Before you get too self righteous about Bush being to blame for warming the planet. You might want to look into the toxic waste dump known locally as the personal computer. The very machine you are posting with may in the end cause more damage to the earth than any other invention. After eighteen months when a new PC turns obsolete, the waste is shipped to the third world where very poor people strip your computer for salvage, poisoning themselves and everything in their village in the process.

Most Americans like yourself are doing nothing to stop global warming, has The Stranger staff sold their cars? Stopped flying in airplanes? Dumped their computers? I think not. Go ahead and blame Bush, but for to find the source of the problem, try looking in the bathroom mirror.

oh, but I'm so saving the rainforst typing here instead of sending in a letter to the editor.

I don't own a car. a lot of seattlites don't own cars.

and I wasn't the one that eased environmental rules on emissions. that was bush. I also am not consuming massive amounts of raw material and fosil fuels waging an endless war against terrorism. again that's bush, not me.

so fuck him, and fuck you for trying to pit anyone's trivial computer use against bush's gargantuan waste.

apples and oranges.

No American's energy use is trivial. All Americans consume massive amounts of raw material and fosil fuels, that's what being American means. The only way you could avoid contributing to the nightmare that is American petrochemical consumption is to move to Bali and live in a hut. Even then you'll have to take a canoe or swim to get there. No airplane allowed.

You are either blind or an idiot to not know of the damage PC are causing the environment. It's not your PC dumbass, it's twentyfive million dead PCs loaded onto barges shipped to third world garbage dumps - a toxic soup the likes of which this world has never seen.

Bush realizes that no one in America is going to get off their ass and do anything about slowing carbon dioxide emissions. Buying organic sushi at Whole Foods accomplishes exactly nothing. New studies are suggesting that corporate organic farms may in fact cause worse environmental damage than traditional chemical farming. (Eco hippies might begin by looking up Organic Chemistry in the dictionary)

The fact is we've already caused irreversable global environmental damage. Unless the entire nation of America is willing to stop driving today, we will not be able to even slow down the damage. It's simply too late.

You could begin by not flying anywhere for vacation, for holidays, for family get togethers. Stop city hopping to promote your vanity publishing projects, and get rid of all your computers and electronic devices. How likely is it you'll do any of that?

What kind of environmental damage is a caused by a hipster weekly printed on dead trees given away free? Plenty if you cared to look at the energy it takes to print and distribute the cigarette and booze ads printed on dead trees known as The Stranger.

The point is EVERYTHING about this American life is wasteful. We create mountains of garbage with all the shit we use just getting ready for work in the morning. There is no one to point the finger at as being the one creating all the waste. All Americans are creating this mess. Not just the Republicans, The White Men, The Non-Vegans, every single one of us.

Even our pretty little war. How much profit is Microsoft, Boeing, and local military contractors making on this war? How many Microsoft employees are refusing to do Microsoft projects benefitting the Defense Department. Last time I checked PowerPoint is used to show off the latest war plans to assembled military types. Are the programmers in the PowerPoint division refusing to allow this? I doubt it.

If anything in Al Gore's movie is news to you, you've been asleep since the 1970's. Wake Up. Be terrified at first. Only don't react by pointing fingers, going vegan, or shopping Whole Foods. It's too late for any of that. And to solve this mess we're all going to have to work together. Capitol Hill vegan hipsters might have to realize that some dumbass hamburger munching Wenatchee dude is actually living a more energy efficently life, all things considered.

ICL, until you come up with figures & citations for even half of the specious claims you've made, shut the hell up. Unlike the world of cable news, nobody here's going to give a crap about your self-righteous screed unless you can back it up with facts.

Bush has increased spending on ways to fight global warming 55% over what Clinton/manbearpig had appropriated.

I need hard facts and figures before I'm going to believe United States consumer culture itself is a problem. Cable news has all kinds of charts and graphs, and people say all kinds of things. But if I get a hybrid SUV that's doing something, and my Labrador retreiver eats organic dogfood so at least I'm not killing salmon there.

But some idiot telling me my entire way of life has something toxic about it is going to have to prove it with a darn good PowerPoint presentation loaded with accurate charts and graphs.

Kimberly can you or anyone else recommend the best, most enviromentally sensitive brand of organic dogfood? I have a seven Akita's and want to do the right thing.

Historical example of "doing something":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_and_cover

If the majority of scientific opinion is correct and overconsumption, particularly of petroleum, is in fact a problem, a large enough number of people to be able to effect change won't believe it until it's too late. So, while avoiding anything blatantly wasteful (like owning a car when I live and work in a city with public transit), I work with the system in most ways, even when I know it's unsustainable. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. And it took me a whole lot of soul searching to come to that pithy Looney Tunes conclusion.

If the government was not controlled by the oil industry, and politicians debated issues on merit instead of patronage, maybe you consumption-uber-alles folks wouldn't be full of shit. Consumers aren't robots. But they respond to market pressures. And this is not a free market. Government climate policy of the last sixty years: kill/ starve public transit, build thousands of miles of roads/ demolish walking neighborhoods for highways, subsidize the oil industry, and stymie the development of alternative forms of renewable energy for decades, then give people a "choice" about whether to drive to work. When global warming is invoked, keep fighting wars for the oil industry, but also change the topic, shift the blame, deny, deny, deny.

Lying. It's what's for dinner.

Kimberly I feed my seven dogs human grade Biologically Appropriate Raw Food. I'll link to the website. I also by five pounds of organic stir fry meat at Whole Foods a couple of times a week.

We all have to do everything we can to prevent global warming. I spent about $800 a month on organic dog food and I know it's making a difference.

http://www.barfproducts.com/

89.75% of all statistics cited on the Internet are made up on the spot.

Pre-internal-combustion global warming, and cooling, and warming, and cooling ...

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?020107fa_FACT