Response to a Denier

Your piece today was interesting, although wrongheaded. You quoted Barry Goldwater, whose optimism you subscribe to; but you flew right by an important part "if man does not destroy himself".

We are destroying ourselves! Global warming is not a liberal plot, it is real. On the front page of the paper was an article describing how the snow pack was less than minimal. This is going to be be standard; except we will see more warm wet storms, but now cold enough to bring snow.

We in the north state will be alright, it's the rest of the state that is in trouble, because snow melt is what provides their water. Of course this means more water going south, all the time. I would not buy houseboat stock if I were you.

What I wish you would have said, is the world has reached peak oil. Sweet crude oil has about a 40 year lifespan, add tar sand oil and it gets to about 80. After that, nothing. Your daughter will be about your age when we run out! My grand daughter will be about 40. What kind of world will they have?

Which means gas for your daughter will be $15.00/gallon! Our economy will be finished unless we change. And we cannot drill our way out of it. Tar sand oil, or converting oil from coal (we have lots of that) is hugely expensive, uses billions of gallons of water, and adds to the warming that just yesterday killed dozens with warm weather spawned tornadoes. That's right, global warming causes the outbreak of killer storms we are seeing all over the planet.

And your small car, that gets 35 miles per gallon, will bankrupt you.

As for your conservative optimism, we saw that in 1940. The "America First" movement refused to support American getting involved in Europe or Asia to stop the spread of fascism. They were made up mostly of conservatives; who like you, were "optimistic that man can figure out a way", unless he destroys himself first.

Roosevelt, the enemy of all things conservative, was practically screaming that we needed to get into the war or face Hitler alone. The draft passed the Congress by one vote. One vote in 1940!

And still the conservatives, optimistic that the oceans would protect us, optimistic that we could find a way to live with Hitler, optimistic that it was all overblown by those crazy Democrats to justify a larger government, held fast to America First.

And then we got Pear Harbor, where the optimists said it couldn't be a flight of the enemy on radar, but geese, or B-17s! More optimism! And we parked our planes wing tip to wing tip, confident that saboteurs were the biggest threat; and then the Japanese came and destroyed our denier's world in one day. While we slept, we almost were defeated. While we enjoyed our optimism, disaster got us!

We won WWI and II with courage, sacrifice, teamwork, high taxes, and patriotism. We also won WWII by out resourcing the enemy. We burned up much of our native oil supplies, and out oiled Japan and Germany, who did not have petroleum supplies. Hitler and Japan ran out of gas!

After the war we needed to go to the Middle East for oil, because we burned up much of our own winning the war and saving the planet. Right now, if the Middle East gets heartburn, we get an energy crisis. We are addicted to their oil. We don't have much left we can all our own.

The problem was, the world got a huge dose of CO2 in the atmosphere with all this gas, that has grown to threaten the planet; only this time it is not fascism we fight, it is nature herself.

And once again, the conservatives have their heads in the sand, denying reality, denying that we either rally together to save ourselves or die.

People in this town have been trained, by your newspaper and talk radio, that good old conservative optimism is all we need; that man can figure out a way, that liberty will prevail.

Liberty prevailed all right in WWII, with organization, cooperation, firepower, millions of airplanes and yes, BIG government, that mobilized us to win and survive.

We are right there, right now. Whining about $5.00 gas is nothing. We should be be coming together, putting solar panels on every roof, demanding that the City go solar and get off natural gas, demanding that railroads once again have passenger service, taxing cars off the road, getting trucks back to the rails; etc.

Every time I see an R.V. I wince, every time I get blown off the road by a eighteen wheeler, I see the coming disaster.

What we have to do will hurt, it will mean sacrifice, innovation, using our heads, cooperation (all the human liberty traits that you hold dear). But it will mean cooperating within our government to do it...we cannot do this as individuals.

Sounds far fetched right? We can individually figure this out right? We can conservatively get through this right? We don't need government to do this right? WRONG!

Roosevelt said, and I am paraphrasing, the basic problem with conservatives is their frame of reference is the past, they look back, we look forward. He also said, cooperation will beat competition (among ourselves) every time. And he was right! Ask any football coach!

So do your daughter a favor, look forward not back. Stop fighting and denying what is right in front of your face.

The tragedy is we have the tools to do this. We have done this before. But we stopped arguing and started working together to get it done.

The only difference, is this time it is for all the marbles! We truly are entering an end game scenario.