Everyone Else’s Political Pygmalion Presents:

Everyone Else is going to be looking at political issues over the next couple months not from the position of the partisans, or the political parties’ talking points, but instead from the position of…well, you guessed it…everyone else.  Our basic point is that there is too much political debate these days that involve very little logic or truth.  Most pundits are just trying to see which attempts at demagoguery will stick.

A word about the controversial nature of debating politics: It’s no use flaming us when we say something you might not agree with.  Please do comment and debate.  The idea is that we hope (as we always do) that at some point we are going to say something that offends everyone.  Also, we don’t care that you might disagree with us, and frankly, your degree of irrational vitriol is inversely proportional to the validity of your position.

Now, without further prologue: The Wrong Side of the Issue – Global Warming.

Global warming seems to be today’s cause celeb.  From the ridiculous moonbattery of the neo-hippies living with no air conditioning (which is particularly bad, since they aren’t wearing deodorant to start with), to some extreme Right Wingers seeming to want to punish the evil earth for all of those natural disasters, the one thing that’s for sure is that everyone is talking about it.

Basically, the breakdown can be seen like this: The Liberals want to lessen pollution to as close to zero as we can.  Many are hoping that prices of resources will go up to the point where people will stop using them, and that the government will crack down heavily on businesses to reduce their pollution, often at staggering costs.  At the same time, global warming has become religion-like in its fanatical devotion, where any doubt of its power is to be met by instantly relegating the doubter to the eternal time-out corner.

Republicans, on the other hand, are handling the situation by either blissful head-in-the-sand policy, or for some odd reason, deciding to advocate cheap-as-free energy policies coupled with purposeful wasting.  Even typically level-headed Glenn Beck has been asking listeners to waste as much energy as possible in his “Carbon Onset Program,” in order to offset the savings from the Democratic National Convention in Colorado.

On this issue, both parties are on the wrong side, but the Repubs are more butts-up than the anyone.  Lets look at what we KNOW to be facts:

1. Pollution is bad!  We know this is a complete revelation.  But let’s just think about this.  Even if we did have an unlimited amount of resources, it would just be wrong to waste them.  This isn’t a difficult concept people!
2. We do have a limited amount of resources.  The fact is that at some point the world’s demand for things like oil (particularly oil) will be greater than the world’s supply.  The question of when that will be exactly is debated.  But the fact is that eventually this will happen.  When it does, there will be global fights over these resources.  Of course, this isn’t destined.  We could come up with technology to either switch to less scarce resources, or find ways to use less of them.  Countries that come up with these answers earlier will have to struggle less when the resources become scarcer.  Who in their right mind wouldn’t advocate for making this a top priority now.  It really isn’t more complicated than that.
3. We currently are paying a lot of money for something we absolutely need (oil) to countries that make no pretense over wanting our men, women, and children dead.
4. We also buy this resource (oil, again) and then we take it and burn it.  Yes, we burn it.  Now, if I said that we were going to have everyone in America buy an iPhone made in North Korea, and then put it in our fireplaces and burn them for warmth, we would seem crazy.  Yet, we do this with oil.  Oh, and yeah, did we mention that this creates a very unhealthy smoke.  Don’t doubt us on the smoke.  Have you ever tried to breathe the air in Beijing?
5. Whether or not the earth is getting warmer is really moot.  This is a pointless debate.  The reasons for being better stewards of the environment are stacked to the ceiling as it is.  The global warming issue is an obvious straw man argument.  Debating the temperature or thickness of the ice caps does not address the issue of wasting resources, creating unneeded pollution, giving money to our enemies, and putting us in a horrible position for future global competition.

So Republicans, you are on the Wrong Side of the Issue

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~ by everyoneelse on August 27, 2008.