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Campaigns heat up the wrong way

James Rickman

Posted: 04.25.2008 / 8:10 AM EDT

Most of the pundits and press outlets were fixated on what barbs were being traded by Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama during the run up to Pennsylvania—missing an opportunity to get the candidates’ views on what will eventually become the single biggest issue facing our nation and humanity at large.

Few in the political world took time to mention Earth Day this week. Or if they did, we didn’t see much about it on the news. We American people have short attention spans and an appetite for the instant entertainment value that comes from televised bickering or the back-and-forth he-said-she-said reportage that has become the pathetic standard of the new Fourth Estate.

As members of a fast-moving society, we are too busy to sit down and digest “think pieces”or to take the time to analyze and draw conclusions about larger issues, so we allow the talking heads on our favorite news channels to do our critical thinking for us and to define  what is “important.” Unfortunately for us, The Environment didn’t make the cut this week, other than the obligatory reportage of local Earth Day events.

And in the process, many of us missed the following tidbits that should have set off some red flags for all of us:

• Announcement of a new study indicating that global climate change may become irreversible if humanity doesn’t cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent in the next 50 years;

• President George W. Bush’s pronouncement that the United States isn’t going to begin reducing greenhouse gasses until 2025 and only then if it doesn’t adversely affect the economy;

• News that Sam’s Club and CostCo have imposed rationing of rice;

• the World Food Program’s grim acknowledgment that a “silent tsunami” of hunger is sweeping over the world’s poorest nations.

All of the above are related to global climate change or humanity’s response to it.

Far sooner than we hope, some Americans could be forced to make the choice between eating or heating their homes;  between saving for college or saving for gasoline; between buying bread or buying coal.

Here in Los Alamos this week, I ran across a young woman who had regrettably quit a job she loved in order to greatly reduce her commute. The rising costs of gas were simply “out of control” as she put it, and are making too big of an impact on her paycheck. She opted for a job closer to home.

I would have liked to have heard what Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and even John McCain had to say about Earth Day, the climate crisis or how the world is going to balance food production with the production of organic materials for alternative fuels.

Instead, we heard the band play on about which campaign was accusing the other of smear tactics or dirty tricks.