Year 2, Month 8, Day 3: Hey! I’m-a-talkin’ to YOU!

The July 17 Poughkeepsie Journal runs an interview with their area’s Regional EPA director, prefacing it with some pointed words of criticism:

Nevertheless, it is on that second subject, global warming, that the federal Environmental Protection Agency has been far too tepid in its response. Both the agency and federal elected officials still have to find common ground — and viable solutions.

Judith Enck, the EPA regional administrator, defended the agency’s decision not to press forward more forcibly without congressional support, despite various court rulings that would seem to give the EPA more latitude here.

I think I’m going to start writing to the multinationals directly. Yeah, that’ll work. The Poughkeepsie Journal has a 250-word limit, and I didn’t feel like cutting this one down from 195, so it’s a little longer than the default 150. Sent July 17:

It is irrefutable that the EPA should push harder to limit carbon emissions and give more attention to educating the public on the extremely dangerous future that awaits us if global climate change is not controlled. Sadly, it’s also irrefutable that the current political climate is a dreadful one for progress on environmental issues. With an ideologically constricted Republican party chock-full of anti-science zealots who appear to believe that they can create their own reality if they don’t like this one, meaningful legislative initiatives on what is arguably the most pressing issue of our time are entirely out of the question. Yes, the EPA should do its job more zealously, with special attention to aspects of the environment which transcend national boundaries and affect all the world’s people. But the other side of the equation is that the corporate forces controlling our politics must realize that if their customer base were to experience what biologists delicately call an “evolutionary bottleneck,” it would hurt their future profit margins more than a worldwide shift to renewable energy. Let the world’s multinationals figure this out, and we’ll see Republicans publicly embracing wind turbines and solar panels.

Warren Senders