[North-NV-Greens] Fwd: Molly Ivins: The Reality-Based Environment

[Paul Etxeberri]

>
>
>The Reality-Based Environment
>
>By Molly Ivins, AlterNet
>Posted on December 16, 2004,
>Printed on December 17, 2004
><http://www.alternet.org/story/20772/>
>
>    "The aide (a senior adviser to President Bush) said
>    that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-
>    based community,' which he defined as people who
>    'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious
>    study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured
>    something about enlightenment principles and
>    empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the
>    world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an
>    empire now, and when we act, we create our own
>    reality. And while you're studying that reality ñ
>    judiciously, as you will ñ we'll act again, creating
>    other new realities, which you can study too, and
>    that's how things will sort out. We're history's
>    actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just
>    study what we do." ñ Ron Suskind, New York Times
>    Magazine, Oct. 17, 2004.
>
>This is the quote that now has some noted bloggers
>identifying themselves as, "Proud Member of the Reality-
>Based Community."
>
>Of all the problems that arise from having an
>administration that chooses not to believe in reality,
>the ones most likely to have irretrievably disastrous
>consequences are environmental.
>
>The Bush solution to global warming is to declare it
>does not exist. While this solves the problem for him in
>the short term, global warming is highly unlikely to be
>impressed by the news that we are now an empire and can
>change history.
>
>Just lately, "history's actors" have made a couple of
>singular contributions to our future that we in the
>reality-based community will doubtless be studying for
>some time to come.
>
>The first allows sewer operators to dump inadequately
>treated sewage into the nation's waterways. The
>Environmental Protection Agency (a name that becomes
>more ironic daily) currently requires sewer operators to
>fully treat their waste in all but the most extreme
>circumstances, like during a hurricane. The new plan
>will allow operators to dump sewage routinely any time
>it rains.
>
>According to the Natural Resources Defense Council: "For
>the last 50 years, standard sewage treatment has
>involved a two-step process: solids removal, and
>biological treatment to kill bacteria, viruses and
>parasites. The new policy allows facilities to routinely
>bypass the second step and to 'blend' partially treated
>sewage with fully treated wastewater before discharging
>it into the waterways."
>
>NRDC predicts more Americans ñ especially the elderly,
>very young and those with weakened immune systems ñ will
>get sick and die. That's on account of the fact that
>bacteria, viruses and parasites are also part of the
>reality-based community and have no respect for
>history's actors or empires.
>
>Next, in one of those under-the-radar moments so beloved
>of the Bushies, the Pentagon has simply exempted itself
>from environmental law. A new Department of Defense
>directive changes a Clinton-era order on "Environmental
>Security" by eliminating the following policies:
>
>     * Reducing risk to human health and the environment
>     by identifying, evaluating and, where necessary,
>     remediating contamination resulting from past DoD
>     activities.
>
>     * Protecting, preserving and, when required,
>     restoring and enhancing the quality of the
>     environment.
>
>     * Conserving and restoring, where necessary, the
>     natural and cultural heritage represented on DoD
>     installations within the United States.
>
>There has been no public debate or congressional review
>of the new policy. The policy was written by the man who
>watched the looting of Baghdad and said, "Stuff
>happens."
>
>To add to the global warming festivities now comes a new
>novel by Michael Crichton, who has made a fortune by
>scaring us about nonexistent threats ñ the Japanese
>taking over the world, rampant sexual harassment by
>predatory females and dinosaurs recreated by insane
>scientists. This time, Crichton claims to be working
>against the fear-mongers, because the premise of his new
>novel is that global warming is much overrated and
>actually the product of a sinister group of villains ñ
>the environmentalists. Enviros, by and large a pacific
>bunch of vegetarians and birders, must make
>unsatisfactory villains (I haven't read the book).
>
>But in fact, the "villains" in global warming are not
>environmentalists, but scientists. They are the ones
>trying to "scare" us by making us aware of the problem,
>which is reality-based. Yet another study ñ by 300
>scientists with the International Arctic Science
>Committee ñ finds:
>
>     * Average winter temperatures in the Arctic are up
>     by 4 to 7 degrees over the past 50 years and now
>     projected to rise by 7 to 14 degrees over the next
>     100 years.
>
>     * Polar ice during the summer is projected to
>     decline by 50 percent by the end of this century.
>
>     * Warming over Greenland will lead to substantial
>     melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, contributing to
>     global sea level rise at an increasing rate.
>     Greenland's ice sheets contain enough water to raise
>     the sea level by about 23 feet.
>
>Scientists, a reality-based bunch of empiricists if ever
>there was one, are in no doubt about global warming. The
>only question is about how fast it's happening. And many
>of the small minority who argue it is coming slowly are
>themselves in the pay of oil companies and industry
>groups.
>
>As Upton Sinclair observed, "It is difficult to get a
>man to understand something when his salary depends upon
>his not understanding it." And that is not conspiracy-
>mongering. That is reality.
>
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-- 
Paul Etxeberri

"Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow"   ---Chateaubriand