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Edited on Thu Sep-16-04 07:08 PM by The Nation
This was an editorial I had to right for my composition & rhetoric class, PLEASE LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU GUYS THINK! :)
A PERFECT STORM
It’s hurricane season…again. But along with the beautiful homes perched dramatically on the edges of cliffs, automobiles, farm animals, and people being washed away, there are some big stories slipping down into the deep as well. As Hurricane Ivan and its powerful winds smashed into the southeastern coast of the United States, scientists told Congress on Wednesday that global warming could produce stronger and more destructive hurricanes in the future. Global warming will increase the temperature of ocean water that fuels hurricanes, leading to stronger winds, heavier rains and larger storm surges, the researchers told the Senate Commerce Committee. In the meantime, of course, while President Bush is on camera asking fellow Americans to pray for the brave souls living in these states in crisis, little attention is paid to the fact that Bush refused to join the 1997 Kyoto treaty on greenhouse gases, saying it would be ‘too costly to the economy.’ Too costly to the economy. Bush on Wednesday assured the governors of states in the path of Hurricane Ivan of federal aid to deal with damage from the storm. "The government is ready to help," Bush said he told the leaders of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana."I told all four governors the people of this country are praying for their safety," Bush said. "We pray that the storm passes as quickly as possible without any loss of life or loss of property." On Tuesday he asked Congress for an additional $3.1 billion to help Florida and other states recover from recent hurricanes. Just who exactly was the Kyoto treaty too expensive for? Certainly not the American tax payer, apparently. Aside from massive amounts of government aid being funneled to relief efforts, the cost for insurance companies has been immense. Hurricane Charley cost insurers about $6.8 billion and Hurricane Frances cost an estimated $6 billion. There is the human cost as well; an 8 year old girl being crushed under a fallen tree and killed, a family whose house was destroyed who couldn’t afford to renew their storm insurance because their jobs were outsourced to a foreign land. These people’s lives are changed forever. (This is the administration which has stated that outsourcing is good for the economy) Jobs will be lost, houses, communities, streets, bridges, beaches will all need to be rebuilt, and will all cost a massive amount of money. You will never hear about any of this background info on the evening news, however. They will only interrupt the 24/7 continuous shots of their reporters standing in brightly coloured oversized rain coats, intrepidly trying to hang on to any metal bar that might be near and speaking garbled into water covered mics, to report that Bush’s post-convention bounce continues to balloon. Oh, and if you haven’t had enough, Ralph Nader is back. After a court decision striking him from the ballot, his name was allowed back onto the ballot in Florida after confusion that the hurricane might effect the arrival of absentee ballots. In a letter to elections supervisors, Florida state elections director Dawn Roberts said she was forced to act because of uncertainty given the impending approach of Hurricane Ivan. And she noted, supervisors must postmark overseas ballots by Saturday. So lets recap, shall we? President bush refused to join the Kyoto treaty on the basis that it would hurt the US economy and cost Americans too much money. In the meantime, hurricanes, which experts say will only increases in strength and frequency as a result of global warming, which the Kyoto treaty would have begun to curb, are sticking us with an astronomically high human and economic cost, while the polluters get tax cuts, and this administration continues to roll back seemingly every environmental regulation on industry, no matter how sane and reasonable it may be. The media is too concerned with the excitement of putting their correspondents out in the wind and rain to pause for a second and report back to the people with some perspective. And Nader has been put on the ballot in Florida again which could very well cost Kerry crucial votes and deliver 25 electoral votes to Bush in November. Bush couldn’t have asked for a more perfect storm.
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