"2012... HA!" In Response

In this posting, I respond to my classmate Darlene Ohabughiro’s blog entitled “2012 Presidential Elections…… Ha!”

I agree with Darlene that the idea of Michelle Bachman as president is an absurd notion. But what's scary is that she might actually have a shot. She has an educated team of advisors and financial backers who seem to think so. But then again, most of the 2012 Republican nominees scare me.

Obviously there’s Bachman who, in addition to being openly hateful of homosexuals, denies the possibility of global warming. But moreover there’s Ron Paul, who wants to legalize drugs, return America to a gold standard, and abolish FEMA. There’s former Alaska governor, Sara Palin, who despite her opposition to nationalized health care, admits that she and her family would “hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada. And I think now, isn't that ironic?” To say nothing of Jimmy McMillan, founder of the Rent is to Damn High Party, who favors equal rent regardless of propert value.

As far as Republican candidates go, Fred Karger (who probably has the least chance of success) is clearly the most sane.

I agree with Darlene’s sentiment that the 2012 elections are sure to be a spectacle whoever wins the GOP. Or maybe debacle is the word for it.

TIme Bomb

In the next seventy years, the way the world does agriculture will drastically change in ways mankind is not prepared for. This is because of the scarcely discussed threat of the world phosphorous shortage.

In the mid-twentieth century, advances in technology spurred the Green Revolution. This revolution was built primarily around the mining of phosphorous for use as a fertilizer. This allowed farms to yield increasingly larger and larger crops, allowing the population to grow as food became more more and more abundant.

Cataloging the numerous ways in which big agriculture and phosphorous fertilizer is detrimental to the environment (such as the fact that unnaturally high concentrations of phosphorous drain from farmlands into our rivers and watersheds, effectively fertilizing those bodies of water, which promotes the overgrowth of algae in a process known as eutrophication that chokes out all other aquatic life in the area creating increasingly huge dead zones, such as the Mississippi River delta) is beyond the scope of this editorial. This editorial will focus instead on the fragility of the infrastructure that we have built around big agriculture, which is entirely dependent on phosphorous fertilizer.

There is less phosphorous remaining in the world than there is crude oil. And we've been waring over depleting oil supplies for years. What's truly disturbing is that we could survive just fine without oil. If global oil reserves mysteriously vanished tomorrow, it would shakes the world's economies, but we wouldn't see the sort of famine that is promised to us when phosphorous runs out.

Yet more disturbing is the promise of war over this dwindling resource. Morocco controls over 40% of the world's phosphorous supple. China controls almost as much. Making these regions geostrategic timebombs. It is the duty of our leaders in office to ensure a safe and prosperous tomorrow by having the initiative to foresee and circumvent these threats, even if it means dismantling big industriess like agriculte.

If the world's governments don't take drastic and immediate actions to restructure our food supply we will soon be fighting wars not for the luxury of oil, but for the first time in hundreds of years, very tools to sustain life.

Quick! Name One Thing That Is Hurting This Country!

  If you answered the Clean Water Act, I'd be shocked and deeply, deeply appalled. But I trust that the the thought, fair reader, never crossed your mind. But perhaps, fair reader, that's only because unlike some persons of power and esteem, you're not in the sweet satin pockets of those whose interests lie in being free of pesky EPA regulations. At any rate, The House of Representatives is tossing around what it so handsomely calls the Clean Water Cooperative Federalism Act of 2011, which would give individual states the power to veto aspects of the Clean Water Act.

Before the Clean Water Act, roughly none of our nation's waterways were fit for recreation, which is to say, not safe to come in contact with. Testimony to this fun-fact, rivers that caught on fire! So why would any state, whose interests lie in protecting its people, repeal the Clean Water Act? Let's ask West Virginia!

“Hey, West Virgina?”

“Yeah, boss?”

“What's with these profit margins?”

“Well... you see, boss. Remember how fifty years ago we could dump our wastes into lakes and rivers or
just bury it discreetly where it may or may not contaminate groundwater? They don't let us do that anymore.”

Ouch. I apologize.  This is coming across as comical, but only because the situation is so morbidly absurd. When states mandate their own pollution control there is nothing to stop them from polluting their part of a river to levels acceptable by them and nothing to protect their downstream neighbors, who may have much more stringent controls.

This article from The Huffington Post sums up the peril better than I do. I implore you to look further into this issue. I have a terrible feeling that it's going to get dirty.