WGOW-FM

11-24

Jeff spent a fair amount of time today on global warming. Or global climate change, as it's now called. It's hard for me to get too worked up about it since the climate of the globe, or the Earth as I call it, has been changing since the day it came into existence and will continue to change long, long, long after humans as a species cease to exist. And at some point in time, we will cease to exist. Don't think we won't, no matter what you do. It seems a bit narcissistic to assume that during our 70 years on the planet climate change would stop and everything would stay the same for us when the ice has been ebbing and flowing and the water has been rising and receding and the land has been shifting along fault lines for billions and billions of years.

I really don't feel the need to argue about it one way or another. I carry my own cloth bags and walk to the grocery store but I'm not going to beat up someone who doesn't. It just makes more sense to me than piling up drawers full of those thin plastic bags or filling up trash cans with them. I hate waste. I don't drive a hybrid because I can't afford one. If those wringing their hands because I don't want to provide one for me, I'll happily drive it. But I'm not going to delude myself into believing that by doing so I'll stop the climate of the Earth from changing. It's going to change and species will come and go no matter what I do or don't do.

Fighting climate change -- even the appearance of fighting climate change -- has become a huge money-maker. There is profit in continuing dire long-term predictions, but the catastrophic predictions of temperature increases have come from models, not empirical observations. It's an exercise in "what if" based on the pre-defined parameters programmed into models.

Put simply, it's the SportTalk methodology. "If Alabama beat Tennessee by two points and Florida beat the Vols by 10, that makes the Gators an eight-point favorite in the SEC Championship Game against the Tide." Check Doctor B's record to see how well that works.

As long as you're checking records, look at what existing big business has done to you. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand there's one and only one thing big business cares about: its bottom line. Its profit. Whether its Exxon or Goldman-Sachs or Citadel Communications, big business in its current form will do anything it takes -- whether that means lying to you, squeezing you or rolling right over you -- to keep that bottom line, that profit margin, where shareholders expect it to be.

And just because you slap a "green" label on a business and it markets slightly different products doesn't make the people operating those businesses any more or less honest. And it sure as hell doesn't make them care any more or less about me. They want to win the argument and be in control in the same way business in its current form wants to win the argument and maintain control. It's a power struggle. It's a political/philosophical struggle. And I don't trust one any more than I do the other. I'm not going to jump on the "green" bandwagon. And I'm certainly not going to defend current business practices.

It's Jeff passion and I respect that. All of us are passionate about something. But having a conversation with someone who's passionate on an issue isn't easy when you question methodologies and conclusions or don't have that same passion.

So.......let's see what kind of discussion we can generate here......on the Blog.......

Kevin West