SOUTH DAKOTA STRAIGHT TALK

Our social and political culture is Green.

Today everyone is environmentally friendly. Global Warming is almost universally accepted. Public Opinion even believes warming is based on science (which is still a matter of scientific debate).

The convergence of events including Katrina, a few warm years, drought (that is cyclical and not really new), high-energy prices, the War in the Middle East, the Al Gore Inconvenient Truth PR effort (geez an Academy Award that’s scientific validation) among other anecdotal evidence have convinced the public that Global Warming must be real. After all in the Public Culture today we all believe it is real.

Our politicians today don’t disagree. John Thune is promoting Wind Energy development, sponsoring legislation on bio fuel marketing, and (with Stephanie HS) is a leading advocate in Congress for Ethanol. Herseth Sandlin is on the Global Warming Special Committee in the U S House.

Today our largest energy dependent industries do not even dispute Global Warming. While they may not privately accept the science, on the commercial level our domestic Automakers are talking and implementing bio fuels and hybrid vehicles. Our utility companies while still using massive quantities of coal no longer argue about the science – they know what people are thinking and just want to avoid any argument.

Today Americans widely embrace the idea of Conservation (something we should be doing anyway). We talk a good game as we vacillate between energy efficient automobiles, SUVs and whether we should use and subsidize mass transit. Interestingly Nuclear energy, a very green solution still cannot gather enough public support to become accepted.

Today gas is $2.75 and there is hardly a whimper much less a public outcry. While still theoretic, American’s believe that if we could leave Iraq even $4 gas prices would be acceptable. Of course if gas would actually become 4 bucks opinion might change.

As we think about our environment on this Earth Day we should focus on Conservation and Energy Independence but our opinions should not be based on opinions or alleged Truths, Inconvenient or otherwise espoused even by the great scientist that claimed to invent the Internet.