The Importance of Your Vote

Reading the words of the Boston Globe editorial, A planet on thin ice, several sentences leaped off the page:

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... NASA scientist, James Hansen, has a succinct phrase for what man-made emissions are creating: "a different planet."

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Just as the data on Arctic summer ice came in, researchers also reported alarming releases of methane gas in the Arctic. As a greenhouse gas, methane is 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide. Scientists have long feared that gigantic burps of this gas would be a result of warming in the Arctic.

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... senior scientist Mark Serreze at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo.: "We could very well be in that quick slide downward in terms of passing a tipping point. We're seeing it happen now."

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There are a number of reasons the comments leaped off the page. Scientists have offered models that, in hindsight, were overly conservative. Those models grossly underestimated the impacts, feedback mechanisms and the rapidity of the progression. The issues surrounding GLOBAL WARMING or CLIMATE CHANGE have been known for 40 years.

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More strikingly, it has made me wonder how corporations, well-funded right-wing think tanks, misguided journalists like Donald Lambro, and the Dynamic Duo of Deniers offered by the Republican Party can continue to deny the catastrophic effects that we have writ.

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When scientists got CLIMATE CHANGE wrong using computer models, we have no reason to believe their predictions about "a different planet" aren't equally as conservative. Will that different planet sustain life?

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Corporate gurus need to explain: why you believe you are immune. Sure, you can still afford gas for your Hummer. And you can afford to both heat and cool your homes. And you can still put food on your table, unlike the famines and food shortages that will erupt. But how do you avoid the chemical and mercury contamination in the food chain? How do you avoid the chemicals and mercury that are being rained down onto farm fields? When water that is chemical laden is used for crop irrigation, how do you avoid it? And how do you avoid breathing the air you have contaminated with the chemicals, mercury and coal particulates and much else? That's your homework assignment and we look forward to your answers.

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With a Presidential Election forthcoming and 8 precious years lost that might have been better spent presenting honest environmental information to the public about the pending threats of GLOBAL WARMING, preparing for a post oil era and actually learning to live more energy efficiently, instead of selling out to DIRTY ENERGY and BIG POLLUTERS, our vote seems more important this year.

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On a local level, the silence regarding the Dirty Brockton Power Plant is deafening.