Has anyone else noticed how war fatigued we are? Conservatives coming out against military campaigns? Your fellow conservatives would have labeled you unamerican and run you out of town just a few years ago. This is a good thing. It's something that we can all agree on. Let's bring our soldiers home.
Something else conservatives and liberals are starting to agree on is the need to reduce our usage of foreign oil. I remember how upset cons were about the incandescent light bulb thing just a couple of years ago. Someone started a thread about incandescent bulbs on this forum a short time ago and I think it generated 2 very minor rants. I'm guessing everyone else just yawned. It's a good policy in that it helps us all and hurts people that don't like us.
Also, am I seeing a shift on green energy? Are cons realizing that solar panels and windwills help us and hurt people that don't like us?
We are only dependent on foreign because we are not being allowed, by our government, to develop our own resources.
Why is it that "Liberals", AKA the 'Great Banners", revel in the idea of less freedom and MORE government control over our everyday lives. Being told what kind of light bulb, or how much water our toilet can use etc, is not freedom.
Wind turbines? Green? Maybe, in certain limited applications. Ripping down thousands of acres of wildlife habitat, however, is NOT green. Polluting that same ground with tons upon tons of toxic herbicides is NOT green. Killing large numbers of eagles is NOT green. Is solar and wind the answer? No, not by themselves.
What about other "green" answers? Let's dam up some more rivers, destroy MORE habitat, wipe out more species. Hydro power has the "added advantage of taking out swamps and marshes, some of the most important and productive habitat on earth. Green?
From what I have seen, the policies of the federal government is doing more right now to hurt the environment than help it. There is no balance. Very little they are doing, besides making no economic sense, is based on any kind of real, sound, science.
We need to continue to clean up our act. We have made tremendous strides in the last 40 years and we need to insure that continues. We don't want to return to the "old ways". No more gutting of mountain tops to put up wind farms, just one example. We need to reduce the amount of ethanol production. In the Great Lakes region it is already beginning to have a negative impact on the Lakes. The increased use of phosphorus based fertilizers is reversing a decades long decline in the phosphorus levels in the Lakes. Lake Erie, because it is a very shallow lake, is seeing the return of Lake killing algae blooms due in part to the increased use of phosphorus. The increasing numbers of golf courses, and the resulting increases of even more phosphorus, is contributing to that problem. Golf courses have the added bonus of dumping tons of toxic herbicides and pesticides into the water table. Those pesticides are likely contributing to the world wide decline of the honey bee, which if it goes away, will have far reaching negative effects on the environment.
We ran willy nilly into the "oil age", paying little attention to what the results may be. We are again, doing exactly the same thing, with "green energy", We are barely looking at the potential downsides to some, or all, of the "green answers".
We need to first, point out the great strides we have made in cleaning things up. Air pollution levels have been dropping and continue to drop. The Great Lakes are much cleaner than they were 40 years ago, and will continue to get cleaner if we can reverse a few of the recent set backs, like the phosphorus levels. We need to start looking at the improvements? Why? The facts must be known. It is important to continue the work that was started, in some cases, more than a hundred years ago. People need to know what has been done, what effects it has had, good or bad, and then and only then will we come up with a solid, science based answers.
The first is a table from an economist showing progress on the debt. It's not gloom and doom like you keep repeating and the more the economy improves and the more people that get back to work and pay taxes instead of getting benefits the more the rate of improvement should accelerate.
