All Profit is Sacred

The Bush administration and the Republican-dominated Congress have turned a deaf ear to predictions about global warming. Or worse, they've hooted with derision at the scientific evidence, often prompted by the drug-addicted Lush Limbaugh, and they have pursued policies guaranteed to worsen air pollution. Bush repudiated the Kyoto Protocols aimed at lessening the problem, and his administration has taken steps to ease restrictions on coal-fired power plants. Alarmed at this public policy trend, and at the spectacle of Republican Senators spouting fake science to buttress this administration's positions, the American Geophysical Union has finally taken a public stand that acknowledges the long-range problem of global warming.

Our local county government seems but a microcosm of the Bush Administration ... writing policy that ignores long-term consequences for the environment in order to benefit short-term big-money interests. Billboards on our highways ... asphalt plants in our neighborhoods ... no real controls ... that's the philosophy, top to bottom, of the prevailing Republicanism currently in power, from the Courthouse to the White House.