He lives in the most densely populated area in the U.S. (Washington D.C.). Everything is convoluted and polluted there. The most densely populated cities are where it is the most polluted. There's scientific evidence that the simple reason for that pollution is that there is too much going on in a limited area.
It's unfortunate that global issues are also condensed into a small area that has a lot of population. The media and Government both know this and use it to their advantage. That's pretty much how Obummer got elected. Many people in the big cities don't know what fresh air is. The Earth is about 1.3 quadrillion times the size in weight of all of the people on the planet put together. All people standing take up less ground space than 40% of the State of Rhode Island (2 square feet (most people take up about 20% less than that) x 7 billion = roughly 500 square miles) . In volume, people take up less space than 1/3rd of a cubic mile (28%).
The Earth isn't polluted as a whole. The big cities are. That just makes for something to cater to as a politician. Fame, fortune, and power is all these morons (like Obummer) aspire to have. Make the world look terrible and claim that you can fix it. I doubt that most politicians know how big the world really is. Obummer's speech is only a political ploy by an ignorant and self-important politician!!!
Another trademark Sagebrain copy-paste fail. You not only forgot the link to the crackpot blog you got this "question" from, you forgot to even read that blog. What you quoted is routine boilerplate. Except for cannibals who eat babies and Goebbels worshippers who waste their lives here, everyone knows that it is normal to care about what kind of world children will grow up in. Politicians (who aren't cannibals) promise a chicken in every pot, and kiss babies. Surely there was more than on the crackpot anti-science blog, or "fair and balanced" Murdoch gutter rag story, than what your "question" quotes. "Oops", you did it again.
When you are captured by Forged Birth Certificate Kenyan cannibals with nose-rings, and boiling in the pot, will you be ready to tell St. Peter you told the truth about science here?
Or, since you have no capacity for ever understanding science, try geography. You don't even need to find the following states on the map (hard if you've never done it before), but all of them (and rest assured, Ringed-Nose-Kenyans have not yet taken over ANY of them) voted for George W. Bush in 2004, but voted for Obama in 2008: Iowa, Missouri, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida. That makes a total of 13,192,006 votes in those states for Obama in 2008 http://www.infoplease.com/us/government/...
13,192,006 is a lot. How did the Cannibals do it?
Without yet knowing the entire context of his remarks, this paragraph strikes a responsive chord for me given my family history, background and experience. As an investor in Northern Minnesota, from today's perspective there was an incredible waste of natural resources from the mid 19th to the mid 20th Century in this area alone, primarily timber and iron ore. In addition, my family history includes the journals of a great great great grandfather detailing his life and travels from about 1809 when he left New York until shortly before his death in Kansas at the age of 78 in 1874. He objected to and wrote about similar waste of natural resources including the clear cutting of timber in Pennsylvania that exhausted that resource in 75 years, as well as the wasteful management of game and wildlife that decimated many populations. There are many other examples that could be cited, but I trust that these two from my own experience and family history will be sufficient to put my point of view in perspective.
I do not want to be remembered, nor do I want my generation(s) to be remembered as we now think of the generations of the mid 19th to mid 20th century people in terms of how little they respected the environment and what poor stewards of our resources they were...the problems they left us to deal with, from fewer resources, damaged environment, health consequences and additional technological challenges, all bearing with them enormous costs, many of which might have been avoided or at least not as bad as they ended up being. Granted, we are judging past generations in hindsight by today's standards, but likely tomorrow's standard will be applied equally in another hundred or so years.
So I am in tune with the philosophy of trying to maintain balance between today's needs and tomorrow's, whether that philosophy is economic or social. I do not think we have made the best decisions and maintained that balance for many decades...but regardless of the philosophy, it is much easier said than done. Especially today, with many of the uncertainties that Climate Change presents, whether one believes it is a natural event out of our control or that mankind does indeed influence it and we may be able to minimize that impact. Interestingly, it would seem that if we do indeed influence and accelerate climate change, by researching it and developing related technologies, it would seem that we could, at some point, either warm or cool the planet if we needed to. Of course, that is 'out there' thinking and brings up the spectre of geoengineering, a whole topic that makes me squirm some as I picture guys in open cockpit biplanes wearing goggles and tossing dry ice into the clouds. Haw.
I really don't think anyone today would be happy about condemning future generations to pay for our excesses today, but at the same time we have to balance our needs today with the future, and that is a tall order in a complex and large society. Who we can trust to do the best job of it is really a hard question to answer in such a polarized political environment.
But overall, I do believe that the remark is true as it stands-we don't have to choose. Getting it done right is the problem.
Sounds pretty reasonable to me.
A lot more reasonable than Zippi62's answer. Admittedly I couldn't get past the first line of it, which is both irrelevant and absurdly wrong at the same time. Don't deniers ever check whether what they say is true or not? Or do they just make up stuff when it suits them?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Uni...
EDIT: Sagebrush says
"As a parent he is condemning his children and grand children to indebtedness"
Apparently you haven't seen the latest study on the subject by those well-known alarmist liberals--the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
We cannnot fix the planet , or harm it .It does not have a fever
or any thing
watch Cosmos tonight, or remain wrongheaded
That Obama character needs to remember that he works for US!!! He is advocating against the wishes of the American voter (his Boss).
The guy has no clue about what makes for a successful economy and definitely has no clue as to the corruption and fraud that exists in the Global Warming community.
Once again, he has embarrassed those who voted him into office.
He is right. More jobs are created in the clean energy sector than coal and oil. The GOP has to find a different economic argument to justify pollution.
In context this is what he said…
“In America, we don’t have to choose between the health of our economy and the health of our children. The old rules may say we can’t protect our environment and promote economic growth at the same time, but in America, we’ve always used new technology to break the old rules.
”As President, and as a parent, I refuse to condemn our children to a planet that’s beyond fixing. The shift to a cleaner energy economy won’t happen overnight, and it will require tough choices along the way. But a low-carbon, clean energy economy can be an engine of growth for decades to come. America will build that engine. America will build the future. A future that’s cleaner, more prosperous, and full of good jobs – a future where we can look our kids in the eye and tell them we did our part to leave them a safer, more stable world.”
Full transcript can be found here:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-offi...
One the one hand – clean safe and reliable energy that will last indefinitely, on the other hand – expensive, polluting energy that will soon run out and bring the US to it’s knees when it does.
Not a difficult decision to make.
President Obama:
“We don’t have to choose between the health of our economy and the health of our children,” he said in his weekly address, which was recorded yesterday at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington. “As president, and as a parent, I refuse to condemn our children to a planet that’s beyond fixing.”
