A TIME FOR EVERY SEASON

First let me say that unless George W. Bush and his fascist regime are eliminated, the issue of global climate change, and many others crucial to human survival, will remain unresolved. Because of his corporate loyalty, emission of greenhouse gases will only increase. If Bush is not expelled now we will be stuck with him as dictator for many years to come. I do not believe he will surrender power in 2008. In fact, I seriously doubt there will be an election.

For those of you who believe that global environmental issues are something you don't need to think about, I have a small experiment you can try that might serve to enlighten you.

Hop in your 10-mpg SUV and motor on down to that most magnificent monster of monuments to capitalism, your local WalMart, and buy yourself a fishbowl. Not an aquarium, just a regular, little old goldfish bowl.

Then, so you'll have a reason for owning a fishbowl, purchase 5 or 6 of the least expensive goldfish you can find there. Get a little fish food while you're at it. You won't need much.

Take it all home, fill the bowl with water and toss in the fish. Feed them as often as required. That's all. Don't do anything else. Don't clean or replace the water. Don't use any pumps or filters. Just leave the fish, whatever waste they produce and the water.

Watch what happens to your new finny friends. Before too long they'll all be floating belly up in the stinking, poisonous mess their fishbowl environment has become. This planet we live on, Earth in case you're unsure, is our fishbowl. It's just as finite and just as easily poisoned as that bowl of dead goldfish.

Even if the radical changes to global climate, which we're already beginning to see, weren't an issue at all, the destruction of the environment that allows us to exist would still have to be stopped!

If you couldn't connect with the poor dead goldfish try this.

If I put you in a closed room, pump out the air and replace it with poison gases, you will die! This should be a simple enough concept for most to grasp. Should be.

Earth is, in effect, our closed room.

Forests produce 40% of the oxygen for our room. 50% comes from the oceans via phytoplankton photosynthesis. That's 90% of what we need to breath, to stay alive in our room.

We are clear-cutting forests and killing phytoplankton like there's no tomorrow. There may not be. There are no alternative sources for the oxygen we're losing. This in not an opinion or a theory, it is a fact.

We are pumping the air out of our room.

We are driving millions upon millions of vehicles spewing millions and millions of tons of poison gases into our room. We are burning billions of barrels of oil and billions of tons of coal, spewing more millions of tons of poison gases into our room.

We are filling our room with poison gases.

Now remember how this works. We are in a closed room. We are pumping out the air and filling the room with poison gases. Remember what will happen if we do this? We will die!

Air goes out, poison gases come in and humans die. It's a no-brainer.

What part of this don't you understand?

So, even if you don't give a rat's ass about global warming, you still need to breathe!

But, really, if you asked all the climatologists, and scientists in related fields, if global climate change was being caused or profoundly exacerbated by human activity and 99.5% said "absolutely, unequivocally yes" and the rest said "no, we don't think so", what would you honestly believe? By the way, would it matter that the .5% who said no all took money from oil companies? I didn't think so.

The irrefutable scientific data is very nice and all but, come on, this is just simple common sense. If you can see, if your nose still works at all, if your ears are still receiving any sound and you are capable of anything that requires more critical thinking than watching American Idol, you know that we've really screwed up the global climate. Even the Media Propaganda Machine has to go with exciting disaster stories. It sells copy. If it bleeds it leads. Hypocrisy never stopped them anyway. It's a little funny listening to them sensationalize the suffering caused by the effects of climate change out of one side of their mouth and then denying it exists out of the other.

There are so many crucial environmental issues to be addressed that I wouldn't even try to list them all here. The levels of poisons in the air, oceans, soil and water are overwhelming. There are probably mountains of books that have been written. Just do a search for pollution, or environmental destruction or anything like that. You'll get about 87 zillion hits. Of the 87 zillion maybe 10 will say that pollution is not a problem.

Foods that were once the healthiest are now unsafe for human consumption. There are virtual epidemics in children of autism, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorders greatly exacerbated, more likely directly caused, by the introduction of high levels of mercury through contaminated food sources and even the injection of vaccines with mercury preservatives.

The bodies of average Americans are contaminated with 100 or more separate pollutants that are linked to immune system degradation, disease initiation, neural damage and more.

There is a smorgasbord of cancers to choose from; at least one for every tissue and organ in the body. Brain, blood, stomach, liver, lungs, bones, colon, you name it we've got it! These cancers are rampant in modern humans but intensive studies of ancient remains dating from 5,300 B.C. to the mid-19th century show little or no evidence of indicators common in modern skeletal remains.

There's a list of food additives, dyes and preservatives, longer than the list of cancers, which are poisoning everyone who isn't starving.

The production and distribution of these poisons rely on the destruction of forest for agriculture, mining, and infrastructure, plus the burning of hydrocarbons. Wheels within wheels. These are the two paramount causes for the extended period of global warming we are currently experiencing. It has actually been going on for around eight thousand years, when some of us stopped living as nomads. Gosh, that's longer than some of you believe the Earth has existed! Go figure. Nevertheless, a preponderance of evidence indicates that the beginning of the agricultural era, which required the clearing of large forested tracts, was also the beginning of the steadily increasing, human induced greenhouse effect that may well end our meddlesome existence. Earth naturally experiences cycles of heating and cooling. All evidence available tells us we should now be cooling. Our "contribution" to our environment has broken the normal cycle and has us locked in the warming mode.

As a species, we are committing suicide plain and simple. Why? Because that's generally what any addict is doing. We Americans are seriously addicted and I don't mean to oil. That's just a symptom of our technology jones. Making our techno gadgets, powering them, delivering them, all depend on fossil fuel, oil, hydrocarbons. We're like a heroin addict who's also an alcoholic.

So, we're fouling our fishbowl, gassing our room, poisoning our bodies and assuring our extinction as a species because we're junkies. Like most addicts we're also deniers. If it were learned tomorrow, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that our ipods, cell phones, or whatever, were killing us, we'd simply ignore that bothersome bit of information and get on with our mindless quest for self-extermination. If we were told we'd have to give up any of these goodies we'd go totally ballistic. We'd put up much more of a fight over losing our gadgets than we did over losing the Bill of Rights, Habeas Corpus and the Constitution!

How do people become addicts? Well, there's usually another player involved. A term that's been commonly used for many decades is Pusher. This is a form of parasite masquerading as a human. The Pusher usually coaxes the user with a sales pitch promising great things. If you think about it though, the pusher/parasite is just another kind of addict hooked on the wealth and power provided by the host/victim. Who is the Pusher for America's technology fix? Free Market Capitalism. The parasitic corporations that suck their life from the body of the masses. A parasite is something that is dependent on a substance it gets from its host to survive.

Par·a·siten.1. Biology An organism that grows, feeds, and is sheltered on or in a different organism while contributing nothing to the survival of its host.

An addict and a parasite actually have a lot in common. Both rely on another "organism" to provide what they need. Both are assuring their own destruction through mutual enabling.

Now this begins to be interesting. We have two groups of addicts, each one dependent on the other for what it needs to satisfy the unsatisfiable. Consumers hooked on corporate poisons, corporate parasites dependant on the wealth/power fix they get from consumers. It almost seems like poetic justice. It's actually a form of Mutually Assured Destruction without "nookuler" weapons. It's a negative biomechanical feedback loop, helluva thing! I just made that up but it sounds pretty good doesn't it? You can see however that, taking this mutual addiction to its logical extreme, the two groups will eventually cancel each other out. The parasite kills its host thereby killing itself. It's a zero sum game for both participants. Nobody wins.

It has to stop. It will kill us all eventually. Our planet will have to adopt a new paradigm; Earth without people. It will probably be a much more balanced, functional and beautiful place.

Renewable, environmentally sane, alternative energy sources must be put into use immediately on a global scale; things that don't have to be burned to produce power. Not in five years or ten years or sometime this century but RIGHT NOW! If this means that stock markets will crash then so be it. If this means that rapacious, criminal, multi-national corporations that profit from death must die themselves, by all means, make it so. If this means an end to the invisible hand of the market, the complete and utter destruction of "Free Market Capitalism" then what the hell are we waiting for? This fictitious "tide that lifts all ships" of "free" market economics is the single most significant cause of the crises we face.

If we trashed this system today, following some sort of global epiphany and spontaneous social revolution, there would be great chaos and suffering, but we would survive. If we continue on our present, suicidal course the human race will become extinct. Which do you think will come first?

The human race, if it is to survive, must consciously take the next step in its own evolution. We must grow up, abandon our lust for wealth and power, and become civilized for the first time. We must do it NOW! This is not a subject for debate, it is an evolutionary imperative.

Unfortunately, unless the corporatized fascist propaganda machine of the mainstream media can be nationalized and turned to public service, it is unlikely that the needed changes will come in time. There must be a MASSIVE information explosion and it has to be aimed at "markets" just as all "selling" is done today. Society has been trained over generations to respond to such advertising and, sadly it seems, people won't consume anything that hasn't been "sold" to them. The problem is that those who own the means to get the message out are the ones who would rather shoot the messenger. Their own personal wealth and power, in the here and now, are more important than the survival of the human race.

Documentaries like An Inconvenient Truth or The 11^th Hour are obvious examples of trying to make positive use of commercial media. The problem is, they're one-shot deals and they require the viewer to have an attention span of more than fifteen minutes. American consumers need to be pounded over the head, every quarter hour, with short, sloganeered advertisements. They need to see the same hype repeatedly for weeks or months and then they need to see the same hype delivered in a slightly different package. They've been brainwashed in this manner for so long they don't respond to any other method.

What's really needed are glaring headlines in major newspapers and thirty-second spots during Monday Night Football. We need movie, pop and sports superstar endorsements, documentary infomercials and mandatory classes in public schools and universities. World leaders must make much-publicized announcements confirming the urgency of the problems and their commitment to work together to solve them. Without world peace and international cooperation no meaningful progress can be made.

One thing that Americans in particular need to have pounded into their heads; it is NOT the earth we are trying to save. Nor spotted owls, poison dart frogs, coral reefs, whales, Amazonian rain forests or any other exotic fauna or flora they may or may not ever see. What we are trying to preserve is the lives of their children, grandchildren and the human race itself. Given the speed at which the environment is collapsing, they may even be saving their own selfish lives.

Unless the Main Stream Propaganda Machine can be converted to The Global Truth Machine, there is no chance that enough can be done in time to avoid a global extinction event.

Of course there are always those members of the scientific community who prefer obfuscation, for a fee, as opposed to scientific method. It's a relief to know there are a few experts left who haven't simply lost their minds like the 99% of climatologists and scientists from related fields.

A wide majority of specialists, through years of diligence and scientific study, have reached a conclusion that makes a certain small group of obscenely wealthy individuals unhappy. These corporate robber barons want to continue the rape of our world without interference. It's an activity they believe to be of the highest priority regardless of consequence. Apparently there are a small number of scientific experts who, for the right price, are more than willing to share that belief.

Even to an informed layman it's fairly obvious that what's happening to our climate now is not comparable to any natural event that has occurred in the past. This is simply a matter of common sense. Sadly that seems to be a commodity that people who worship money don't possess in any significant quantity. There are elements in the equation now that have never existed before. The science of the global warming deniers is reminiscent of some claims that prove oil is actually abiotic and will never, ever run out no matter how much we use. Anything is acceptable as long as it keeps the money flowing. I'm sure, if there was enough profit in it, you could find a group of scientists who would provide proof that the world is flat, that cigarettes are actually good for you or that we really don't need oxygen in order to breathe.

I'm sick of money worshippers in denial. You can lie on the tracks if you want to and insist there ain't no train a-cummin. You can twist and cherry-pick all kinds of alleged facts and produce reams of seemingly scholarly pseudo- evidence that no train exists and there's no reason to be concerned. You won't be any less dead after the train kills you, no matter how convincingly you argue against the possibility of it happening.

Perhaps the majority of the scientific community is wrong. Maybe they have greatly underestimated the time to the coming catastrophe.

Don't you think it would be interesting to see Manhattan up to its penthouses in seawater?