[Dialogue] New Rules -- Bill Maher

[FacilitationFla@aol.com]

Hope people read the article in Time Magazine on Global Warning.
 
Here's Bill Maher's take
 
And finally, New Rule: Nobody can use the phrase "our greatest problem"  
anymore unless you're talking about global warming. President Bush has been  
saying we're in a war on terror, and now I get it. He's not saying "terror,"  he's 
saying "terra" as in "terra firma," as in the Earth. George Bush is an  alien 
sent here to destroy the Earth! I know it sounds crazy, but it made  perfect 
sense when Tom Cruise explained it to me last week. 

Now, last  week on "60 Minutes," James Hansen, who is NASA's leading expert 
on the science  of climate delivered the world's most important message. He 
said, "We have to,  in the next ten years, begin to decrease the rate of carbon 
dioxide emissions  and then flatten it out. If that doesn't happen in ten 
years, we're going to be  passing certain tipping points. If the ice sheets begin 
to disintegrate, what  can you do about it? You can't tie a rope around an ice 
sheet." Although I know  a certain cowboy from Crawford who might think you 
could. 

And that  cowboy and his corporate goons at the White House tried to censor 
Mr. Hansen  from delivering that message, claiming such warnings were 
speculative. This from  the crowd that rushed into a war based on an article in the 
Weekly Standard.  This - this from the guy who thinks Kyoto is that Japanese 
emperor dude his dad  threw up on. 

Global warming is not speculative. It threatens us enough  so that it should 
be considered a national security issue. Failing to warn the  citizens of a 
looming weapon of mass destruction - and that's what global  warming is - in 
order to protect oil company profits, well, that fits, for me,  the definition of 
treason. And codified treason. 

Please, wait a second.  The guy in the White House who made the edits was 
Phil Cooney, who had been an  oil industry lobbyist before given this job as head 
of the White House Council  on Environmental Quality. That's the office that 
is supposed to be watching out  for us. But that's where Phil busied himself 
crossing stuff out in scientists'  reports, because apparently in Phil's mind, 
he hadn't switched jobs. He was just  doing his old job - oil industry 
lobbyist - from a different office. You know,  in the "people's house." 

Republicans have succeeded in making the  environment about some tie-dyed 
dude from Seattle who lives in a solar-powered  yurt and eats twigs. It's not. 
This issue should be driven by something  conservatives are much more familiar 
with: utter selfishness. That's my  motivation. I don't want to live my golden 
years having to put on a hazmat suit  just to go down and get the mail. Those 
are my Viagra years. When I'll be  thinking about having children. 



Cynthia N.  Vance
Strategics International Inc.
8245 SW 116 Terrace
Miami, Florida,  33156
305-378-1327; fax  305-378-9178
http://members.aol.com/facilitationfla
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