Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Getting Down to Earth Day

Barack Obama escapes the White House again. turning up today at an Iowa wind-turbine plant to tout his energy and climate-change plans while Administration members fan out to announce other initiatives and even the Coast Guard twitters about ways of saving the environment.

A Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee email from Al Gore, who invented the environment, underscores the import of Earth Day:

"I can tell you that President Obama has signaled in the strongest possible terms that he intends to take bold steps and harness innovative resources to solve the climate crisis. Not only that, but Speaker Pelosi has said she will personally shepherd climate legislation through."

Lisa Jackson, new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, says her agency "is back on the job. And that's not meant to say that the employees who were here all along haven't been working hard, but a lot of that work wasn't allowed to come forth for the American people."

Not all is sweetness and light, however, as environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. blasts the President and other politicians as "indentured servants" to the coal industry. "Clean coal is a dirty lie," he says.

Meanwhile. Republicans are in a brown study about how to get into the green act, although House Leader John Boehner made a start Sunday, declaring that worries about carbon dioxide are "almost comical" since human exhalations and cow emissions produce so much of it.

In any case, we can all go out and plant something. Happy Earth Day.

1 comment:

Mike said...

It's great that the USA has a much greener prez now, but Obama contradicted his own message by jetting from D.C. to Iowa for a "green" announcement. He could have and should have made the announcement "in" Iowa by satellite hookup. Much smaller carbon footprint that way.