Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Pretending the planet isn’t in peril


Nature's cataclysmic volcano eruptions, hurricanes, tornadoes and floods aren't episodes that develop abruptly. Complex environmental and geophysical conditions that breed gradually develop long before the catastrophes strike.

So it is with climate change and the warming of the earth. Catastrophes lie beyond humankind's current line of sight.

But marvels of scientific technology have detected first signs of conditions that could lead to almost unendurable living conditions on the planet—famine, devastating coastal tides, parched forests, blistering urban heat, snow-less winters. They give humankind time to begin remedies.

However, naysayers continue to obstruct reform, despite incontrovertible data that the planet is in peril.

Add the state of Utah to the foot-draggers. Relying on a "study" by The Heritage Foundation, a Republican business group, the Utah GOP's Sen. Orrin Hatch and Gov. Gary Herbert are trying to panic Utahns into believing climate change legislation should be defeated. Heritage's study claims job and state revenue losses would ensue if business is required to install energy-saving, pollution-prevention technologies.

As The Salt Lake Tribune reported, the 100 people attending a town hall meeting seemed less interested in details of the legislation than how they could kill it. A few who posed questions about health and environmental damages if the bill isn't enacted were booed down.

Heritage's economic doomsaying ignores one of the vital instincts of industry—its ability to show genius in confronting cost obstacles with new technologies that create savings and even new job opportunities, such as "green" innovations.

The study also disregards a more important cost—if climate change legislation to reverse greenhouse gas trends isn't imposed quickly, global warming will affect the human habitat drastically with skyrocketing health and unemployment costs.

A new study by researchers from Norway, Canada, the U.S., Denmark, Britain and Finland into the 2,000-year trend of Arctic temperatures published in Science magazine provides more credible documentation of the environmental plight of the planet. It thoroughly disputes any notion that climate change is a "hoax."

In parroting industry's scare-mongering about job losses and smothering the truth about climate change, Utah's senior politicians do their state the nation a cruel disservice by placing industry's fortunes above the fate of the planet.

If global warming inflicts irreversible damage to earth's quality of life, then industry and its political protectors will really learn the costs of climate change. Making changes now will be far cheaper than dealing with catastrophe.




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