There should have been a fourth debate and that debate should have been dedicated to all things environment. The environment covers a lot of issues, from natural resources including fossil fuels and other natural energy resources to their alternatives that we need to be discussing now.
It also includes Climate Change and our complete inability to act as a Country due to the deep partisan divide regarding what many scientists have declared as settled. It's happening and we have little time to act. So what are these two men going to do to act now, now four years from now, not ten. We need to act now. Where is our leadership on this dire global issue that will far out weight the deficit as an issue for our children and their children to come?
As David Atkins so perfectly stated, "A generation from now, historians will laugh at us for being more afraid of Iran than Climate Change".
The other issues are also related to Climate Change which our very lives depend on. Food! How we grow it and where we will grow it in the future. From our use of heinously ridiculous and dangerous farming practices that puts more pollution in our environment and our bodies (fertilizers, pesticides and antibiotics because of CAFO's and large industrialized farming) to our refusal to see how farming subsidies affect our food choices and how it sets our national eating trends.
GMO's anyone?
What about protecting our National Parks and open spaces?
What about our Oceans and the ongoing issue of overfishing and exploitation of it's resources. Acidification? What about our use of sonar and its affects on marine mammals off the coasts?
Water? What about the water issue that continues to be the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about. We only have so much fresh water and we refuse to deal with how we will keep it clean, transport it and use it wisely!
What about our crumbling energy infrastructure? Our power Grid?
Transportation? How are we going to continue to reduce carbon emissions, pollution, mercury and other pollutants that are harming our environment, our health and our future?
These issues are not mutually exclusive, they all relate to the environment and there are so MANY more!
The fact that our news media refuses to address these issues in the debates is appalling to me. There is no dollar bill without clean air. There is no nightly news without drinking water and food to eat. Our entire civilization breaks down when we cannot function on the simple things we need to survive.
When I read to my 9 year old that in 20 years all big cats will probably be extinct she began to cry. Not just little tears, but sobbing. My daughter gets that, she wanted to know what she COULD DO. She felt the urgency of now, that what we do now matters and when I explained habitat loss, poachers and climate change she wanted to know why we weren't doing more?
Why aren't we doing more? Why aren't the adults DOING MORE?
It's a good question. But no one asked any of those questions in the debates and I for one was very disappointed as well. We have a duty to our children and grandchildren to try to do our best to try to remember that the planet is our home and we must do more to save her.