WhackyNation

The environmental extremists seem to run hot and cold on issues. They jump from one issue to another, leaving the old one behind, undoubtedly because they don’t have any truly scientific support for each one. A case in point was their phony panic over a non-existent danger, which one scientist described as “the holes in the ozone-hole scare.”

Another in a long list of hot-and-cold alarms was the cry of anguish over acid rain. Remember that one? I certainly do, because I countered the extremists at every turn until I realized they didn’t have a leg to stand on. Now, please don’t misunderstand me. I’m all for determining what causes acid rain and how to control it.

But control, as in all other cases, should be done when all the scientific results are in — and not in a gigantic, premature program that would simply enrich a lot of big companies and not get the job done. The acid-rain scenario of past years was an international drama with lots of players.

Funny thing. I think the environmental movement — the honest one I have been involved in since the 1950s — is genuinely concerned and has good intentions. But, thanks to the political extremists, it has been handed a bill of goods. The extremists demanded acid-rain curbs before the real causes were identified.

Among the extremists’ strange bedfellows were big companies like General Electric and Combustion Engineering. They stood to make billions of dollars from the premature legislation the extremists tried to get passed because they made pollution-control products.

Oh, yes. I almost forgot. Out in the wings of the phony drama the extremists were playing out was Canada’s colossal power industry. If their legislative measure had been accepted by Congress and Canada’s federal government, many of the older coal-fired power plants in the Northeastern U.S. would probably have had to close down, putting thousands out of jobs — and permitting Canada’s power moguls to find a rich, new market for its surplus electricity!

One of the great mysteries that disturbed me in the days the enviros were trying to get their alarmist legislation passed was how they managed to get in a political bed with the big corporations they always said they despised. It’s amazing what the thirst for political power will do to unthinking humans.

By the way, I should also mention another important factor in the brouhaha over acid rain. The information company that first issued the report promoting the extremists’ proposed legislation also provided advertising and promotional services to all the power companies that would have profited immensely from the ill-advised bill.

Finally, I have a rhetorical question that should always be posed when considering costly actions backed by the environmental extremists: Whom do you think would be saddled with the costs of all the legislation that has been proposed — and will continue to be proposed — by the rabid enviros?

If you have a mirror handy, you can find the answer to that question simply by looking into it. Environmental extremism has always cost the American taxpayer a lot of greenbacks he or she didn’t have to pay.

There it was, a sign in the Seattle hotel elevator boasting just how green the hotel was being in order to save the planet.

Get me the barf bag.

The hotel was boasting four room policies:

1. Shower constrictors to reduce water consumption;
2. Shower soap dispensers to reduce refuse disposal;
3. Compact flourescent lightbulbs to reduce carbon dioxide pollution;
4. and optional linen and towel replacement to reduce water pollutuion.

Was the motivator mother earth or reducing costs and increasing profits?

I suspect the bottom line as managers justified cost cutting by labeling it “green.”

I don’t mind managers cutting costs, but I do mind having smoke blown up my ass.  Do marketeers think the public is that gullible?

Pick up any Northwest focused magazine or newspaper and you’ll see ads for communities “built green,’ or ads for interior decorators who use only “organic” and “natural materials.”

It’s nice to know that as the wealthy high tech couple builds their 6,000 square foot McMansion, they are only using green materials.

These latest environmental buzzwords in advertising ring hollow to me most of the time.  Advertisers are pandering to America’s latest political fashion, environmentalism, but keep encouraging America’s all-time habit, consumerism.  I guess you can still consume and think yourself green.

That’s the power of belief.

Have we forgotten so soon? Two years ago, University of Washington researchers working in Africa, produced a new study, published in the journal, Science, that gave dynamic support to my contention and the contention of many scientists that the greatest mistake made by the U.S. and foreign nations in the 20^th Century was the decision to ban the miracle pesticide and insecticide, DDT.

The U.W. study, reported by the Associated Press, told us that malaria

is fueling the spread of AIDS in Africa by boosting the HIV in people’s bodies for weeks at a time, pinning down the deadly interplay between the dual scourges. It’s a vicious cycle, as people weakened by HIV are, in turn, more vulnerable to malaria.

It’s necessary to repeat some history. The new pesticide, DDT, was created by scientists to combat malaria primarily, and it soon proved its worth when it was introduced in the 1930s, not only in the U.S. but also in those countries with climates and conditions conducive to promoting malaria in mosquito-laden swamplands.

At the time, the total number of deaths attributed to malaria was approximately 3,000,000 a year! After the application of DDT in swamplands everywhere, the number of malaria cases dropped to a few hundred and by mid-century was headed for total elimination! It was a remarkable achievement, one that has never been matched in the world.

Then, along came Rachel Carson’s scientifically inaccurate book, Silent Spring, which sparked extremists in the new environmental movement to demand that DDT be banned everywhere, because, they said, they had discovered it was harmful to the eggs of eagles. It was not only a ridiculous assumption but one which eventually would cost the lives of millions of people, most of them babies and children.

After the extremists succeeded in forcing the U.S. to order its ban on DDT, many nations the world over followed suit. And the “malaria holocaust,” as I would hasten to call it, began. A terrible disease, which had neared its worldwide elimination, thanks to DDT, returned to plague the earth once again — and deaths from malaria annually have climbed back toward the 3,000,000 figure!

My longtime colleague, the late Dr. Dixy Lee Ray, detailed the remarkable DDT story in our second book, Environmental Overkill. But, despite that story and the entreaties of many scientists, no action has been taken by Congress or other nations to reinstate DDT as the greatest antidote to malaria ever developed.

Today, with the scary news from the U.W. study that malaria and AIDS are linked and abet each other, it is doubly important that the U.S. and other nations launch a new movement to bring DDT back into worldwide use to save the lives of many millions of people each year.

When I referred to a “malaria holocaust,” I was intentionally referring to the Nazi holocaust that resulted in the murder of more than 6,000,000 Jews and millions more who defied Hitler in the 1930s and 1940s. By my reckoning, the deaths from malaria since the ban on DDT has exceeded 100,000,000 — and that is undoubtedly a conservative estimate.

All this came about as a result of a silly charge that a few eagle eggs were supposedly harmed. Shouldn’t we be indicting the extremists for genocidal murder?

Way back in 1989, my old friend, Dr. Dixy Lee Ray, former governor of Washington State and an internationally noted marine scientist and oceanographer, addressed two of the nation’s largest garden organizations, meeting together at a national convention in Rochester, New York.

They were the Garden Clubs of America and the National Association of State Garden Clubs. The topic of her address was “The Greening of America,” an idea that had grown out of her state program, “The Greening of Washington.” Her proposal was to create a national movement encouraging tree, shrub, and flower plantings on buildings, streets, highways, everywhere in order to absorb pollutants, principally CO2, carbon dioxide.

Although her talk was greeted with applause and a lot of head-nodding, nothing came of the proposal on a national basis, much to her disappointment and mine. I was specially disappointed, because it was I who had planted the original “Greening of Washington” idea in her mind and helped make it part of her statewide program.

I had also suggested that she broaden her proposal to make the “Greening” idea a national program, after its seed was planted in Washington State, to coin a phrase. Unfortunately, the idea eventually died in both the state Legislature and in the meeting halls of the two garden clubs.

After all these years, I still have hopes that both Washington State and the two national garden clubs will resurrect the idea and run with it. Some progress along the “greening” line has been noted in a few areas, but much more remains to be done.

One wonders why the environmental extremists don’t get off their erratic high horses and embrace a program such as the one Governor Ray proposed to the garden clubs and others. It seems to me that the exteremists would be doing themselves and the nation a gigantic favor in doing so.

Also, I don’t understand why President Bush, who has been critical of the extremists’ wild pronouncements, doesn’t declare a sane and safe environmental policy for the United States — a policy that puts the welfare of human beings above that of the plant and animal world.

At the same time, the President should declare once and for all that he is not a proponent of the global-warming hokum and that the world’s responsible climatologists and other scientists have stated clearly that global warming is a myth that should not be used to fortify American policy.

It should not be difficult for the noisy environmental extremists to understand that their preoccupation with outlandish, far-fetched schemes has, in fact, severely hindered the cause of responsible environmentalism. Dr. Ray and I helped pioneer the original environmental movement in the Pacific Northwest, but we both left the movement when the extremists, inspired by Rachel Carson’s scientifically inaccurate book, Silent Spring, took over the movement in their search for political power.

The other day, an intriguing newspaper headline caught my eye, and I was drawn to the details of the report from Hamburg, Germany. It read: “Italy dumps trash issue on Germany.” The New York Times article included this amazing statement:

So, for the time being — 11 weeks, actually — a 56-car train will arrive in Hamburg every day after a 44-hour journey bearing 700 tons of Neapolitan refuse.

It’s only a temporary arrangement, say the Germans, but they were happy to solve a seriously growing problem in Naples and environs, where the garbage was piling up in the streets, because the Italians had not yet found a solution to their problem until the Germans suggested using the Hamburg incinerator.

Germany and several other European nations have already found the answer to the mounting crisis of refuse. It’s adequate, newly developed incinerators that are so well equipped that no fumes, odors, gases, or any other residues escape the fires of the new incinerators.

I was immediately drawn to the Hamburg report because of the attempt made by my old friend, Dr. Dixy Lee Ray, and me when she was governor of Washington State and tried to persuade the legislature to invest a little time, money, and research into the newly designed models of incinerators that had just been produced.

As in most American states, Washington — and particularly the heavily populated western side of the state — was running out of landfill areas as repositories for garbage and other wastes. Unfortunately, the legislature failed to follow up on Dixy’s proposal for new incinerators in Eastern Washington — and hasn’t to this day.

A few other states have adopted the new incineration methods, and they are saving considerable land areas for other, more important purposes than repositories for garbage and other wastes. Once again, as in so many other cases, the environmental extremists are the culprits, who have opposed utilizing the new incinerators on the basis of groundless charges that they produce dangerous pollutants.

In the meantime, Germany and some of the other northern European nations have solved their garbage problem and their overflowing landfill crisis by installing incinerators of the new breed in various cities. The Germans apparently don’t pay much attention to the “pollutant” rants of the environmental extremists. We should follow their lead.

Here’s a significant paragraph from the Hamburg report:

The Europeans have developed state-of-the-art incinerators that minimize noxious emissions with a series of filters and have put the energy generated to good use, by heating homes and water, for example.

Dixy’s proposal included the note that incineration not only would get rid of garbage and other wastes. She emphasized that the newly developed incineration plants could also produce considerable energy for the immediate areas. That should have been enough to promote the proposal to the legislature. But it’s another case of politicians and environmental extremists getting in the way of real progress.

Whiney Democrats can’t foist the high cost of gasoline onto President Bush or the Republicans.

No, sir.  Expensive fuel and busting household budgets are the result of a generation of do-good, think-little baby boomers swallowing the Jimmy Carter energy and transportation policies 30 years ago.  Then, as a nation we stopped drilling domestically and stopped building refineries.  The Carter Democrats convinced the boomers that ramping up domestic production would be bad for the environment.  Now these policies are about to seriously hurt the economy when boomers are approaching retirement.

British Petroleum CEO Tony Hayward today told the Asia Oil and Gas Conference in Kuala Lampur, “Producers are being hampered by 25 years of low investments, because of low prices.”  He added, “The result is a supply chain being stretched to a breaking point.”

Hayward gets part of the picture, the reality of what is today and the near-term future.  He doesn’t own up to the real reason the refining industry has not added much capacity because B-P is one of those “Green” oil companies that is trying to suck up to the socialist liberals.  The real reason the refining industry hasn’t added capacity is because of the excessive costs involving compliance to over-burdensome environmental regulations.  Economists have been predicting for years the shortfall we are experiencing as China and India have been increasing their demand for oil products.

Washington and Oregon State nambypambyism when it comes to sensible energy policies hasn’t provided any leadership.

But with gasoline prices spiking, the soccer moms who up to this point have been going along with the politically-correct energy policies of the Democrats may take another look at the trade-offs between a way-of-life and ridiculous over-reaching environmental and over-restrictive energy policies.  These moms don’t want to stop driving the kids to practice.  And the bus doesn’t work either.

This is difficult to say, but it must be said. The worldwide flurry of methods being used to fight malaria are praiseworthy, and the people involved should be complimented for a valiant try. But they are wasting their time and overlooking a much better, already proven scientific remedy for the dreaded disease.

Why are they listening to the misguided environmental extremists, instead of heeding the advice of the world’s leading scientists, who long ago came up with the best remedy for eliminating malaria everywhere on the planet? That remedy was the insecticide, DDT, which in just a few years drove the onetime 3,000,000-a-year malaria deaths down to a few hundred — and in a few years would have erased malaria completely.

The dramatic campaign to end the malaria curse began with the application of DDT to swampland areas everywhere, including America’s southland, Europe, Asia, South America, and, most notably, Africa. In a little more than a decade in the middle of the 20^th Century, the fight against malaria was one of the most remarkable victories ever scored by science.

Then the misguided environmental extremists entered the fray, charging that the insecticide was infecting eagles’ eggs in their nests — and other equally ridiculous charges. Unfortunately, easily duped politicos and assorted governmental figures manipulated a ban on DDT, a ban adopted in other countries, as well.

What a crime! As soon as the use of DDT ended, the deaths from malaria, particularly in African nations, began skyrocketing and were soon back to the annual figure of 3,000,000, again mostly of babies and children. >That’s why I have said the extremists should have been charged with genocide, because their action was directly responsible for the huge number of malaria deaths.

Despite the proven effectiveness of DDT, many individuals and organizations are supporting other, far less effective measures. For example, church groups and even athletes in the National Basketball Association are promoting the purchase and use of mosquito nets to curb malaria deaths in Africa and elsewhere.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has donated millions to research to find a malaria cure and preventive — all of which would be unnecessary if the Gates family would get behind a worldwide campaign to return DDT to the fight against the mosquito-fed disease on all swamplands on the planet.

Even President Bush has chipped in with what has been called the Malaria Initiative, which has contributed at least $6,000,000 thus far to the fight against malaria. But even President Bush has not yet acknowledged the fact that no effort has come close to matching the effectiveness of DDT.

America’s scientists should begin a nationwide campaign to force the federal government to restore use of DDT in our own swamplands and every other country in the world. At the same time, charges should be filed against the environmental extremists for the millions of deaths they have caused for the ban on DDT.

A measure the Democrats are certain to bring up once again in the new Congress, which they control, is one they barely failed to pass in the early 1990s. It was an ill-conceived measure to expand the Environmental Protection Agency into a full department and raise it to the status of cabinet level.

No one can argue against the philosophy that environmental issues deserve priority attention in the federal government and all the states — nor oppose that attention because of our dealings with other nations, since what happens to the air, land, and sea affects the world, not the U.S. alone.

But it is a typical political response — a copout, if you will — to solve a sticky problem simply by creating another unnecessary bureaucracy, then walking away from a problem, as if that action solved the problem. We certainly don’t need still another massive, paper-shuffling, cabinet-level department.

As it stands today, the President already has the formidable task of trying to control 15 cabinet-level departments, and he actually can’t manage them, as it is. Adding another one like the complicated E.P.A. and its close relationship with similar agencies in all 50 states doesn’t make sense.

All the ingredients for managing national environmental affairs are already available in the E.P.A. And many, including this writer, have also argued that the E.P.A. has too much authority and often administers regulations that go beyond the authority in the law passed by Congress.

What’s needed is not another layer of overpaid administrators and the added expense those unneeded workers cost taxpayers — but a determination to make

Big Environment --- represented by pressure groups that are interested in headlines and contributions to their treasuries, rather than scientific truth --- needs as much public surveillance as Big Industry, Big Oil, Big Labor, and, yes, Big News Media. Another massive federal department would simply create more headaches than it would cure.

While I’m at it, I’m compelled to bring up another environmental issue that needs the nation’s attention. This one relates to the culpability of environmental extremists for the damage and, yes, the many deaths they have caused since environmentalism became a universal factor in the middle of the 20^th Century.

For example, DDT, a superior pesticide developed by scientists, successfully stopped the spread of malaria in the world and brought the annual death toll of 3,000,000 persons down to a few hundred. Then, the worldwide ban on DDT engineered by the environmental extremists sent the annual death toll back up to the 3,000,000 mark. Why haven’t the enviros been called to account for what amounts to genocide?

Washington State’s most renowned environmentalist Jim Ellis publically endorsed State Lands Commissioner Doug Sutherland for re-election at a campaign kickoff breakfast this morning.

“I have the pleasure to publically be here and to publically praise our State Lands Commissioner and our next Lands Commissioner,” Ellis told the crowd of over 200 supporters at Bellevue’s Hilton.

“The job transcends party,” he explained.  Ellis said that when he looks at candidates he starts with honesty and intelligence, but then he has his checklist of his “Four C’s”: caution, courage, collaboration and common sense.  He said Sutherland has all four, but Ellis stressed caution and collaboration.  He said Sutherland is willing to listen to everybody and is very collaborative and effective in working with environmentalists.  He said Doug is cautious about making decisions because of the long term impacts his decisions may have on state lands.

The skill in the job comes from balancing the needs for revenues which go to building schools and the need to protect the assets for future generations, Ellis explained.   When the legislature first decided to fund school construction from the harvest of state forests, “there were a lot more trees than students.  Now there are a lot more students and fewer trees.”  Ellis said Sutherland clearly understands the balance in needs.

Ellis, who has been active in Seattle public affairs for 60 years, ended his strong endorsement of Sutherland by saying “He is a great Lands Commissioner, my favorite Lands Commissioner.”

Sutherland said Ellis taught him caution 30 years ago when Sutherland was Mayor of Tacoma and Ellis the City’s Bond Attorney.  Sutherland also acknowledged Ellis’ praise for collaboration.  When bringing divergent groups together, Sutherland explained, everybody’s idea is “The Idea.”

Sutherland said he doesn’t manage the agency thinking in quarterly reports, but rather 50-year, 75-year and 100-year reports.  “It’s not today’s agenda, but tomorrow’s agenda” he worries about, he explained.

Senator Slade Gorton told the crowd that Doug’s challenge in a “long-ballot” year is to be able to get the message out about how responsibly he has administered his office.  If you care to donate to Sutherland’s campaign, you can link here.

Earlier in the program, Bill Chapman, President of the Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust, praised Sutherland and introduced Ellis.

King County Councilwoman Jane Hague emceed the event.

One of the worst wastes of taxpayers’ money is about to be carried out — and taxpayers won’t have a chance to stop it. It’s an administration plan to spend $489 million in an ill-advised plan to protect the Northern Spotted Owl and its immediate enemy, the barred owl, in Pacific Northwest forests.

The owl fanatics, who are environmental extremists, have been aiming their verbal darts at the forest industry for more than 30 years with the same old rhetoric. They don’t really give a damn about the spotted owl, because their aim is to prevent the forest industry from making the best use of timber in old-growth forests.

The forest industry took care of the complaints many years ago and has had a good plan to protect old growths. In the meantime, the real enemy of the spotted owls is their forestry cousin, the barred owl, which has relentlessly preyed on the spotted owls and constantly reduced their number.

Apparently the extremists will not be satisfied until they destroy the forest industry, which has an extremely important role to fill in the U.S. economy, and, in so doing, eliminate the jobs of thousands of forest workers and all those who depend upon a steady supply of good timber for housing and many other uses.

In the meantime, the federal government goes on playing the patsy for the owl fanatics and coming up with such wasteful measures as the $489 million program to bring the Northern Spotted Owl and the barred owls back to their full numbers — whatever in the world that may be — in 30 years.

I am surprised that President Bush and his advisers haven’t brushed off the owl fanatics and their plan to waste so many millions in tax money for a program that is unneeded and will accomplish nothing more than the forest industry has already taken care of in protecting old growths.

One of the unbelievable facets of the wasteful plan is that neither the owl fanatics nor the conservation-minded organizations have realized that few if any Northern Spotted Owls are to be found in the largest portion of old-growth forests, mostly in the eastern portion of the Northwest forests.

It has come down to what amounts to a comedy of errors, although the frittering away of half a billion tax dollars is hardly a comedy. Don’t the environmental extremists have anything better to do than to invent silly scenarios designed to keep their forces intact and contributing funds to the environmentalists’ treasury?

In the meantime, it seems to me that the beleaguered forest industry, which has tried hard to satisfy environmental demands in the forests, deserves a break and a tribute from the extremists, instead of their constant diatribes concerning a species that is endangered only by a cousin, the barred owls.

It’s long past time for the implementation of a great idea my old friend, Dr. Dixy Lee Ray, had many years ago. She proposed the creation of a Science Tribunal to hear cases involving environmental issues and to deliver decisions based on legitimate science and facts, not hearsay and extremist fairy tales.

When will we learn? It has just been disclosed that fake malaria drugs that created havoc in Southeast Asia because they failed to check the disease have now had the same deadly effect in many African nations, including Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Nigeria, and Kenya.

The disclosure was made by an organization called Africa Fighting Malaria, described as a prominent health-advocacy group by the Associated Press. One would have thought that the African nations and the health groups there would have stayed away from the fake drugs used in Southeast Asia. But they didn’t heed the dangers.

According to the Africa Fighting Malaria organization, a sampling of the fake drugs two years ago revealed that more than half the malaria drugs being used were substandard and ineffective in preventing the disease or healing the thousands who were afflicted with an alarming death rate.

Then, just recently, medical experts in Africa tested 195 packs of malaria drugs purchased at private pharmacies and discovered “that a third didn’t contain enough active ingredients or did not dissolve quickly enough to work,” as the Associated Press reported.

The medical team disclosed that “just a third of the packets contained artemisinin, the newest anti-malarial drug from China. Last year, the World Health Organization asked drug companies to stop selling it, except in multi-drug cocktails. Why the W.H.O.’s warning wasn’t heeded in the African nations is a mystery.

The medics also said that “nearly half the drugs made in Africa — assuming their packaging was legitimate — failed the tests. So did a third of those made in Asia.” This has the makings of an outrageous worldwide misuse of so-called malaria “cures,” and it should stir worldwide anger and action.

The most important action should be the restoration of DDT, the miracle pesticide that had begun to eliminate malaria throughout the world in the middle of the last century, until the misguided environmental extremists forced political action that halted the use of DDT on swamplands and all other areas with mosquito infestations.

I must say it once again. Rachel Carson and her terribly inaccurate book, Silent Spring, and all the environmental extremists who used it in their campaign to block the use of DDT are guilty of genocide. Malaria was killing 3,000,000 people a year, mostly children, before DDT was applied to the swamplands.

In a short time, DDT brought the annual death rate from malaria down to just a few hundred and would have eliminated the disease totally in time, if the extremists had not inflicted politicos worldwide with their anti-DDT messages. As soon as DDT was banned, the malaria death rate rose again quickly to the 3,000,000-a-year figure. What a tragedy!

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has done so much to combat AIDS and other diseases in Africa, should adopt as its No. 1 order of business a new movement to restore DDT as a desperately needed pesticide to end the malaria scourge.

I am amused by the self-righteous right wing the past two days who proclaim on Sound Politics that they will never vote for Senator John McCain now that he is saying global warming must be dealt with.

First of all, I totally agree with the right wingers that the arguments that man is somehow putting the planet in peril are ridiculous.  But my difference with the self righteous right wing is that I think I understand the art of politics just a bit better.  You remember the old maxim that you don’t want to know how sausage or laws are made.

You social conservatives get played all the time because you don’t understand how laws are made.  Politicians will give lip service, but unless a bill is brought out of committee to the full house or senate there is no vote, no law, no change.  That’s the real game.  Not speechifying.  Speechifying is meant to appease the politically stupid.

Reagan was a master.  Trent Lott another.  Bill Frist and Harry Reid are losers by comparison.  You can talk all you want, but unless a measure is brought to a vote, it’s just talk.  Reagan’s priortities were to stop the Russian Bear and to reverse FDR socialism.  He gave lip service to social conservative agenda items, but few of those items really made it into law under him.  Am I right?  Those items were pawns on his chess board.

Same thing can be said about Trent Lott as Senate Majority Leader.   He speechified about all the crazy social conservative stuff, but he kept any of that proposed legislation bottled up in committee.  It never got to a vote!  Yet, the social conservatives thought they were being satisfied.  Dumb as a box of chocolates.

Stop listening to the words and start looking at the actions.

Now we have John McCain sounding like some whore pimping for Al Gore.  But look at his proposals.  He supports nuclear power and recycling, but hates subsidies for things like ethanol.  I wish he had the courage to propose drilling for more oil, but he realizes stupid Seattle soccer moms and their impotent husbands won’t buy that now.

It’s politics, folks.  Just like sausage making.  If you look at the process, it can make you sick.  You have to get elected first if you’re going to have any power.  Sometimes you have to say things that really aren’t that important to you.  Few people get that, including most reporters.

I attended Senator John McCain’s environmental panel held today at Cedar River Watershed Educational facility.

I heard a lot of common sense.  Sure, I heard McCain say he believes in man-made global warming because so many scientists say so.  And he also said we need to reduce our carbon pollution.

But then, the surprise to me, is that he didn’t say or advocate any solution that I wouldn’t support.  He promoted nuclear energy.  I’m okay with that.  He wants better batteries for cars.  I’m okay with that.  He wants an education program to encourage recycling.  I’m okay for that.  He said nuclear is more economical than clean-coal technology.  Makes sense.

Then he said he was wary of government subsidies, bringing up how he voted against the ethanol subsidy.  The subsidy ended up “distorting the market,” he said.  I’m okay with that.

Everything he said had a weight of economic evaluation, something you don’t get very much from Democrat candidates.  For instance, McCain pointed out that more attention should be focused on methane because that gas “is 25 times more polluting than carbon.”

Panelist Steve Litzgow, Mercer Island City Counilman and Republican candidate for the House in the 41st District, pointed out that greenhouse gas solutions are similar to what the internet was 15 years ago.  “One-third of the ideas work, another third don’t, and the last third will work in ten years.”  He added, “It’s a matter of priorities” because there is only so much money.  Again, a reasoned economic evaluation of attacking the problem.

Public Lands Commissioner Doug Sutherland pointed out that Washington State should not be penalized by possible new laws by the date set for the baseline measurement for carbon emmissions.  Sutherland said the state has been doing a lot since 1990 to re-plant forests and protect the environment when other states have not.

Another panelist, Sally Jewel, CEO of R.E.I, pointed out that the average kid spends an amazing 46 1/2 hours in front of the TV each week and only 30 minutes in unstructured play.  That comment actually gave me less insight on the environment and more on the popularity of Senator Barack Obama among today’s youth.

Jewel told McCain that reducing automobile time of commuting employees would do a lot to reduce the carbon footprint of her organization.  She said she is seeing a steady growth in internet sales which she believes is healthier for the atmosphere than in-store sales.

All in all, I heard reasoned responses to protecting the environment.  I could live with what I heard today.  And McCain can go around saying that “global warming is real” if that’s what people want to hear.

Governor Dan Evans was also a panelist.  In the audience were many Republican leaders including Senator Slade Gorton and State Republican Party Chairman Luke Esser.  Of course, big environmentalist and former Secretary of State Ralph Munro who heads up the Washington campaign for McCain, was there showing support.  

Republicans are providing the independent voter with reasoned environmental solutions.   The question is will the media talk about it?

Thanks to a commentor to one of Lou’s LouTubes, I was referred to the “Malaria Clock” at junkscience.com.  It brings home to you the immense death toll that environmentalists have wrought since banning the anti-malarial chemical DDT in the 70’s.  In the minute I was on the page, seven people died in the world and hundreds more were infected by malaria.  I suggest you visit this link and forward it to your friends.  Radical environmentalism must be stopped.

President Bush has made some mistakes, for sure, but he has chalked up a few victories, too, although you’d never know it from the news media coverage.  One of those victories was to win the use of