Fossils and CO2

Someone recently pointed out to me that CO2 levels are the highest they have been for 100 million years. I remarked that it was because we are burning 100 million year old fuel.

My statement was somewhat true. While CO2 levels were probably a little higher 130 thousand years ago, fairly close to the dawn of mankind, it was quite a long time ago. The fuels we use today, so-called fossil fuels including oil, gas, and coal, were formed over millions of years from decomposed organic matter. The orders of magnitude are different, but the gist is the same.

Armchair Activist: The Reply

Let's say you followed the Armchair Activist's advice and clicked away at the action alert at a website for a cause you care about. You just need to care a little about your issue, because it is so easy to contact the overlords. As promised, they will hear your pleas.

I contacted the President and Vice President of the United States about something a while back. I don't remember what exactly. It may have been that drilling in Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). It may may have been me asking for the release of Pol Brennan (OK, it wasn't that, because I only heard about his unjust incarceration today). But it was something important which I care deeply about. I'm sure of it.

But as you see, the responses are rather generic. But do not be disillusioned. Someone out there keeps track of your emails and each email is a vote. Remember if one person sends a letter there must be a million who feel the same way and have not done son. And if one sends an email, there must be at least a hundred ... errr... ten thousand who feel the same way. It's a vote. It's a poll. It's you petitioning your representatives to do something.

With no further ado, here's the reply from George W. Bush to my email message on an important topic:

From: comments@whitehouse.gov
To:
Sent: Wed 4/30/2008 3:45 PM
Subject:

On behalf of President Bush, thank you for your correspondence.

We appreciate hearing your views and welcome your suggestions.

Due to the large volume of e-mail received, the White House cannot respond to every message.

Thank you again for taking the time to write.

As you can see, W took a little less time to write as I did, and he didn't even bother to put a subject on his email. And here's what I received from Vice President Cheney:

From: vice_president@whitehouse.gov
To:
Sent: Wed 4/30/2008 3:45 PM
Subject:


Thank you for e-mailing Vice President Cheney. Your comments, suggestions and concerns are important to him. Unfortunately, because of the large volume of e-mail received, the Vice President cannot personally respond to each message. However, members of the Vice President's staff consider and report citizen ideas and concerns. Please visit the White House web site for the most up-to-date information on Presidential initiatives, current events, and topics of interest to you.

Thank you again for taking the time to write.

Eerily familiar and even sent at the same exact minute and also without a subject. Who indeed is pulling the strings over there at the White House?

Watch It Shred

Somehow there is a bit of primitive satisfaction to see something torn asunder or see something burn up. And it has to be rendered to bits, to dust or to ashes. Nobody lights a fire and walks away. They want to see the log burn up completely. We watch the whole movie, play the whole game, finish the plate. There is anticipation of the result, the finality.

Watch It Shred is a collection of the worst of our society. You can watch utter waste and futility while bowling balls, computers, pumpkins, skis, tires - you name it - get ground up in an industrial shredder. The skis appear to be shiny new and have boots in their bindings, and hey I could use a pair. I'm not picky. But when you think about it, many of these things could find a home somewhere and, given their fate, question whether they should have been created in the first place. They clog our landfills and get shipped overseas for someone else to sift through to separate the toxics from the precious. The computers may be old. The tires will be recycled into asphalt. Can you imagine shredding your old love-letters or those crates of LPs which give you grief because you can no longer play them?

Go ahead and watch these industrial snuff films and welcome that funny little feeling as you see familiar objects ground to nothing. But please do me a favor and shop less, fix things before discarding, use Freecycle (to find a new home for or to acquire things), and keep giving hand-me-down clothes to your younger cousin.