Is George W Bush a complete moron ?

[clapstyx]

It does not seem to make sense to spend billions of dollars worth of various resources in order to get to a barren place like Mars when the finance is more urgently required here on Earth to balance the ratio of CO2 emission to sequestration. Is it just me or does this guy need his head read ?

The benefits to humanity will surely be much greater to spend the money on expanding the size of the global forest and so buying us some time to work out an equitable way to reign in the level of economic output (and the consequential emissions). Only once we have overcome the challenges on Earth that are critical to our perpetual survival should we even be thinking about locations elsewhere in the solar system. Clearly we dont have enough forests to stabilise the climate and rapidly absorb the CO2 that the American consumerist culture has generated and I would have thought it incumbent upon him as a leader (if not a world leader) to deal with these issues as a priority given his position of elevated responsibility.

[Boerseun]

Didn't you hear?

NASA found a few drops of oil on Mars! One of the latest photos taken by 'Opportunity' also shows a McDonald's under construction near a pretty big crater-rim.

[questor]

while Bush may not have his priorities in order, what will you do about China and India revving up their consumer engines? what will you do about the population explosion? these are the real problems, not Bush.

[C1ay]

Originally Posted by clapstyx

The benefits to humanity will surely be much greater to spend the money on expanding the size of the global forest and so buying us some time to work out an equitable way to reign in the level of economic output (and the consequential emissions).

Don't just spout 'what', spout 'how' as well. The U.S. itself is not a temperate forest region so expanding the global forest in the U.S. is not an efficient proposal. Even if the U.S. planted all of it's open space with plant life it does not have the optimal climate to support it. Countries that are temperate forest regions with better climates are busy harvesting more forest than they're renewing. Are you suggesting that we force these countries to reverese this process?

Countries like China and India are busy ramping up their industrial processes and their consumption of fossil fuels as well. They also don't have optimal regions for offsetting their consumption through forestation. Compounding the problem in all of these countries is their location on the globe. Each has regions far enough north to consume large quantities of heating fuel in the winter and regions far enough south to consume huge amounts of energy for air conditioning in the summer. With population growth and growing commercialism these consumption rates will soar far faster than any forest could be regrown to offset them.

At some point mankind's consumption will exceed that which the planet can supply or recover from. Should we wait until then with trying to learn how to branch out into space? That may be too late....

[questor]

space is not the answer. we must deal with the problem here on earth. forests can grow back, but mining of minerals and changing the earths topography can lead to permanent weather changes. it is man's nature not to
alter his exploitation of the earth until forced to do so by calamitous circumstances. the only chance we have is to control the earth's population, we may already have too many people on earth to sustain over the next 500 years. we are not in balance with the earth's ability to regenerate and there is no evidence that anyone is aware or cares.
this is not Geoge Bush's problem, it is everyones problem. if you want to be an activist, be active about something that makes sense.

[Pyrotex]

Originally Posted by questor

while Bush may not have his priorities in order, what will you do about China and India revving up their consumer engines? what will you do about the population explosion? these are the real problems, not Bush.

What will WE do?
Who speaks for WE? Who manifests our country's policy?
George W. Bush.
So, "what will you do about..." becomes "what will GWB do about..."

Is he a total moron? No. Of course not. GWB has a decent IQ (I have been told). He is only inept whenever he is trying to speak without a well-rehearsed script.

GWB's deficiencies are not about stupidity or even priorities. It is about ideology and insularity. As the philosopher in my sig once said, "the map is not the territory". The concept or explanation we have for the reality around us is not the reality itself, just an approximation.

Ideology is where you are so "in love" with your map, that you insist that it IS reality. That your map describes everything worth describing and nothing else matters. So you ignore the evidence that reality does not always fit your nice clean map with its straight lines and perfect boundaries.

Insularity is where you surround yourself with folks who "believe in" the same map, and never engage in a meaningful conversation with anyone outside your little circle of friends. You don't want to even hear about evidence that your map is anything but perfect. Besides which, if anything goes wrong, God will step in and take care of it, right????

That's the problem.

[Boerseun]

There are one of two options:

Either he is a complete dork,
or
he is not a complete dork.

The catch is that he's an elected dork (or not). Elected by popular vote, with universal suffrage.

Now, if he is an elected dork, what does that say about US society?

He is the picture seen when the United Stated holds a collective mirror up to its face.

[Tarantism]

Originally Posted by Boerseun

Now, if he is an elected dork, what does that say about US society?

were all dorks.

[Pyrotex]

Originally Posted by (((tartanism)))

were all dorks.

Speak for MYSELF, Tartan!!

I RESEMBLE that remark!!

[InfiniteNow]

Dubbya is certainly not a moron. Do I agree with each of his decisions? By no means. Do I think the issues he faces each day are easy? If I did, I'd be wrong.

Currently, human population growth seems analoguous to a virus sprending across the planet (our host). We are growing and eating and growing and using and growing and throwing away... Oil is but one (although large) part of the equation. We need a major societal shift in our thinking.

Where does change begin? With each of us. We have to educate ourselves and those around us to make better choices. We need new ideas and solutions, and we need to share them with everyone around us so the collective input will generate even better ideas and solutions. We need our reptilian brains to catch up to our mathematical abstractions in the evolution of our species and our society.

It will take more than one human at the top to make the change. However, if that one human were a true leader with a vision that made sense to all, whose belief was supported with evidence and facts and intelligence, then others would follow. However, let me ask you, why should I care if a gay couple gets married when we are destroying our home... a home we share with EVERY other life form that you have EVER heard of in ALL of history?

We are but a "Pale Blue Dot" <Carl Sagan> in "a moat of dust in one tiny corner of the universe..." but it's our dot, and it's all we have.