If you've read this column over the years, you know I like to listen to public radio as I ride up and down the road. I like it because I feel I get a very unbiased account on many of issues. They do a great job of presenting something and then getting people on opposing sides an opportunity to respond without the host interjecting his or her opinion.
It's been interesting the past few weeks as we grow closer and closer to the 2020 elections and Democrats and Republicans begin drawing lines in the sand. I listened the other day and climate change seems to have risen to the top of the agenda for a lot of Democrats. Republicans are still pointing to the wall in Mexico and the illegal immigrants as the major issue.
My hero has always been James Carville, the Democratic strategist who had to defend Bill Clinton's sexcapades in the Oval Office. I love the fact that Carville's wife was a true-blooded Republican and loved it more when they were sitting side-by-side in an interview.
I'll give Carville the credit for the phrase 'It's the economy stupid'. He's right. People love to forgive when the economy is doing well regardless of what they are doing with an intern in the Oval Office.
Global warming seems to be a hot topic heading into the 2020 election campaign, but I do wonder if people will jump head first onto that bandwagon.
The Democrats are apparently putting all their eggs into two baskets: global warming stopping President Trump from building his wall.
The big question to me is how much do we want the government involved in what we do on a daily basis. Hey, I'm all for saving the environment and I agree we humans have caused damage to the environment. But the real question is how far do we want to go?
History books tell us we had an ice age, massive flooding and other disasters that changed the world. Most of those events happened long before we began burning fossil fuels and putting other 'containments' into the air that some say endanger the environment.
Something happened millions of years ago to wipe out the dinosaurs on the planet and I have serious doubts that vehicles burning gasoline had anything to do with it. I really don't think Noah had a diesel powered motor to power his arc.
So, where to we draw the line? That's the question that will be asked and answered over the next year as we gear up for the 2020 elections.
How far do we want to go? Hey, lets ban automobiles; lets shutdown paper mills and other manufacturing companies that send stuff into the air. Fred Flintstone got around pretty good on his leg-driven vehicle with rock tires instead of the tires we use today.
Some of the same politicians who complain about the environment travel across the country in jets and vehicles that are sending out the exact fumes they want to stop.
Maybe we need to ban cattle. I listened to a good argument on both sides the other day that the methane gas put out by cow manure is higher and more dangerous to the environment than a vehicle.
I'd like to see people like U.S. Rep. Alexandia Ocasio-Cortez and U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, Democrats from New York and Massachusetts who are sponsoring their 'Green New Deal' to protect the environment, to show they are serious by riding bicycles to and from speaking engagements instead of jets and limousines, which, by the way, burn a lot of fossil fuels that end up in the atmosphere.
If they really think fossil fuels are the culprit, jump out there and introduce a bill to ban them. Introduce a bill to make it illegal to cut a tree down and ban plastic. Hey, while we are at it, lets ban fertilizer and pesticides used by farmers and if we get rid of cows, we might as well get rid of chickens and their high-nitrogen poop.
I don't know what we'll do about the volcanoes that send more toxics into the air than anything we produce on this planet.
Democrats better listen to the words of their biggest supporter – Carville – and listen to his words : 'It's the economy stupid' because too much of a 'Green New Deal' will take green money out of the hands of many Americans.
