Grateful Dead

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...in the Swat Valley of Pakistan. More than a million are now homeless with thousands killed. The flooding from the monsoon is unprecedented and due to global warming. Those poor, poor people.To it's credit, Israel is helping Pakistan in this emergency. Perhaps there is hope for the world after all. The greatest security risk on the planet now is global warming. More moisture as the greenhouse effect takes over means vastly more precipitation in the form of rain or snow in increasingly ferocious storms. Massive dislocation of populations across national borders is now imminent. Will the snow be six to ten feet deep this winter where it was usually 3"-6"? I certainly hope not but we are far into the soup now that anything is possible, including that scenario from the movie about ecological catastrophe called The Day After Tomorrow. How could our country, the leader of the free world, obfuscated on this issue for so long? The corporate propaganda machine took over and still churns out a mass of bullshit and their bought and paid for lackeys in Congress won't pass a bill to cut CO2 emissions. This is total insanity. (Sorry, can't find any good news except the Jews helping the Muslims in Pakistan)

gratefuldean, that was quite the team. I attended a meeting where Amory Lovins met with members of the Iowa Legislature (back when I lived there) about energy issues. This must have been about 20 years ago. If only his dreams and plans were undertaken. I remember he was also acting as a consultant to some branch of U.S. government or maybe even military to look at energy issues to decrease our dependence on mideastern oil and our involvement in the mideast issues as a national security issue and to save money and lives. But we had an oil president for 4 years and then an oil vice president (Gore) for the next eight. Brower was a great inspiration to me. The man did much to build the environmental movement and protect wild places. Young at heart even when he was old. Glad I was able to meet him on occasion, his spirit rubbed off on me. Keep it wild and free! If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. William Blake

Thanks for the interesting back and forth everybody. Guess we have to set aside a separate plate of CC cookies for Mr. Dean. No problem!

I live among a lot of folks who seem obsessed with the book of Revelation. Funny how they seem to have overlooked that part! Most of them seem to think the Earth was put here to be used up!

to contemplate...................indeed!!

Now please don't get angry but I just wanted to point out that in the Book of Revelation, chp. 11, verse 18,it says that God will "destroy them which destroy the earth". I've wondered how Saint John could have foreseen that one day mankind would be capable of destroying the earth when they didn't even know how big the earth was back then. I guess you could say God is the biggest environmentalist of us all. Let it be known There is a fountain That was not made By the hands of man Many blessings to you all

They all have detrimental impacts to the environment. You could make a case for pros and cons to each of them. "The dire wolf collects his due while the boys sing round the fire"

I don't know a definitive answer to this either but I did live in the coal fields of VA for almost 8 yrs. Coal is a huge environmental hazard at the point of production. The entire area becomes covered with coal dust. Stores, houses, cars etc. The streams in the area are very polluted and some stink. They smell of sulfur etc. When mountain top removal mining methods are used things are even worse. Mining is very dangerous for the health and well being of those who do it. We've all heard about the recent catastrophes in WV, but this is a drop in the bucket to the miners who die or have a miserable quality of life from black lung and rock dust disease. Rock dust is the stuff they spread in the mines to keep down the coal dust and prevent explosions but this dust can be just as bad for the lungs of the miners as the coal dust. I'm not sure how the carbon footprint numbers compare for oil and coal which would be more relevant to answering johnman,s question, but I do know that coal production has a horrible impact on the environment surrounding the mines.

Before we got spun off, we were owned by a company whose chairman had an environmental epiphany in the mid-90s. Long story, but he assembled an environmental "Dream Team" to work on making the business sustainable in the true, and not greenwashed sense. The effort was completely sincere -- I believe that unequivocally. The team included Paul Hawken, whose book, "The Ecology of Commerce" prompted the epiphany; Amory Lovins, who is just a genius, I think; David Brower; Jon Picard; and a couple of others that I can't recall. McDonough was part of that team, but got dropped over some licensing issues (the money part), I believe. Those were very fun, very inspiring times for a traditional manufacturing plunderer of the earth. We're still carrying the torch, but this economy sure ain't making it easy. Chocolate chip cookies here, if you please... Oh yeah, the point was exactly that: if the entire world behaved as Americans do in terms of consumption...well, there just ain't enough world to go around.

Somehow I'm guessing coal because it is so dirty at the point of production. Not that oil isn't, just less so, I imagine. Maybe somebody has a definitive answer. And yer absolutely right that not all employees are justified at getting back at their boss. That is the other thing I notice living where I do. The amount of abysmally stupid people doing abysmally stupid things. If it's that bad in the rest of the country then I would say the Idiocracy is in full bloom. However, there is a law being drafted that would make a civil workplace mandatory and I say let the lawyers feast when the bill is signed. Owner/bosses would no longer have the right to bully, yell and belittle their employees in the workplace and I say it is high time for that. Past high time. There are a lot of businesses that have been passed down from parent to child where the habit of the parent becomes the habit of the child. That is, the bad habit of abusing their employees. I am extremely passionate on this subject. If the boss/owner can't control his mouth then let the wrath of shyster lawyers rain down on them like a tropical downpour. WE ALL DESERVE A CIVIL WORKPLACE and shouldn't have to put up with incivility from bosses, customers or other employees. Really. And no twinkie defense either (It was the junk food I ate, yer'honor. I really have no control when my blood sugar rises). Speaking of blood sugar J'man - I'm only giving you lo-cal cookies from now on. Here are some peanut ones.