Save the Environment

By Larry Fritzlan

Our planet is at grave risk. We need immediate, comprehensive, government action if we are to prevent total devastation of the earth and its atmosphere.

"Congress and the Executive Branch, in all their actions, will strive to recreate a biosphere like the one that existed when this country was founded."

This topic is painful. Who hasn't had their heart broken at what is happening to Our Mother Earth? Remember Joni Mitchell's song about how they "paved paradise and put up a parking lot?"

For millions of years, the Earth and Mother Nature have unveiled their wonder. Man evolved and learned how to hunt and gather and live sustainably on this planet. For a million years, man and nature got along. And then, a moment ago in galactic time, we went crazy. We went insane. We figured out how to set carbon on fire, ignored the effects of our actions, and now we're on track to kill Mother Nature and end all life, if we don't turn this around! It may already be too late.

The Native Americans lived in peaceful harmony with the earth. We chose to disregard their sustainable systems, and now we've relegated them to a few reservations where they subsist on a fraction of the land they used to protect. If we'd left the Native Americans in charge of our natural resources, would we be in this bad a fix?

It looks like Einstein was right -- we are going to destroy ourselves.

It's that serious.

Nothing demonstrates this better than the way Big Business, and Big Government, in collusion with Big Union, have gone absolutely insane and destroyed large parts of the Earth.

And we are fools for trusting them. Seriously, we are the fools who put them in charge!

The ethanol subsidy game is an example. It is a rigged system, enabled by our politicians. The only people who win are the fat cats in Big Business, the politicians, and Big Farm -- the large, mainly corn-growing farmers in Midwestern America. Ethanol is touted as an alternative energy to oil, but it takes nearly a gallon of oil to make a gallon of ethanol!

So this scheme essentially funds Big Oil. And Our Government colludes with Big Business to brainwash the citizens of Iowa to accept farm subsidies (bribes) to grow corn that's run through Big Oil's money machines, to make ethanol that's added to gasoline.

Who wins? The money addicts in Big Business. And the politicians who get bribes to run their endless campaigns. Big Oil and Big Farm, which get subsidies. Farmers don't seem to mind ruining their grandchildren's lands and rivers, or are so squeezed economically that they can't see another choice.

Does not sound sane to me. To you?

Who loses? We all do -- our taxes are raised to pay for this charade. And, all of us lose as nature is destroyed and pollutants are washed into the rivers and oceans.

The smallish, blue, third planet from the sun, Earth, is heating up. Its inhabitants are running around at a frantic pace, setting all the carbon on fire.

This last year has shown us what the future holds. In July 2011 every single state reported record high temperatures! Huge floods, tornados, and torrential rain fell. This is occurring because our now warmer air holds more moisture. And it is warmer because we, you and I, this year, have pumped 31 billion metric tons of carbon into it; a new record. And we are in a recession. Wait until world economies are humming again.

Earth's rapid warming is setting off alarms on many fronts. The journal Nature has recently reported some troubling findings. Scientists at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks report that the ice covering the permafrost is melting. Should this ice melt, it will release vast amounts of methane, and catastrophic amounts of carbon dioxide. Jeremy Rifkin, in his latest book, The Third Industrial Revolution, says that if this happened, "there is nothing our species could do to prevent a wholesale destruction of our ecosystems and catastrophic extinction of life on the planet."

Barack Obama talked a good game before he was elected. Many of us hoped he would save the environment. But he caved. He sold out. In his State of the Union address he said, "We have enough natural gas to last 100 years." Am I the only one who wondered about my great, great, grandchildren having no natural gas? President Obama has become part of the insanity. He sold out his influence to the special interests by giving them what they wanted, so they will give him money to spend on advertising to get re-elected. It is estimated that Obama will spend close to one billion dollars campaigning, in an attempt to brainwash us into voting for him!

One billion dollars! What did he have to give up to get that money?

Obama is opening up more land in Wyoming to dig up more coal, to ship east, and burn for fuel, which will pump more carbon into our air and spread more mercury on America's children and into America's rivers. He continues to support the removal of mountaintops in the east, to mine coal in a process that destroys ground water and spews more mercury into the atmosphere (ending up in our children's food), and heats up the planet.

Both Big Oil and Big Union support this. And they are opening up more drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska. I had hoped that Obama would be different. I now see that I was naïve. I didn't fully understand the magnitude of the power wielded by the 1%. I, like most of us, believed in the American Way. I was still in denial of the fact that we are governed by an oligarchy that is run by unethical people.

And the Democrats, champions of the little man, champions of big fixes for big problems, stand around with their hands out, knowing that cash will be coming in to support this madness! The Republicans are also standing there with their hands out, waiting for the bribes and their marching orders.

But now, the Internet has given us, the people, the ability to see that the whole system is corrupt.

Jeremy Rifkin's book, The Third Industrial Revolution, challenges all of us to think in terms of the paradigm shift that is necessary. The European Union has been working with him to implement some of the changes needed.

As a U.S. Representative, I will introduce a bill in Congress that proposes the following Constitutional Amendment:

"Congress and the Executive Branch, in all their actions, will strive to recreate a Biosphere like the one that existed when this country was founded."

It will take generations to undo the damage we have done to America and our Planet. We must come out of denial and realize that Eden and Paradise and Mother Nature are wondrous and all around us, and in the blink of an eye, we have gone insane, forgotten nature's gifts, and ruined our "fruited plains." We need to grow up, come out of denial, and see the bigger picture.

We can do this. Europe has many examples of communities that exist almost completely on renewable, non-carbon-based energy sources. We can do this, if we have leaders with vision and integrity, whose goal is to heal the planet. We could do this quite easily, if we had leaders who could envision helping the planet recover and creating a sustainable planet and a sane future -- leaders who would talk directly to the people. Steve Jobs demonstrated the power of visionary leadership. He built Apple and encouraged his team to create products and services that we did not even know were possible. We need environmental leaders similar to Jobs who can imagine a better future and lead the way there.