Newspapers / North Carolina Wesleyan University … / Oct. 2, 1992, edition 1 / Page 5
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OCTOBER 2,1992 — THE DECREE — PAGE 5 Moderate’ Gore inhabits environmental fantasy land By KENNETH LEONARD To see Senator Albert S. Gore, •. (D-Tenn.) trying to portray imself as a “raging moderate” is lot like watching Pat Buchanan xying to make himself look the same. Gore is an environmental kook as extremist as any other. The best somce of informa tion about just how crazy this man is happens to be Earth In The Balance by Senator A1 Gore. In this book, he speaks of the spiri tual forces of rivers and animals which are disrupted by damming and the use of animals for hides and meat. He laments that Chris tianity wiped out most of the god dess worship fitom the world be cause the goddess-worshipping Druids were far more “earth- friendly.” (In between human sac rifices, I guess, they went and cleaned up dirty rivers.) When most of us read Genesis 4:10, we read God talking to Cain ifter he has murdered his brother Abel. “What have you done? Lis ten! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.” To nost of us, it seems that God is furious at the murder. Nope. Sena tor A1 says this was “pollution.” Although he says the waste of human life (not counting feticide, I guess) is the worst kind of pol lution, to equate murder with toss- ng a styrofoam cup in the Tar River is a bit more than most ra tional human beings are willing to accept A1 Gore claims that this book 's spiritual in nature (no pun in- nded) and if so we have a New ge leftover (emphasis on “left”) who worships a small pantheon of nature spirits. Do you remember the “ozone hole” that allegedly appeared over North America? A1 Gore would just as soon you forget it, I imag ine. The scare was based on a flawed, inconclusive report from NASA based on a single flight from a single CFC-monitoring plane. Since CFC levels vary wildly from day to day, it was foolish to base any conclusion on the data. Yet A1 Gore offered stacks of new legislaticm instantly. When the data came back point ing out that there was no such fear, A1 Gore dropped the subject like a hot potato. If, as A1 Gore contends, the earth is heating up, why aren’t the earth’s temperatures going up? Looking in past news magazines, we can see the same prophets of doom-and-gloom global warming preaching global cooling caused by industrial emissions just a couple of decades ago. Although Gore claims that there is consen sus in the scientific community about global warming, even Greenpeace — never accused of moderation on the environment — found that only 13 percent of scientists involved in global cli mate studies agreed with the theory, 47 percent rejected it, and a few considered it probable or possible. Gore, howevCT, repeats a 98 pCTcent figure that appar Flik piks... If you have any suggestions of what movies you would like to see shown on campus, please call 5224 (SGA Hotline) and leave us a message. ently comes from the Lady of the Lake. Exactly how, pray tell. Mister Senator, did the Ice Age end? Glo bal warming, perhaps? Any environmental extremist trying to pose as a moderate should have written less than Sen. Gore. In a newspaper article. Gore wrote, ‘The environment indicts our civilization.” There you have it, he hates Western civilization! In the article he endorses envi ronmentalists Frederico Zaragoza and Rep. Claudine Schneider of Rhode Island. Zaragoza, incidentally, wants to form a military force through the United Nations to act as the Peacekeeping Forces, only this time to protect the environment. Rq). Schneider wants to cut off all aid to nations other than those developing through “least-cost energy,” specifically “... pack ani mals and similar affordable, non motorized vehicles.” Even for people who have to fall back on the “we have to do this just in case, we don’t have time to wait for research” argu ment, these steps are a bit much, I think. On any other issue, we would have to prove that a threat was possible and real, and that we had to solve it. To an environ mentalist, a theory is enough to sell over the entire nation. So let’s throw in a few facts to mull over. In the laboratory, CFCs did not destroy ozone. Over Ant arctica, ozone thins in a regular cycle because it is created by so lar energy, and the sun is below the horizon for six months of the year. Computer models which predict global warming ignore many factors, including oceans. So far, the only environmental scares that have been proven con- clusively have been proven wrong. Since A1 Gore claims that environmentalism is a spiritual issue, let’s probe him on it. I think we’d all be surprised. Growing I fell off the main stem Now I’m searching for the light Pushing through the shadows To find a spot just right. I’m a tiny sprout Li a forest rather tall With older trees around me Casting darkness on us all. I may not be as tall My trunk might not be straight But my roots are growing deeper And finding Hght is fate. — Stewart A. Crank, Jr. Dickens made readers take notice of world (Continued from Page 4) wrote every day. Sheer hard woik — both in reading and writing and in actively pursuing life—is also necessary for the kind of bodes Dickens left us. Ackroyd writes, “His genius lay in the imaginative sympathy so strong that the world oveqx>w- ers him; in a linguistic mastery so great that in turn he can recreate both himself and the world.” Studying Dickens’ works and his biogr^hy suggest that art is al ways in some way autobio graphic, but not in the gross sense. Dickens did walk the streets which he describes in his books, and he suffered the pangs of hun ger and poverty. But more im portantly, even in his early sketches, he gave form to a world which was experienced by his contemporaries but not realized by them. His realization of it is what we continue to celebrate. Ackroyd quotes from an 1833 trial transcript, and we immedi ately hear that Dickens’ use of the vernacular in his novels rings true: “I’se quite hinnocent, your vorship. I was a valking along, and I see these here trouser a hanging, vich I vishes I’d a never seed at all.” Dickens made his readm no tice all the pieces of their wcvld which they usually took for granted. He showed than what they were always looking at. Library no place for athletes^ noise (Continaed from 4) tod harsh a word) to my first amendment rights as a joumali^ Resuling an article to be assured of its correctness, no matter how sweet it sounds, is pre-censorsh^. I am not intending to ango' this person. I am just expressing my disa^pointmenL The article was to q)pear in this year’s firet p^r. I could not bring myself to write it and am just now exi»ess- ing why. I ^plaud Dr. Bennett for as suring that no adniinistrator or member of the faculty interferes with the Decree and the freedom of the press. A gentle reminder that at Wesleyan the students are supposed to come first Joanna C. Holladay Bound & Gagged By Dana Summers \
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Oct. 2, 1992, edition 1
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