Face it, the "environment" now dominates all news. That's why I say

[henslee]

Al Gore for President.

Ice caps melting. Funky fish in the Potomic. Disappearing fish in the ocean. Deforestation. Fucked up weather. Let's face it, these problems trump all others, especiall terra. The Enviroment must become the hot button issue for the next twenty years.

[Az]

1. Oh .... but its not the environment

Didn't you hear. These are the end of days. Its the end of the world. Rejoice.

[don954]

3. to them, i say, go off yourself and hurry it up already

the rest of us have to live on this planet.

[bunkerbuster1]

2. Environmentalists kept us from building refineries!

didn't you hear?

$3+/gallon gasoline is the evil tree-huggers' fault!

(they seem to be backing down from the earlier "If we could have drilled ANWR we'd be sittin' pretty!" meme but you hear that, still, as well.)

Ok, I live in Red State Hell, but you get the idea.

[MadHound]

4. What good would Al "BP owns my ass" Gore do?

Seriously, while Al talks a good game, his actual tangible results are rather scarce. And the fact that he is a bought and paid for corporate whore for BP Oil isn't encouraging. I mean really now, would a man who chose his corporate masters over getting almost 600,000 votes for a Florida(and national) win really be all that compelled to look out for the enviroment and steer this country away from our oil addiction? Somehow I doubt it. Sure, he might implement a few token measures, but these are some seriously tough times, and they require some drastic action that Gore simply would be unwilling to undertake.

Sorry friend, but Gore isn't the answer. What we really need is somebody who isn't in the back pocket of the oil industry. That disqualfies Gore right there.

[henslee]

5. Yeah. but who?

[MadHound]

7. Kucinich comes to mind off the bat

He doesn't take any corporate money what so ever. After that, any liberal, Deomcratic or otherwise, that refuses to take corporate cash, for that is the real problem right there. Once they start taking corporate cash, all other priorities move straight to the bottom of their to do list.

[whatever4]

6. This reminds me of a paper I wrote in Jr HIgh

So WOW that was a long time ago, and, I got an A on it. I ran across it the other day, because I kept that one ;) My little old paper, it was on the environment and energy. I came to the conclusion, in the '70's, long before peak oil, that we were going to have vast problems with both energy and the environment. In the end, I determined we would end up dying in our own waste before we ran out of energy.

Funny to me is that we're still in the same race. Will we run out of energy or will we be too polluted to live healthy lives. Still not sure I'm right, but what I DO know is that both problems have escalated to the point where the question isn't silly and academic anymore. Back then, I hoped I was wrong. I'm getting REALLY tired of hoping against hope that I'm wrong.

I think we're going to keep coming up with energy resources, and all the while we'll continue destroying our planet, so I hold with my original idea. When I add depleted uranium to the equation, I'm quite sure. We're dying in our own waste.

And it hardly matters, at that point, if we have the energy to light a bulb or not, hardly matters if we have heat and light at night if we're dying. Living in teepee's would be better. I agree completely with "The Environment must become the hot button issue for the next twenty years." because if it isn't obviously important enough to say that about now, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand it WILL be obviously that important soon, and that when it gets to THAT point, it happened due to mismanagement and political lies of omission. Any politician can't see this isn't worth their salt, isn't worthy of representing us, and doesn't care about the future.

It just won't matter how much energy we have if we're all too sick to care, if the air is to toxic to breath, if the sun gives us cancer and the water tables aren't pure and the land barren of trees and life fails to support us. All the energy in the world won't matter. It just won't help, like being dressed up with no place to go, all the money in the world but nothing to spend it on. The energy won't matter.

All the energy in the world won't matter if we can't live. Sad that this is a difficult concept to explain to some people. Culture of death.

[henslee]

9. I too feel like these issues were much "around" and integrated into

mindsets when I was in high school. There was more awareness, perhaps residual hippie-ness that stuck around into the seventies until it was stomped out in the eighties. And way back then, there was never any tree hugger demonization. Ecology was a word I remember hearing. Animal rights activists were not thought of as loons.
Solutions: The EPA should be revamped. A new government agency on global warming and environmental crises should be formed. Yeah, like it will ever happen.

[EuroObserver]

10. You're right

I obtained my 1st degree in environmental sciences in the mid seventies. That was the analysis then and as far as I know it's still the analysis now: proceeding so far largely as predicted.

It's one of the main reasons why I chose to have no kids. (But I just end up worrying about *everyone's* kids).

...Recently, and I hesitate to mention this potential meme, I've come to suspect that some PNAC-type thinkers may actually be taking the issue seriously (as part of the Project, on behalf of the super-rich), and of course will be going for the 'easy' answer to the problem (which would fit well with their wider totally immoral resource-guzzling schemes), viz: CULL a very large (preferably selected) proportion of the human population of this planet.

[tex-wyo-dem]

8. The environment will be THE issue for the next several decades...

we're only beginning to see the effects.

Any candidate who truly understands this and presents a plan to lead America through the rather drastic changes we need to make will get my vote.