According to Senator Obama, there aren’t many problems with modern America that farmers don’t at least partially make worse. Barack Obama spoke with Joe Klein of Time Magazine and pronounced a stinging indictment against the agricultural sector.
I was just reading an article in the New York Times by Michael Pollen about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it's creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they're contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs. That's just one sector of the economy. You think about the same thing is true on transportation. The same thing is true on how we construct our buildings. The same is true across the board.
There are many Amish agricultural settlements, in the swing states of Pennsylvania and Ohio, who would question the entire agricultural system being built on cheap oil. These individuals operate the most productive bushel/acre farms in America. An Amish farmer opined in the past that “the tractor don’t make no manure.”
The extent to which agriculture may contribute to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions has more to do with the south end of a northern facing pig than the tailpipe of a diesel tractor. Perhaps Senator Obama has turned his nose up at the bitter folk to the point that it has distorted his sense smell. The typical head of livestock produces about the same amount of CO2 in a year, as Senator Biden does in 30 minutes atop the stump. It’s the CH4 that serious atmospheric chemists worry about; with respect to agricultural contributions to anthropogenic GHG pollution.
Then, there’s that whole line of argument that farmers and agribusiness executives cause Americans to suffer from Type II Diabetes. Has Archer Daniels Midland shot me with the dreaded Pasta-Munching Mind Ray of Doom? People choose what they eat. People are responsible for their own diets and levels of physical activities.
I didn’t particularly enjoy getting up at 4:45 AM this morning, and trotting around the neighborhood as a living advertisement for why Middle-Aged White Men would serve their nation better, by not wearing spandex. However, I am at least taking responsibility for my own physical well-being, and not blaming Dominoes Pizza for making their crusts too thick.
This total refusal, on Senator Obama’s part, to tell people they are responsible for their own existential conditions is shameful pandering. It’s even worse if Senator Obama is actually stupid enough to believe agricultural and food services companies cause Americans to suffer from Type II Diabetes. I’ve never seen a McDonalds yet that didn’t have poorly-prepared salads, right next to the poorly-prepared hamburgers, on the lunch menu.
Senator Obama looks slightly less jaundiced against the coal industry. It seems our mining firms are at least decent enough to cease and desist from causing the common American to suffer from Type II Diabetes. He may also have good enough judgment to recognize that the Da Vinci Code Movie was based upon a literary work of fiction. However, he still feels compelled to inveigh against the evil coal industry.
"I was the first to call for a 100 percent auction on the cap and trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases emitted would be charged to the polluter," Obama continued. "That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants that are being built, that they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted down caps that are being placed, imposed every year.”
"So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted."
Cap and Trade is a risible idea, based upon questionable and inadequate science, which has been twice rejected by the US Senate. This is even worse. Senator Obama seems to favor Cap and Exterminate. Shutting down the industry would definitely take coal off the table as an ideological issue.
"The only thing I've said with respect to coal, I haven't been some coal booster," Obama said in the San Francisco Chronicle interview. "What I have said is that for us to take coal off the table as an ideological matter as opposed to saying if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it."
The fact that these two industries operate heavily, in areas far afield from Senator Obama’s political support base, has far more to do with his opposition to these industries than any genuine belief that they harm the environment or fatten the children. The Greenhouse emissions issue is a proxy. Senator Obama targets the industrial and economic well being of the parts of America he has no respect for.
This has far more to do with bringing about Senator Obama’s vision of social change, through economic rearrangement, than any other legitimate concern. A vote for McCain/Palin becomes a necessity to defend and preserve these traditional avenues of economic endeavor and American culture.
Recent comments