I don’t normally watch NBC’s Meet the Press. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the program, but my viewership goes back to my childhood. On Sunday mornings, the show simply got beat out by cartoons. As an adult, I don’t normally watch cartoons—until this morning.
I became familiar with Bill Nye, when my husband, Blake Webster, interviewed him for his book, “Environmentalists in Action: Profile of Green Pioneers”. This morning, he debated Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who is vice-chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Now, we all agree that lately the weather is Beyond Cuckoo and that there is a general consensus among the scientific community, that carbon emissions play a role in global climate change. Well, Ms. Blackburn is Beyond Skeptical. To quote, “you don’t make good laws, sustainable laws, when you’re making them on hypotheses, or theories, or unproven sciences.”
Mr. Nye offered up some common sense. He pointed out that what Ms. Blackburn called a “very slight” change in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, is in fact significant at a 25% increase since 1994. With little air time, the numbers and names tossed about, to be honest, meant little to me. What hit home was Ms. Blackburn’s repetition of the phrase “Cost/Benefits analysis”, which sounded to me like, it’s simply too expensive to look into environmentally clean technology.
Bill Nye made me glad to be American as he pushed back with a more patriotic view. “As a guy who grew up in the US,” he said, “I want the US to lead the world in this….The more we mess around with this denial, the less we’re going to get done.”
You can find Blake Webster’s interview with Bill Nye on Amazon.com:
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2014
About the Author:
Elaine Webster writes fiction, creative non-fiction, essays and poetry from her studio in Las Cruces, New Mexico—in the heart of the Land of Enchantment. “It’s easy to be creative surrounded by the beauty of Southern New Mexico. We have the best of everything—food, art, culture, music and sense of community.”