ReportFromTheFront's Blog

          When I was a young boy, I used to be able to ride the bus for the princely sum – at that time - of fifteen cents. In those years, a Coke cost a dime, a pack of gum was a nickel and penny candy was, well, a penny. If you bought an entire100 count box of hot cinnamon Fireballs (the unquestioned reigning favorite at my elementary school which became so popular, it was smuggled in like contraband and spawned a cottage industry whereby individual pieces were upcharged and sold by our 5th grade version of the Mafia for a nickel apiece), the store we bought them from threw in an extra twenty five pieces.

            I was standing at a bus stop one day waiting for the bus to take me home when a bigger boy who lived at the end of the block breezed by on a motorcycle, stopped and offered to give me a ride home thereby saving me my fifteen cents. I don’t think I opened my eyes or even remembered to take a breath until he deposited me in my own driveway. Scared though I was, I was hooked. As soon as I was able to drive, I asked my parents for a motorcycle. The answer, of course, was a resounding no. After marrying the first Mrs. ReportFromTheFront, I informed her that I wanted to ride. ‘Over my dead body’, she said; a thought which, shortly thereafter, began to have its own singular appeal.

            After jettisoning the first Mrs. RPTF, I eventually got a bike, taught myself to ride and joined the Montgomery County chapter of ABATE. I started to go to the weekly meetings and discovered to my surprise that the only substantive issue on their agenda – road trips aside - was a concerted endorsement of legislation for the repeal of the local helmet laws (In Maryland, all riders must wear a helmet Not so in Pennsylvania, Ohio and a smattering of other states). I couldn’t believe how vehement they were about it. Some of the members almost frothed at the mouth whenever the subject came up – which was usually the case every week. They even employed lobbyists and aimed them at the State House in Annapolis. These guys can’t be serious, I thought. Foolishly, I made the mistake of openly disagreeing with them at a meeting one evening. After all, I reasoned, in the event you go down, anything to protect you has got to be a good thing. Oh, not so, was the angry response. To prove their point, my (now) opponents on the matter produced mountains of data, expert analysis and numbers you wouldn’t believe to support their position showing, in fact, that helmets were nothing more than window dressing. Not only were they useless in a crash, helmets, they said, actually caused more injuries than they prevented.

            I ultimately left the group over this issue and their seemingly single-minded pursuit. Sure, they had all of the aforementioned stuff to back up their position, but to me, it only proved the old axiom that no matter the issue or how crazy your position, you can always dig up numbers to support you. Say what you want, anything to cushion the impact between a rider and an onrushing immovable object to my way of thinking has just got to be, as I said, a good thing.

            It’s just common sense.

            And so it is with detractors and nay-sayers with respect to the subject of global warming.  Through the ages, the earth has gone through several cooling and warming trends, the pendulum taking multiple eons to swing either way. What is happening now however, the recent phenomenon we call Global Warming, is something completely different and not the net result of the waxing and waning of Mother Nature. What is happening now is artificially driven by mankind and the waste products pumped into the atmosphere and waterways since the onset of the Industrial Revolution, and visibly occurring over the course of mere generations. In the most simple and basic of terms (and with apologies to comedian George Carlin), think of it as looking at a confessional line and actually being able to see it move.

            Ice shelves at both poles are receding at an alarming rate sometimes resulting in the ‘calving’ of icebergs as big as some states. So much ice is disappearing so quickly – resulting in a sharply diminished range for polar bears and snow foxes – that the existence of both species is in doubt. Ocean temperatures are rising ever so slightly (Imagine for a moment if you will, the enormous amount of therms required to change the temperature of so large a mass). This not only affects the long term longevity of a broad variety of plants and animals – both ocean and land based - but our weather is being affected as well with hotter and more oppressive summers followed by longer, colder and more brutal winters in many parts of the world. The occurrence of severe weather such as tornadoes and hurricanes are on the rise. Droughts are happening more often and affecting ever widening areas. The symptoms I’ve listed here are just the tip of the iceberg, to coin a phrase. More things are happening – or at least being detected – every day and are just too numerous to list here, but I think you get the idea.

            Despite all of the empirical evidence, no less a personage than the President of the United States and hard core Republican members of Congress have – at least until recently – mythologized global warming and reduced it to the status of a political football. It wasn’t until the President became concerned about his legacy, that he became a recent convert and begrudgingly acknowledged the possibility that his perhapsprevious position on global warming may have been a bit too hasty.

            Remember too, that this is the very same President who has steadfastly refused to call our treatment of enemy combatants captured in Iraq and Afghanistan as torture and will not - under any circumstances  - acknowledge that the United States is now in a recession.

            While it may be a pie-in-the-sky view to believe that all candidates running for elected office at any level only do so because they want to serve and truly have the best interests of the electorate at heart. In the real world however, it must be acknowledged that it is a basic characteristic of politics to blow with the wind a bit, to tell a particular audience that which they want to hear and to pander for votes. It is the nature of the beast and, unfortunately, unavoidable. If candidates – and ultimately office holders – would only take a firm stance on issues, speak their minds and vote their convictions, we wouldn’t have the political turmoil we experience every four years and the world we live in would be a better place.

            After all, it’s only common sense.