A few more thoughts

When given the assignment to write about the threats to North America, as posed by India and China, the first thing that came to my mind was the threats to the environment. In China, these threats are being nourished by unregulated (less regulated) industrialization, an exponential increase in motor vehicle use, and coal-generated electricity production, to name a few. I can sympathize with ‘developing’ countries that hold the position they had nothing (little) to do with laying the foundations for the current state of accelerating ecological trauma, so why should they be penalized. Fair enough, but that attitude isn’t going to spare the planet. I think anyone who doesn’t believe it’s worthwhile paying attention to climate change is an idiot.

This leads me to dwell on what I have learned about the reallocation of spending and investment by the US after 9/11, and the grossly disproportionate allocation to address security issues at the expense of literacy and the environment.

What would happen if journalists or broadcasters or publishers decided to spin for the environment? Forget stories based on social, economic or political analysis. You can catch all of those in one big environmental lens. “And in climate changes news ….eight schools and two hospitals were evacuated today because of the expanding forest fires in California….heavy rains in the mid-west has destroyed two thirds of the nation’s wheat crop ..... the government is being blamed for mismanaging the distribution of water after the recent prolonged drought in southern England….”

It’s tragically irresponsible for journalists to use the word environmentalist in a pejorative manner.