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The old button from the Environmental Club days which I just happened to find on Earth Day! It is a little beat up (particularly the ends of the ribbon), but no worse for the wear, I think. And it is one of the few items that I have left from those days, so it carries a lot of great memories for me! Nothing Changes Until You Do!
Here is a picture of a very similar logo, with the same message, that was on the t-shirt that I purchased from the BCC Environmental Club and, if memory serves me correctly, may even have helped to make. There were a few projects like that which club members, myself included, were regularly involved with. It has been so long, however, that I no longer recall specifically if I actually helped to make these or not, although I do believe so, since I remember seeing the process of the t-shirts being dyed. In any case, I loved this t-shirt, and have kept it ever since, even if I do not regularly wear it. Since it was part of my experience with the BCC Environmental Club days, as well as more generally having an environmental theme, it seemed appropriate to share it here.
"Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's gred."
~Mahatma Gandhi
"Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future."
~John F. Kennedy
It is hard to believe that even today, in 2015, we have many people who still deny the reality of climate change, or even of human involvement in climate change.
The price of gas has gone down, and so naturally, you have more people driving big, gas-guzzling SUV's.
Over and over again, whenever there are brief fluctuations in the price of things like gas, you have examples of irresponsible decision making and narrow mindedness all around you.
We have commercials these days that remind me so much of Neil Young's Keep on Rockin' in the Free World, when Young was mentioning a "man of the people" type that was urging Americans to drive, and burn fossil fuels. Here is the specific line:
"Got a man of the people, says keep hope alive Got fuel to burn, got roads to drive!"
Yes, Marathon gas (I do not believe that I have ever actually seen a station, but I would not stop there if I ever do) even came up with their own song, complete with insipid lyrics:
"Get a full tank of freedom and drive the American road – we’ll take you wherever you go!"
Ah, the music of ecological responsibility! It outright implies that "a full tank" is "freedom". Once again, we find that we have a "right" to do something that causes others harm. In this case, the harm is being done to pretty much every living creature on this planet, albeit in small increments. But if you add those increments up, particularly taking into consideration the push for more cars and more areas to dig for gas, even at the expense of our open and still wild lands, the damage is hardly incremental.
Here in the United States these days, we seem to often equate "freedom" systematically with doing things that are tremendously damaging to the public good in general. Again, in small increments, so small that most people see only the drop that, in their particular case, might not seem to do much damage, but taken as a whole, do tremendous damage. Sure, in part, I am speaking of the right to consume more gas than is absolutely necessary by driving gas-guzzling vehicle, such as SUV's. But I am also speaking of the "right" to acquire whatever weaponry we want, no matter how damaging, as the right to bear arms so that we can sustain a well-regulated militia. There is also the "freedom" of the religious who can use their religion to discriminate against others based on their sexual orientation. I am also talking about the "freedom" of big corporations and the ultra-wealthy to give limitless tons of money to influence political campaigns and elections, as well as the "right" of many of these same corporations and the ultra-wealthy to practice economics that have proven harmful to the American people as a whole, including such practices as unjustifiable tax breaks and incentives, shipping off jobs to other, poorer countries (known as outsourcing), and cutting benefits and paying less than living wages to workers.
Yes, these are all things that too many Americans these days equate with "freedom". The freedom to be irresponsible towards your fellow man.
That is the sorry state of affairs presently in the United States. We see proud symbols of our American heritage, including the words of some truly great, giant intellectual figures of human history, to justify this skewed perception of what "freedom" means.
Global warming, or climate change, or whatever you want to call it, is a real threat, to the best of our understanding. The vast majority of the scientific community, the experts in this particular field, agree that this is so. Yet, it is met with mockery and disdain by the very people who are most ignorant of this "theory". Just a couple of days ago, on Earth Day itself, the present Speaker of the House, John Boehner, released a video pretty clearly mocking the very idea of Earth Day. I will write a bit more on that in a couple of days. But in short, the video suggests that we should celebrate "Jelly Bean Day", as a transparent dig at the very notion of celebrating "Earth Day".
Such is the present climate of politics in America. And we wonder why things seem to be on a fast track towards decline?
The best answer to all of this is to stay informed, and to keep our wits about us. If we have a better understanding and keep our focus on the bigger picture, we can keep our sanity in what appears to be a time when a certain measure of insanity is taking over.
Here are some articles relating to climate change, or global warming, to help us stay informed, really, of what both sides have to say about it. It begins with how global warming might be impacted with a Hillary presidency. Since she is the unofficially anointed candidate for the Democrats, much like Jeb is the unofficially anointed candidate or the GOP, we should examine what her ascension to the White House might actually mean to the health of the environment and, by extension, to global warming.
There are plenty of other interesting and informative articles, as well. They are hear, with their links so that you can access them and read them for yourself, so that you can stay informed and form your own opinion on them.
From my perspective, staying informed is truly the patriotic thing to do. Here are the links:
Here’s What a Hillary Clinton Presidency Would Mean for Global Warming April 15, 2015 by Ben Adler
Here Are the 56 Percent of Congressional
Republicans Who Deny Climate Change by Tiffany Germain, February 3, 2015:
The Arctic climate threat that nobody’s even talking about yet By Chris Mooney April 1, 2015:
Many Americans reject evolution, deny
climate change and find GM food unsafe by Ian Sample, The Guardian, January 29,
2015:
Obama Calls Out Republicans for Their
“I’m Not a Scientist” Line By Will Oremus, January 29, 2015:
Hilarious Video Reveals 56% Of Congress GOPers Suffer ‘Climate Change Denial Disorder’ (VIDEO) AUTHOR: ELISABETH PARKER APRIL 18, 2015:
What to Do Now That Republicans Have
Acknowledged Climate Change by Tom Tomorrow, February 3, 2015:
How the climate change debate got hijacked by the wrong standard of proof by Kurt Cobb, originally published by Resource Insights | APR 12, 2015
Species Are Dying Off, Human Disease Is
On the Rise and Doomsday Is Closer Than Ever by Dahr Jamail, February 3, 2015:
“No, this all about the president wants to make corporations the enemy,” co-host Melissa Francis insisted. “That’s much easier. He’s so much more comfortable fighting back against the 1 percent, against companies who are changing the environment rather than against ISIS.”
“The science is off,” Tantaros shot back. “And let me point to a very recent example. That’s the most important thing, the science is off. We just had a snow storm two weeks ago in New York. They told us New York City was going to get blown out.”
“We had to give up our freedom and sit in our house, no cars on the road,” she continued. “Guess what? The models were wrong. So they got the models wrong on the science 24 hours before. How about those models 10, 20 years from now?”
“This hysteria, this crisis, this spending taxpayer dollars to fix it, until we have it as a fact, I don’t think we should do it,” Tantaros declared.
Fox host: ‘We had to give up our freedom’ during snow storm because climate change is a hoaxDavid Edwards 11 Feb 2015 at
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/02/fox-host-we-had-to-give-up-our-freedom-during-storm-because-climate-change-is-a-hoax/#.VNwYxeU-7Nw.facebook
Neil deGrasse Tyson: Politicians Denying Science Is ‘Beginning Of The End Of An Informed Democracy’ BY ARI PHILLIPS POSTED ON APRIL 18, 2015
Here Are the 56 Percent of Congressional Republicans Who Deny Climate Change February 3, 2015 by Tiffany Germain
http://billmoyers.com/2015/02/03/congress-climate-deniers/
Is climate change fuelling war?. By Richard Ingham February 11, 2015:
http://news.yahoo.com/climate-change-fuelling-war-071314580.html
NASA Scientist Urges Action on Climate Changeby Linda Telesco (Open Post), September 23, 2011
http://patch.com/new-jersey/teaneck/nasa-scientist-urges-action-on-climate-change-716dd2a6
Posted by Tim De Chant on Tue, 14 Apr 2015 Read Later Share Tweet Staggering Warming Could Happen If We Burn All Fossil Fuels
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/earth/staggering-warming-could-happen-if-we-burn-all-fossil-fuels/
http://www.sciencealert.com/here-are-the-countries-most-likely-to-survive-climate-change
http://uk.businessinsider.com/climate-change-infographic-2015-1
http://www.vox.com/2015/1/27/7918377/population-cartogram
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