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Health & Fitness

Phase Out Fossil Fuels

We are drilling for oil at ocean depths where we cannot insure safety.  We are trying to drill in the Arctic where we do not have the technology to set up rigs in the harsh conditions.  We are squeezing natural gas out of rock formations by ‘fracking’ with toxic chemicals that threaten the area water resources.   

We are blowing the tops off the mountains in Appalachia to get at the coal in a more "cost effective" way.  This is destroying the watersheds and drinking water there, laying waste to one of the most beautiful and biologically diverse places on earth. 

When will we abandon this self-destructive path?  Are we going to allow a pipeline of dirty tar sands through our the Midwest's "breadbasket"?  The Keystone pipeline will ultimately go to a refinery owned by two foreign countries in Port Arthur, Texas.  From there it goes through an international port where we don't even collect taxes.  All this risk is for a few pipeline jobs?  

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Keystone will be part of a pipeline system that is connected to the refineries just east of the St. Louis metro area.  And guess what?  That pipeline comes through St. Charles County.  I'm afraid to ask if any of the tar sands oil will be piped to the metro east to be refined - the air pollution from that will surely be horrendous.  

There is no effective method for cleaning up spilled tar sands in a waterway.  The standard ‘technology’ for spilled oil is to throw absorbent paper towels or tubing on top of oil that floats to the top of the water – it doesn’t work very well but it’s all the industry has bothered to develop.  The technology hasn't changed much in forty years. Tar sands sink to the bottom of the water so paper towels floating on top are useless.  The risk is enormous and the gain is what?  Even dirtier oil on the global market will be available to the highest bidder.  It will ultimately be burned and add to the CO2 overload.  

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You hear the daily accounts of one weather calamity after another.  We are ravaged by super tornados, super hurricanes, super droughts, and massive wildfires.  We all know that our weather is becoming more extreme and the disasters happen more often.  Death Valley is about to set a WORLD high temperature record.   The corporate-owned news outlets don't use the term “climate change” in the coverage of the weather disaster of the month.  But we know something's wrong.  

I think older folks are more in tune with the natural world from tending gardens and living part of our lives without climate controlled buildings.  We know what normal weather patterns are for this area, and we know our weather is now more unpredictable and severe.  

And so we must stand up to the oil, coal, and gas industries!  There is a relationship between legislators accepting money from these industries and then casting votes that enable the exploitation that degrades our natural environment (such as exempting fracking chemicals from clean water regulations).  

We aren’t even allowed to know what is in the fracking chemicals.  Just as we were not allowed to know the chemical composition of the oil dispersants that were spewed over the Gulf Shores National Park System and the Gulf of Mexico.  Those dispersants also affected people living along that coast after BP's cost-cutting created that disaster.  Are trade secrets more important than human health?

To those who argue that we must have fossil fuels to sustain our economies, I say our economies are failing to sustain the majority of us.  Americans can live without much of what the multinational corporations try to sell us (most of us already are by necessity).  They set the price for their ‘goods’ - but we know, if we think it through, what we really need. 

We cannot live without breathable air, pure water, and a climate that allows food crops to be grown and harvested.  We need to get back to living simpler, more sustainable lives while we still have a planet where that is possible.

We must have food distribution systems that don't truck peppers from South American to our local grocery store in road clogging, fuel guzzling tractor-trailers.  We can create jobs by upgrading our infrastructure to include rail systems that bring the things we need to us using a fraction of the fuel required by the trucking industry.  That same rail system could take us where we need to go in relative comfort without the stress of driving and traffic jams.  This  isn't science fiction.  Its how we used to travel in America and how Europe operates today.  

We must find ways to safely turn our rubbish into energy instead of burying it in toxic dumps.  We need wind farms along with geothermal and solar energy.   There are many ways to produce energy cleanly.  Ocean currents can turn turbines if we can sort out a way to do this that doesn’t harm that ecosystem.  We can build structures that are greener and retrofit our older structures to be more efficient.  We need to focus development on industries that will produce a cleaner environment.  Jobs will be generated by these activities.

This isn't a pipe dream.  If they can make solar power work in Germany, we can surely make it work here.  We need leadership that invests in sustainability, not legislators that are handmaidens to industries that continue to defile the earth for profit.  The focus should be more on solving our climate problems and less on the corporate bottom line.  Even if congress is in a stalemate with many of the legislators on the take, YOU have the power to affect positive change.  

Contact your representatives at all levels of government and demand that they change our energy policies.  Insist that they enact laws that change the way we operate to reduce CO2 in our atmosphere.

But we don't have to wait for congress.  We can change our personal fossil fuel usage now.  Taking action will make you feel less helpless in what seems like an impossible challenge.  We need to start thinking about all the small ways that we can work toward a better environment.  

  • Lay off the pesticides.  They are decimating the bees we need to pollinate our crops.  You can’t get these poisons washed off food completely before you eat it.  When I see bug bites on the kale I grow, I tell myself that it is the natural world’s ‘seal of approval’.  If a bug won't eat it, do you really want to? You can kill weeds with boiling water if they are not next to the good plants.
  • Avoid meals that require using your oven in the summer when you are also running your air conditioner.  
  • Change out your incandescent light bulbs to fluorescent or LED.  
  • Try to live near your job.  Or at least try to cut down on driving by planning your errands to combine trips.
  • Make fuel economy a major factor in your next car purchase. 
  • Think about solar panels.  If you replace your HVAC system, get the most efficient system you can afford.  Buy Energy Star appliances.
  • Support businesses that have good environmental records.  It takes some research but most of us have internet access (which is much less expensive in most of the rest of the world – hello, FCC???). 

There are many more things we can do.  Most of them save us money to boot!  You can 'vote' to protect the environment with every dollar you do or don't spend.  If we all take some energy-reducing steps we can make our carbon footprint smaller.  

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