Tragic Hero of the Environmental Movement
Domenic Debs & August Riis
In the minds of most Americans, the words George Bush and environmental awareness are entirely incompatible. Bush pulled the United States out of the Kyoto Treaty, carefully crafted to rapidly reduce global warming. Bush cut funds (in real dollars) for alternative fuel initiatives. He appointed an environmentally hostile Secretary of the Interior, Gayle Norton who rivals Reagan’s choice of evangelical extremist James Watt. Watt, you may recall, said that there was no point in keeping nature in tact because the end of the world was near. Norton never said that, she just behaved as if it were true. At every opportunity, Bush has contributed to global warming and stuck his finger in the eye of activist and ordinary Americans on this issue.
International Press reporters Domenic Debs and August Riis recently completed an in depth investigation that will stand all this on its head.
“Everything you know is wrong!”
Far from a scientifically challenged, catastrophe generating lout, Bush emerges as one of the most prescient of all presidents on environmental and human ecology issues.
How could this be? Wasn’t it Bush who blew off every warning of global warming offered by his advisors? Didn’t Bush dismiss the 2003 Pentagon report that pointed to eco catastrophes as the greatest threat? The answer is yes to both of those questions and many others that seemingly indicate an indifference to environmental concerns. This report allows readers to step back and reevaluate President Bush for who he is: the man who will save the world.
“The Population Bomb”
Campaign aficionados will recall the lost Bush month during his Air National Guard tour in 1972-1973. He left his Texas Air Force Base under questionable circumstances and ended up in Alabama working for the campaign of Republican running for the United States Senate. Critics refer to this period as “missing movement,” a military term indicating “that the accused missed the movement (of his military unit) through design or neglect.” While technically true, the missing movement of 1972-1973 is having a profound effect on our world today.
The Presidents intellectual life had been a barren wasteland up to that point despite earning a masters degree from the Harvard School of Business (or, as some say, perhaps because of it). Before leaving Texas, brother Jeb gave the future president a copy of “The Population Bomb” by Stanford Professor Paul Erlich, Ph.D. This book was causing a sensation at the time. It extended and popularized the dismal conclusions of famous economist Robert Malthus: as resource availability grows arithmetically, population expands geometrically. For the first time in his young life, Bush was taken by a theoretical concept and the proof provided.
This was the beginning of Bush’s life-long obsession with the world population explosion. He had waking visions and frequent dreams of tens of millions of starving humans wandering the earth in search of food and water, and supplies that they would never find. His vision was a combination of the Israelites in lost in the desert and “Night of the Living Dead,” (a popular film at the time).
During a pointless drive through the Mississippi Delta, Bush had a sudden calling: it was he who would solve the civilization ending problems created by the world’s population explosion. He would do what ever it took, including stealing an election or two, to get to the White House and implement his rescue plan.
Fast Forward: Green is Good
Shortly after his inauguration, Bush was presented with dire predictions on the impact of global warming by outgoing Clinton staffers. The President attended this briefing personally; the only time he showed any interest in the Clinton team’s collective knowledge. He listened attentively and thanked the staffers for their time and the numerous documents they amassed.
The Clinton EPA and National Academy of Science researchers presented a grim picture. The worlds population was expanding at an alarming rate and the resources available to feed and shelter them were diminishing. With China and India coming on line as first world economies, the problems would magnify rapidly over a “dreadful decade,” the first of the New Millennium. Polar caps would melt at alarming rates and there would be a 20 foot rise in sea level finishing off, finally, the entire Netherlands, London, New York City, Bangladesh, all of South Florida, and New Orleans (a partial list).
The Clinton team urged immediate ratification of Kyoto with a follow up round within a year accompanied by full exposure of the truth about future certainties.
Kelp and Lots of It, Raw
The chart above represents the
near perfection kelp as a nutrient.
While on his path of learning, Bush discovered that kelp, seaweed, was the near perfect food. It has the optimum balance of nutrients and grew at phenomenal rates, aided by warmer ocean environments. Importantly, it could be eaten raw which relieved any need for energy production in food preparation or service, a phenomenal energy savings.
A Simple Plan: The Bush Paradox
All along, George W. Bush knew he would feed the roving bands of starving people, the wretched of the earth as one of his favorite authors termed it. Sometime during the Clinton staff transition team presentation, he had an epiphany.
Giant Kelp: a Nutritional Bonanza
“We don’t stop global warming. We accelerate it. We may lose some cities but the people will simply move. Through the expansion of ocean mass, we will produce enough kelp to feed all the people on earth.” George W. Bush, 02.25.01
Bush quickly left the briefing and called his good friend, Warren Mitofsky, a respected quantitative public opinion pollster of some accomplishment and long time trusted Bush family friend. He asked that Mitofsky produce a population growth model through the next 50 years, which Mitofsky promised to finish promptly. He then called Don Rumsfeld and asked that the best quantitative modeling team available run density numbers on ocean mass required to produce sufficient kelp for Mitofsky’s population model.
The conclusion fit Bush’s conceptual model perfectly. To achieve sufficient kelp to feed the population explosion which would peak in 2050, Bush needed to institute environmental policies that would melt every drop of ice on both polar caps. The 20 foot rise in sea level plus the warming effect would generate a powerhouse of nutrient production. Harvesting would be simple; the food just washes up on shore or lingers off coast lines accessible to nearly anyone who can swim.
Faced with the possibility of starving hoards and infectious disease on a massive scale that would fell the healthy versus retaining a few obscure species and polar ice caps that produced nothing other tan obstruction for much needed fossil fuel, the choice was easy. Global warming became the official policy of the Bush administration, a policy deliberately designed to save the world’s population
Thus, George W. Bush became the first tragic hero of the environmental movement; willing to take the derision, contempt and mockery of the intelligentsia in order to serve mankind.