“And If Elected, I Promise…..”

How many times have we heard campaign rhetoric start with that phrase? As former New York Governor Mario Cuomo once said, “We campaign in poetry and govern in prose.”

How true, and in the case of energy, how sad: perhaps eventually tragic. And this is the reason that we have taken on the mission of insisting that our children understand the urgency of cleaning up our air and water not twenty years from now – but NOW!

But what are our elected officials actually doing?

The operative word is “politician” which is, after all what our elected officials are. And it seems that what politicians do best – and what gets them elected from time to time – is talk.

And talks seems to be all we can expect for the near future – say a year or two? That is because the talkers are busy working their way out of a financial crisis brought on mainly by – are you ready? – politicians not minding the economic and banking stores for the past ten years!

So when a newly elected president announces that his answer to air and water pollution is develop “clean coal” over the next twenty years, we cringe. For one thing he cannot still be president 20 years from now, or even 9 years. And so he will not have to answer the questions our children will raise about the junk that had to be buried from the coal after it was “cleaned.”

A number of US senate and congress candidates have made some very well-intentioned statements promising the elimination of importing fuel from the Mid-east. Of course they don’t complete the thought by telling what fuel will replace the Arab gold – but we know don’t we? – COAL! That great American product!

And on questioning some of them we are told that our Hydropower ideas are fine but there is no room for big dams anywhere in the country. Wonder where they got that idea? I’ll Tell You. The fossil fuel boys have staged a full scale program of misleading the people about hydropower and its “harmful” impact on the ecology. Can you think of any worse impact on the ecology than unbreathable air and undrinkable water?

Well, if the fossil fiasco is not cured in those famous “twenty years to Clean Obama Coal” there may just be nothing for our grandchildren’s grandchildren to look forward to- or more specifically – to survive in.

Get on your representatives!