Executive Power or Clean Air?

Laracolvin — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 15:33:46 -0500

Today's Washington Post reported the following:

"The
Bush administration yesterday invoked executive privilege and refused
to turn over key documents sought by a House investigative committee,
escalating a fight over the White House role in U.S. policy on greenhouse-gas emissions and ozone air quality standards."

Okay.
Knowing the Bush administration, I shouldn't be surprised. But
seriously? It doesn't take a scientist to figure out the importance of
limiting greenhouse-gas emissions, and with this latest disregard for
the country's - and the world's - safety, Bush has moved to playing
Russian Roulette with our climate. And for what? Why?

One word: power.

Peter Shane, a law professor quoted in the article,
said this is just "part and parcel of a larger effort to reinstate what
the Bush administration believes to be the proper scope of executive
power." So, non-law professor and non-scientist that I am, I gather the
right to live freely in a healthy environment is not so necessary if it
interferes with Bush's plans to single handedly rule - and destroy- our
earth.

Ay! ay! ay! And do you know what makes me even angrier
than Bush's power-hungry maneuvering? It is us...the voters. The
citizens. The users of the gas, electricity, plastic. Because I believe
that Bush hasn't pulled a fast one. He has always been arrogant. He has
always been willing to devour average Joe's and Josie's in the name of
oil and dominance, and he has always told a lesser version of the truth
to the people of the US. He didn't suddenly morph into this person. He
was always this person. And
since we elected him despite this (a collective we...as you probably
know, I never hung a chad in his column), we need to take
responsibility. We need to learn our lesson that taking a backseat in
the governance of our country only breeds dependence on scary people
who do scarier things. We all need to take a history class and re-read
the Declaration of Independence and Constitution and think about what
they really mean and where we
want to go from here. Because, folks, we don't have much time to make
improvements - socially, environmentally, or internationally.

Several journalists have been exploring the "real story" behind the flooding in the Midwest, and Alternet.org has a decent article
discussing it. The cause? Global warming. Duh. To those of us who have
read newspapers and watched documentaries in the last few years, this
doesn't really surprise. What does surprise and anger me is the
reluctance of our government and the mainstream media to address it. We
have a problem here. We know what it is. We know what we need to do
about it. What is it going to take for us, the people, to change? To
act differently? And just how much is it ultimately going to cost us by
avoiding, waiting, denying?

Let's start to give a damn, people.
It is time to take responsibility. Now - or we'll have a lot more to
worry about than flooded farms and wind-whipped towns.

Here are some other sites to explore if you want to make changes (and most of these sites have links of their own!):

Allie's Green Answers
Eco Chick
Gorgeously Green
Honk if You Compost
Non-Toxic Kids
Accidental Environmentalist
Climate Crisis.net
The Daily Green
The Huffington Post - Green

Lara blogs at Notions of Identity.

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Executive Power or Clean Air?