Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Theology or Environment?

Either way, in my opinion he is wrong. Who is wrong? Rick Santorum.

He cleared up when he said the President had phoney theology he was not questioning his faith. One thing that tells me, is that he needs to be careful when he talks, about just what he means, as President you need to be very clear about what you mean. Especially if you are talking to leaders of other countries that have "The Bomb" among other things!

Mostly what he, and the other Republican candidates, talk about seems to be Religion, Gays, Contraception, Etc. There is very little said about the Economy or Foreign Policy except to say that Obama is responsible for everything bad that happened to the Economy, the USA and the World since God made it! But no mention is made of how they will "correct" or "fix" whatever is wrong with it. Instead, we hear about "attacks" on our faith, our beliefs, etc etc. Whatever happened to separation of Church and State? Why are they more concerned about people who love each other wanting to get married, or people who don't want children, or more children, having access to birth control, or sick people having access to Affordable Health Care, or people being able to afford to give their children a good education.

In the latest attack by Santorum it would seem that President Obama is now responsible for public education! Even I know that was instituted before he was born! But no, the fact that the Federal and State governments pay for public education is "anascronitic", and wrong. People should be responsible for their children's education, according to Rick. I guess that is OK for people like him who can afford to send their children to private schools.

But the main thrust of his attack is that The President is an "Environmentalist" or a "Tree Hugger", that he wants to save an endangered plant or animal at the expense of people. But if you look at the kinds of environmental policies Obama pursues we see that they are for the health and well being of us all.

For example he wants to increase the fuel efficiency of vehicles. (This gets angry attacks from Republican - anti environmentalists - everywhere) Every President for the last 30 years or more has required more efficient vehicles, but this doen't stop the haters from telling us that President Obaman has no right to tell us that we need to produce more gas efficient vehicles. There was no problem when Bush mandated it. He wants power plants to reduce mercury emissions. He wants to encourage green energy, all environmental things that help human health.

But Mr Santorum would remove all environmental, endangered species and habitat protections. All attempts at reducing pollution and Global Climate change - he denys all science that shows we are dramatically changing our environment, acidifying our lakes and oceans, rising sea levels, loss of farm land, greenhouse gases, more and bigger storms, heat waves etc. He favors using polluting fuels like coal and oil and stopping research on non-polluting renewable fuels like solar, wind, wave and geothermal. Apparently endangered species have no value to Rick, (they do to that "Dangerous" man Barrack.) They do to me too, lack of biodiversity is important, we are missing chances of new medicines for every plant and animal that we lose.

Santorum is so anti-environment and so extreme in all his views that the thought of him becoming President is literally terrifying to me.

Cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay.

A lot has been written lately about cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay. One of the main pollutants is animal waste, mostly chicken poop. Apparently chicken farmers have a lot of pull when it comes to stopping attempts to get them to treat their chicken's waste before dumping it onto their land from where it simply washes into The Bay. (I wonder how the public would feel about thousands of tons of human waste being dumped into The Bay untreated?)

Anyway here are two procedures placed side by side for your consideration.

In the first the chicken farmers dump several thousand tons of chicken manure into The Chesapeake Bay. (For drama lets have them back their trucks up and dump some of it say off the beach at Sandy Point State Park, and some off of the Bay Bridge, maybe a few into the Annapolis and Baltimore Inner Harbors, and of course don't forget your favorite fishing spot, the waterfront property of a few politicians and just for good luck your waterfront, if you happen live on the water.) Now we go back a week, or a month, or a year later and "Clean it up" Yep we go out there and "Clean up The Bay". Find all that chicken shit that we dumped in there, get it out and treat it. I imagine it would be very very expensive, and of course impossible.

Second alternative, treat the manure BEFORE putting it into The Bay. Or even don't put it into The Bay, even after treating it.

A revolutionary idea?

Could it even be cheaper to treat it BEFORE rather than AFTER dumping it into The Bay? After all we do treat human waste first, why not animal waste? It would have to be cheaper than trying to clean it up after it has been put in there.

As an experiment try taking an armload of newspapers and dumping them off the end of a pier. Then go back, just the next day, and pick it all out. It would take a while, possibly your whole lifetime, much will have floated away, all will be so wet and soggy you won't even be able to pick it up. Now compare the alternative - dump the armload of newspapers into your recycling bin. There, wasn't that easier, quicker, cheaper and less messy?