Today leaders of the EU (European Union) have challenged the world to join them in fighting global warming. The EU has called for energy-saving lighting to be required in homes, offices and streets by the end of this decade and a binding target for 20% renewable sources of energy in use by 2020.
Here's part of the challenge: The leaders are now committed to a target of reducing EU greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020, but they will make that 30% if major nations such as the United States, Russia, China, and India will follow suit.
I don't believe the United States will do much, if anything, as long as the current administration is in office. Somehow we need to educate the American people on this issue. The problem is that our news sources seem more interested in keeping us up-to-date on scandals and the sex lives of the stars rather than REAL NEWS.
What's wrong with this picture? Do we not think it is important to protect the very air we breathe? Do we not understand that if we ruin this earth we don't have anywhere else to go?
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer said, just an hour ago, "The Bush administration is ordering federal wildlife officials headed for international meetings on polar bears not to talk about how climate change and melting ice are affecting the imperiled animals. It is the latest in a string of cases in which the administration has carefully controlled or even banned government employees' public speech about global warming."
Yet the polar bear's habitat is threatened by the melting Arctic sea ice. No, this administration won't take the EU challenge. I hope other countries do.
2 comments:
If I even think about Bush and the environment together, I start to rant. No, there will not be anything positive happening during the Bush Administration. I think we can bank on that.
And, the real reason I'm here . . .
Thanks for the lengthy comment on your Around the World in 80 Days group. It sounds like loads of fun. I've read some of those titles, but far from all of them (and a few are on my stacks).
As to the link; I don't know that I'd leave it as is. My photo blog contains a lot of nature pics, but it was primarily intended as a place to share with relatives and friends, so I add swim photos, kid photos and pics from travels (usually within the state because most of our traveling is due to swim meets, these days). It's definitely not "mostly birds". I think it would probably be best to just label it "Friend's photo blog" or use the title of the blog and let your visitors figure out for themselves whether or not it's a place they're interested in returning.
"The greatest moral issue of our time is our responsibility to the planet and to all its inhabitants," says a NYT editorial this morning entitled "Evangelical Environmentalism."
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