I’m blue today, thinking too much, I guess. What about? Well, mostly about how little anybody’s opinion counts. It all started when I read an article in a recent Rolling Stone magazine titled “As the World Burns - How big oil and big coal mounted one of the most aggressive lobbying campaigns in history to block progress on global warming.” I don’t see how any thinking person can deny there is global warming and like the article says big energy companies know they’ll lose in the long run, but they are out to make as much in the short term as they can.
I’m not sure the number of coal trains that pass through Mandan-Bismarck each day headed east, but it must be at least one an hour. They are long trains, 115-20 cars each. Multiplied that makes about 2760 cars per day, loaded to heaping. I won’t venture a guess as to dollar value but the imagination places it in the clouds someplace. Dollars accumulate causing lobbyists to buzz around like flies on a cowpie. I don’t even need to mention the monetary strength of petroleum companies; we’ve all been victims of their price schemes and maneuverings.
Of course, there is more scheming in other industries: health care, pharmaceuticals, military industries, et al. And now we have a N. D. senator saying he wants to retire, which translated I think means he wants a piece of the lobbying pie, too. I’m sure his mouth is watering. And here comes the governor of N. D. saying he wants the senator’s job, and he intends to make things right in Washington. Ha, he without any seniority whatever! What would it take, two terms before he even gets noticed.
So that’s why I’m blue. This modest blogsite isn’t going to print a multitude of examples to prove the point, but our individual insignifance is glaring. My Nation magazine came today and I’ll quote from it: “The EPA ushered in the new year with a dark reminder of the coal industry’s sway over the Obama administration. On January 4 the agency approved the Hobet 45 mine expansion in West Virginia, the largest mountaintop-removal operation in Appalachia. The decision was announced only days before a group of environmental scientists released a long-awaited peer-reviewed study in the journal Science denouncing mountaintop-removal mining and calling for a moratorium on new permits.” I guess it doesn’t matter who thinks they hold the power in Washington. We know where it really lies.
