Saturday, June 02, 2007
Now I realize that in the Bush Administration the key qualifications for running NASA are that you find homosexuality and abortion offensive and you believe 'The Flinstones' were a documentary, but Michael Griffin, The NASA chief is in line for a Presidential Medal of Freedom if he keeps this up.
This week, National Public Radio asked Griffin whether climate change was a problem mankind should "wrestle with."
Griffin responded as if one of NASA's deep-space probes had dropped him off on Pluto. "I have no doubt that a trend of global warming exists," he said. "I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with."
Digging his toes deeper into his mouth, Griffin said, "I guess I would ask which human beings -- where and when -- are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now, is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that's a rather arrogant position to take. . . . Nowhere in NASA's authorization . . . is there anything at all telling us that we should take actions to affect climate change. . . . NASA is not an agency chartered to, quote, 'Battle climate change.' "
In other words, he is planning on drinking Pat Robertson's Amazing Protein Shake to make it through any discomfort caused by global climate change.
Does it really matter? We seem to be talking past the important issue here. Assume for just one moment that humans aren't creating global climate change, but it's happening. Even Dick Cheney has acknowledged that thermometers are not simply hippy science (way to go Dick). We also have a massive problem with oil being located mainly in a place that is not very friendly to us, with citizens who wear suicide vests attached to their body. The supply of oil is not self replicating. We will run out.
The lunatics want us to not have that conversation. God created the world about 6,000 years ago, and it's arrogant of us to think we could harm it. Oh, and it's not good for Exxon's bottom line. Praise Jesus, pass the credit card, I need me some premium.
Even if we are going to be hysterically in denial, the rest of the world isn't. They are going to create green technologies, market them, and profit. Breathing some sulfur coated toxic air as the world passes us by may be spiritually uplifting for this crowd (let's call it Jesus' incense), but economically we will suffer. Our sons and daughters will continue dying to protect the resource, and perhaps you can still believe Moses rode across the Sinai on a T-Rex and still understand this simple fact.
Subscribe to:
Comment Feed (RSS)
|