1/2/99
perry@uninets.net
It seems that liberal environmentalists in Maine never stop
their 'command & control' tactics. I'm amused, though I
cannot laugh about it when the gung-ho environmentalists in
Augusta brag about "Maine leads the nation!" What makes
it sad is that they are pretty near right; Maine does lead in
having the highest taxes and some of the lowest national incomes.
Now comes the great desire by the governor and the 'greens' to
lead in adopting the Kyoto global warming treaty. Yes, that's
right; the liberals in Augusta want to adopt all the restrictive
provisions of Al Gore's global
warming initiative - even though the best science minds in the
country tell us it won't work; it's not essential and that the
best science shows us the planet is cooling a tiny bit.
By any measure, those zealots in Augusta and Orono will certainly
accomplish two things dear to their hearts - higher taxes and
more 'command & control' over our property rights, plus a
somewhat new and novel idea for all Mainiacs. Those 'green'
zealots want you to have smaller lawns, much smaller lawns
(mowing lawns, they say, produces emission gases (like carbon
dioxide, carbon monoxide and ozone). You must plant more trees on
your lawn, have more bushes and shrubs.
I am continually amazed how little these people know about plant
agronomy and common sense. Such a move to create wooded areas and
no lawns, will certainly increase fire danger, probably hike your
fire insurance rates materially. That's what this summer's fires
in Florida and southern California taught us. When these fires do
occur, those homes in forested, bushy areas have burned first.
That doesn't occur when lawns and meadows abound. Trees,
particularly conifers,. burn easily during times of severe
draught, almost like torches. Reduce lawns, increase trees and
brush and wild fires will occur and there will be severe fires.
In their 66 page draft, entitled "State of Maine Climate
Change Action Plan", their committee of 19 people, the
majority government employees, detail everything they think ought
to be done. Errors abound, of course.
For instance, on page 5, there is this sentence, "the root
of the problem is that human activities have altered the balance
of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, so that we now face the
risk of rapid global warming and climate changes that may
threaten important features of our ecological economies and
social systems".
Honest science simply doesn't back this concept. Elsewhere I read
about how CO2 is a pollutant. It certainly is regarded as a
pollutant by so many 'climate change advocates'. Actually CO2 is
the very breath of life for humans and animals. It is essential
for plant life which in turn produces the oxygen and the food we
need for life.
Such ideas backed by huge amounts of money are used to generate
fear. My 20 years of study on the environmental movement
nationally and internationally, show that the environmentalist
use fear effectively and efficiently, whether it is a Maine or a
Washington program. And those 20 years have taught me, please
trust me, that these liberal 'greens' are usually wrong. And that
statement includes the EPA programs from acid rain to Alar, to
dioxin, and now global warming.
Temperatures change around the world, and some changes last
considerable lengths of time. For instance, going back 40 years
in Connecticut, I recall temperatures as low as -20 degrees. The
area I formerly lived in, from Bridgeport to Hartford, hasn't
seen cold weather like that for many years. On the other hand,
orange plantations were once common in Georgia. Now oranges can't
be successfully raised much north of Orlando, Florida, about 175
miles south of southern Georgia. It's cooled that much in these
southern states.
Obviously, if we have an Arctic warming of several degrees, there
will be no melting; to the contrary, there will be more snowfall
and thicker ice caps. Why? Slight warming in any Arctic region
will create more snowfall; any high school science student knows
that.
I like what Dr. Dixy Lee Ray wrote on global warming "Should
we worry about global warming? Best that we clear away real
uncertainties before we devote resources to a phenomenon that may
exist only in computer simulations." Today we know that
thousands of honest scientists will agree global warming has not
been proven; it very likely is not occurring and it certainly is
no fact.