearted.

...

Few believe that Copenhagen can any longer produce a fully polished treaty; real progress towards one could only begin with the arrival of President Obama in the White House and the reversal of years of US obstructionism. Even now the world finds itself at the mercy of American domestic politics, for the president cannot fully commit to the action required until the US Congress has done so.

[snip]

--The Guardian and 53 other newspapers.

[Emphasis mine]

The Miami Herald was the only U.S. newspaper to carry it. Our oligarchic media afraid to let the American people read the truth?

We have troglodytes like Inhofe obstructing at every opportunity. What an embarrassment.

I used to believe that having a Senate that could deliberate and help keep the House from being over-hasty might be a good thing. Now I am inclined to wish it were abolished. Or would at least change its rules to operate more like a representative body and less like an old boys' club.

Sigh.

--the BB

4 comments:

Ellie Finlay said...

Thanks for this, Paul. I'm gonna have to nick it. Really.

(And I'm SO embarrassed that I live in the same state as Inhofe.)

Paul said...

Inhofe is not your fault. I live in the state that elected Pete Domenici and Heather Wilson. Very happy we went all blue for Congress in 2008.

Ellie Finlay said...

Yes, I know. But it's not only Inhofe; it's also that idiot Coburn. (The one who thinks that the girls' rooms of our high schools are hotbeds of lesbian activity. Ha! You know where HIS mind is.)

Paul said...

It would help if they were not obsessed with other people's sex lives. Its a serious emotional disorder that does damage in the lives of other people. They need treatment, but I'd settle for a sock stuffed in their mouths.