I read the news today, oh boy. I knew it intuitively already and science has now shown my gut feelings to be correct. The use of carbon based fuel is contributing to severe weather and climate change over the length and breadth of the planet.
I have been making environmental art depicting the results of society’s love affair with carbon based energy. A while back I made a little video of my art on the topic of “King Carbon”. It appears at this moment U.S. Politicians have the desire to crucify the electorate on a cross of carbon as they fight feverishly to be sure big carbon interests construct the Keystone Pipeline across the belly of the nation’s bread basket. They undertake this initiative despite the dismal track record of pipeline failures. The number is growing rapidly but the sheer number of pipeline failures which have occurred in the last 14 years is staggering. We’ve been addicted to carbon for a long time. We are now in the terminal stages of that addiction.What will we do? Will we simply overdose and vanish from the planet?
Focusing on the Peoples Republic of China as the prime culprit in this matter of assault on the environment a team of scientists from Texas, California and Washington State published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences which I found in AlterNet today. It is not a comforting picture which you will see if you read the article.
I live on the west coast of the United States and for years it has been known that China is dumping their smokestack particulates in the nearby mountain ranges along the coast using Mother Nature as the delivery mechanism. While using air currents to deliver their pollution to U.S. soil they make Mother Nature into an unwitting accomplice.
The article in AlterNet says in part: “China’s air pollution could be intensifying storms over the Pacific Ocean and altering weather patterns in North America.” Read the entire article at the AlterNet link above. It is a devastating expose of the malicious activity of carbon devotees.
The mountains of Oregon and Washington are not the only areas under attack from the continuous industrial barrage of Chinese smokestacks. In an article at the website energybiz it is revealed that as far back as “… 2001 dust carried from a storm in China that dropped on the US led to health advisories as far east as Atlanta Georgia.” How much is too much? How is this substantially different from an adversary dispensing a disease causing virus in our cities? Why is it not considered state sponsored terrorism?
A short time ago I made a little video with art titled “Carbon, Climate Change and Cyclones.” My gut feelings have been proved correct by these revelations in the news. Why this activity by China is not considered an act of terrorism perpetrated on the population of the United States is a question American citizens need to ask their elected representatives repeatedly until they get a satisfactory answer. This is indeed a public health issue. You’re supposed to be vaccinated for measles to avoid epidemics. But China, a foreign nation, is allowed to drop its poison from the skies across our land regardless of the health and social calamities which ensue. Has China assumed the role of a 21st century Typhoid Mary? Is it going to go on from place to place doing business and destroying the rest of the world while it prospers?
And of course it is not only China. China has enablers in the legislative halls of the U.S. in the ‘person’ of U.S. coal, oil and gas developers who give money to lawmakers in exchange for legislation favoring them. All of these ‘persons’ should also be held accountable for the disease and havoc their actions create.
This article in the Sightline Daily demonstrates what I have said: “Big Coal and Big Oil know that, in their business, political friends are worth their weight in gold. An academic study of one case of corporate lobbying estimated the return on investment at 22,000 percent: a dollar spent earned $220. Jack Abramoff, the convicted, influence-peddling super-lobbyist, pegged the return on investment of one project at 100,000 percent: $4 million dollars in lobbying cash purchased a $4 billion tax break for Tyco International.” Read more at the link.
It should be clear that if carbon use is not curtailed the next generation of humanity and the rest of life on the planet is in for hard times.
With that in mind I made the little video titled “Carbon, Climate Change and Cyclones” . I was just moved to make it because it’s all I can do to make my voice heard and feel as if I didn’t give up without a fight. These bastards are killing us.