Warming Delirium Delirious

William Rusher’s opinion in Sundays Commentary was correctly titled “Warming delirium”. Each of Rusher’s “three mighty engines” that are powering the global-warming controversy is deliriously wrong.

First Rusher said “the media can be depended on to ferret out and wildly over hype any potential negative development any so-called scientist is willing to predict and deplore”… and thus easy to awaken “the natural human impulse to fear allegedly forthcoming disasters, especially if they are clothed in the raiments of scientific certitude”. If either of these assertions were true, the threat of infectious diseases would be the primary driving force of all local, state, federal and foreign policy. The Bird Flu or a release of weaponized smallpox will dwarf any impact of global warming. There is virtually no scientist that covers these inevitable catastrophic threats that believes the media or the public has had adequate exposure, reception or reaction. And it was so called ‘hype’ by both the media and scientific communities that can be credited with the reduction of the very real former environmental problems of “acid Rain” and the “Ozone hole”. If Mr. Rusher would prefer religious ideology over science in determining public policy he should consider the problems this approach creates in the Middle East.

Rusher’s second engine “traditional liberal hatred of ‘American corporations’” misses the fact that it is liberal love of the environment that propels them to seek the source of pollutants. God created the world for our stewardship. Corporations were created by humans and to the degree they put profit over serving human needs and protecting God’s creation, their actions deserve the wrath of harsh critics. The source of global warming however isn’t primarily cows or corporations. It’s our dependence on oil -- a dependence that funds terrorists -- which is a far greater threat than global warming. I’ve never heard any liberals say “Stop the corporations” but I’m confident we can all agree that the funding terrorists must be stopped.

Rusher’s last engine “money” that pays scientists and funds university research is far less than the money engine related to oil that prevents us from finding affordable alternative fuels that could help keep God’s creation clean and peaceful. If US corporations invested their windfall profits in clean alternative energy sources they would spark economic growth that would make liberals love corporations and provide breakthroughs in science that would help us improve other aspects of our health and nations prosperity.

Tauna Rose

Rockville, MD