Copenhagen Revisited

As disappointing as the Copenhagen Summit was and in spite of the Hopenhagen and other green movements grass root efforts, it did outline a few facts:

1. The world agrees that we have a problem of global warming.

2. There is a need to take some action, sometime

3. That countries do put their short and medium interests ahead of the well being of the planet.

Efforts to introduce legislation that preserves the environment are always under attack by the Oil and Coal lobbies and other special interests. Any legislation that involves clean air, clean water or clean energy is always under attack.

All these TV advertisements of the oil companies touting their research and work to produce clean and alternative fuel or clean up the environment and how hard they work to provide us with a better future seem so hypocritical when we hear about the efforts of these same companies to derail legislation meant to promote and legalize their hard work.

I sometimes wonder if the oil and coal lobbies breathe the same air we do or even live on the same planet. We should not let short term profits endanger the long term health and well being of our children and grand children and the way of life that we all claim to defend and preserve.

It is not the existing way of life that we should preserve, at least not the one that promotes dirty energy and waste. It is a new way of life that we should be working for, one as equally good as the one we live now, a way of life that is benign to the environment and the planet, that uses clean energy and promotes efficiency and productivity.