“There is a
cost to inactivity”
For well
over a century now humankind has been conscious of pollution and its affect of
humans, animals and marine life and periodically we have enacted regulations
and created new machinery that would reduce or alleviate the terminal affects
of inhaling or ingesting toxins.
The debates
and arguments were straight forward while the failure to act were obvious,
people were dying from lead poisoning, toxic gases were killing miners and
industrial dust pollution was being inhaled or ingested causing a variety of
lung diseases. The cause and effect were obvious.
The
naysayers were the usual ones, the corporations, the anti-tax groups or the
politicians who feared taxation however they were easily defeated by the
obviousness of the cause and effect. We could drop an infected lung on their
desk. Today’s argument about greenhouse gases on global warming appear to be
less tangible to the ill informed and easier to argue against by certain
political groups who use cost to the public as a means of defeating the issue.
Raising the
alarm on long term effect doesn’t appear to be working yet there are obvious
and immediate affects that are extremely alarming to those of us who understand
that there has been a rise in severe weather patterns, tornadoes, hurricanes,
wildfires and rain storms causing floods as well as severe winds that come out
of nowhere.
Conservatives
and populists argue against one of the most effective taxes to combat these
extreme weather patterns while ignoring the real cost to the taxpayer of rising
insurance claims, government assistance programs and property loss.
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