Friday, August 12, 2005

Faith Based Environmental Policy

From Needlenose. Surprisingly, this isn't a Shrub initiative, but the reality in Malaysia, where forest fires from neighboring Indonesia are literally choking the locals:

PORT KLANG, Malaysia/JAKARTA (Reuters) - Malaysians prayed for rain on Friday and a quick end to the country's worst pollution crisis in eight years as residents choked on acrid forest-fire smoke blowing in from neighboring Indonesia.

As the call to prayers echoed from mosques around the mainly Muslim country, the premier called for Muslims, Christians, Buddhists and Hindus to seek divine intervention to wash the skies of a week-long haze that has threatened public health.


Speaking of possible environmental damage--but more of a long term variety--here's a sobering article from the Guardian:

A vast expanse of western Sibera is undergoing an unprecedented thaw that could dramatically increase the rate of global warming, climate scientists warn today.
Researchers who have recently returned from the region found that an area of permafrost spanning a million square kilometres - the size of France and Germany combined - has started to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age.

The area, which covers the entire sub-Arctic region of western Siberia, is the world's largest frozen peat bog and scientists fear that as it thaws, it will release billions of tonnes of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere.


Great...a worst case scenario means the only thing you can do is pray that the ensuing catastrophe somehow is survivable. Of course, the mouth-breathers don't seem to mind, given their belief that eternal reward awaits them...too bad their grandkids are the one who will pay the price.

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