A tough row to hoe

December 22, 2009
A Tough row to hoe?
Well, since this will be the last Hometowner article for the year, I might as well make an announcement. 2010 is an election year and I will be running for county commissioner from District 5, so my column is going to be rather restricted. I have to be careful what I write about so the county commissioners can’t accuse me of using the Hometowner for a soap box or platform for election. You already know of course that if I choose to speak at the county commission meetings I have to announce whether or not I’m speaking as a private citizen or as a candidate for elective office. I asked the other day if when the commissioners are running for reelection whether or not they have to announce that and was told that when the meeting is in session they are acting as commissioners not candidates for office. Right! Since when?
There is a fine line in this whole ordeal. Even though the paper is published in the state of Iowa, the majority of the people in my district read the Hometowner. Isn’t it nice to read a paper with REAL news printed in it instead of propaganda? I wonder what would happen if I wrote in the Wall Street Journal? Anyway, I will continue to write about oil, water, Hyperion, and the environment. It is just that I will be very careful what I say about county happenings, except for what comes out of the mouths of the commissioners themselves. Then it is news. I will save my wit and witticisms for the campaign.
The rest of this article today is about climate change. The meeting in Copenhagen is drawing international attention, but I would venture to say that the majority of the people in the United States could care less about what is happening in the conference. I have several concerns about what this is all about, and wonder if you might feel the same way. I really want to call this a case of the have’s versus the have not’s.
v 1. One of the big concerns about the climate warming conference is the fact that the poor nations are being hung out to dry. The rich nations continue to get richer and the poor get poorer at the expense of these rich nations. The sad part of this problem is that the poor nations will never catch up. Technology is advancing at such a rate that it is impossible for them to catch up. Climate change is not a fallacy but fact. How we solve this problem is the dilemma.
v 2. In my opinion, the poor nations do not have the technology or the ability to handle the gift or sharing from richer nations. It will still be oppression, pardon me, suppression because it will take 100 years for Africa to catch up if at all. The industrial revolution took place in the 18th and 19th century and Africa is still lagging. The revolution was merely just the use of coal to make steam to power industrial equipment, and still they are behind.
v 3. In order for poor nations to catch up to, the wealthy nations must make sacrifices. That will never happen. That is like in the United States where many people want redistribution of wealth. Opponents of this call it a move to socialism. You know how scary that word is. You know the ramifications of what will happen if the country makes a move that direction, the same feeling exists for constraints on the use of non renewable energy sources.
v 4. The wealthy nations will never ever submit to denial of luxury, i.e. plenty of electricity, CLEAN running water and flush toilets and CLEAN AIR, for the sake of the poor nations. I can speak from firsthand experience what it is like to have laundry done by beating the clothes on a rock at the river and taking a bath in a large earthen jug that captures rainwater. It isn’t fun.
v 5. Climate change cannot happen if these people are kept in the dark. It is like forcing democracy on a nation that has known nothing but dictatorship. It won’t work. Plain and simple. These nations not only have to want to change, they will have to be in a position to be able to satisfy the richer nations with these changes.
So where does that leave us? Climate change is money talking, not morals or environment. This isn’t a perfect world, but people are still greedy and purvey the attitude what is mine is mine and you’re not about to take it away. If this wasn’t the case, there would be no poor in this country.
Until we take the attitude of giving instead of taking you can preach climate change till you are blue in the face and nothing is going to happen. Is that bad? How many of us would be willing to give up driving anywhere you want and conserve to cut down on pollution. Let’s face it, climate change will only be taken seriously when we end up paying double or triple for gas for our cars and the same for electricity and water. When that happens, progress will stagnate and we will be reverting to the life our forefathers had when they were pioneers in the Wild West.
I am not the bearer of impending doom like the ‘Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’ but if we don’t make changes voluntarily to slow down this process, the involuntary change is going to be a tough row to hoe. This is reality and we need to face this issue head on now or it will be too late.