I think the Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s announced plans to challenge the Environmental Protection Agency findings about pollutants that are contributing to our global warming issues with the EPA and in the courts is a bad decision for Virginia’s economy and environment.
Governor Bob McDonnell, a Republican as well, is misguided to support this action which I think has more to do with conservative, right wing GOP politicians who want to bruise President Barack Obama, a Democrat, and his administration than to foster good public policy.
Worldwide there is a movement to address global warming with alternative fuels and green technologies.
Denmark is a world leader in this field having reduced that small country’s need for old technologies that contribute to our pollution challenges. The country’s role in Greenland gives it an opportunity to see first hand the glacier melting taking place there and what it means to the world community.
China is leading the world now in this movement. The country will have 20 percent of its energy needs produced from renewable sources (solar, wind, etc.) by 2020.
Businesses in our country and many of our state governments are meeting this challenge.
It is remarkable that the retail giant Walmart has acknowledged this problem and is moving aggressively to change their business culture in the design of the company’s stores and products it sells.
Many major companies balked at the US Chamber of Commerce conduct about this issue and some of them, such as Apple Computer, have resigned from the USCoC because the organization’s opposition to federal efforts to combat global warming.
California’s Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has set a standard for the country to consider in addressing global warming. Oregon is a pioneer in this field. New Mexico is going to become a solar power. Texas is going to become a wind power.
Is Virginia going to become an isolated hold out?
In the Mid-Atlantic Region, Maryland is creating the Maryland Clean Energy Center in the high-tech 1-270 corridor in Montgomery County in suburban Washington DC and the UNC Charlotte is creating an Energy Production and Infrastructure Center to help that progressive metropolitan area to become a major national center for our new energies.
Virginia’s traffic jams and poor transportation system is a major contributor to our air pollution. That problem is a threat to our health and the life of the Chesapeake Bay which is in trouble.
I think President Obama and his administration are making great strides in helping us deal with the serious problems facing our country and the world relative to our energy needs, global warming and other quality of life issues.
Virginia needs to be a partner in these efforts, not a lone state taking on the federal government to please the GOP right wing.
Our governor should NOT support the attorney general in this foolish effort.
Rodger Provo is a Fredericksburg businessman, working on a number of alternative energy and green technology projects.
This will be a common tactic. The EPA must support it’s moves with science. But right now the science is in a shambles. Good luck to the EPA.
The scientific basis of climate change is not in a shambles. Public knowledge is low or inaccurate. The science is sound, if somewhat caught up in a tempest in a teapot party. Yes, there was one mistake in over a million words by the IPCC regarding how soon ice will melt, and that was acknowledged and corrected as soon as it was discovered. And, yes, some few scientists in the UK appear in e-mails to be arrogant at least, but their behavior does not nullify the science.
An excellent site, maintained by scientists, is http://www.realclimate.org. Another good one is http://nsidc.org/, the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Have a look.
Meanwhile many states in the US are already begun to develop job-creating, clean, reliable and safe energy policies that will help them adapt to and mitigate the real world effects of climate change over the next decade or two. Wisconsin is just the latest, but there are many more. China, Germany, India are all moving rapidly into these 21st Century technologies. Virginia could be a leader here if it chose to be.
Finally, there may be uncertainties about the error bars in how soon and how high the sea levels will rise at any given location in the world, but with the Greenland ice melt and the Arctic Sea ice melt, rise they will, and the east coast of the U.S., and Hampton Roads in particular, have some planning to do. The Corps of Engineers and the U. S. Navy have already started. Virginia ought not be late to this party because the longer we wait, the more it is going to cost.
You’re on point with your argument, but as a semantic matter, Virginia is not the only state doing this. Texas is another, and there are probably others.
In any case, I don’t see how Ken Cuccinelli can claim to have better science than the United Nations. The fact that only Republican-run states are doing this makes it, to me, a completely transparent political ploy–not unlike trying to reject stimulus money.
Ken Cuccinelli may have a political agenda with all this. He may want to strengthen his own support within the conservative political base. He may think that independent voters will recoil at the Obama Administration plans once they understand the full economic impact of those plans. He may be a loud mouth who just can’t shut up.
But he is an absolute piker compared to the United Nations. When it comes to having a completely partisan, political agenda everybody is an ameteur compared to the UN.
I don’t know whether the Earth is really warming due to human activity or not. Based on recent events I wonder if anybody really knows. However, I know that the UN would like to transfer trillions fo dollars from developed countries to developing countries and will go to any length to make this happend. Fraud, lies and manipulated data would certainly be seen as “the ends justifying the means” by the UN.
If you want to completely disrupt the world’s economic system - please do it for some reason better than “the UN said we have to”.
No American should trust the United Nations. Not one.