Let’s Cancel Earth Day, Shall We? | NYU Local

Think back further. Al Gore, the guy with the PowerPoint on how we’re destroying the Earth, was able to put together a technically-successful presidential campaign in 2000. Four years later? The environment wasn’t even a top-three issue. Why? Oh, you know, September 11 and Iraq and the flu-shot thing and No Child Left Behind and a bunch of other issues that mattered more to people than the environment.

My point is that, save for the most extreme environmental activists—whose work is important in raising awareness on issues relating to pollution and ecological protection!—the environment as an issue just hasn’t stuck with people.

We're saved by the cork industry!

No trees are cut down to make the cork. Instead the spongy bark is stripped from the trees every nine years by skilled workers using handheld axes. The bark slowly grows back and the trees frequently live to well over 200 years. The Portuguese insist that stripping keeps the trees healthy.

The cork industry association APCOR says the regeneration of the bark makes the cork oak more effective in absorbing carbon dioxide, the gas blamed most for global warming. It estimates that the amount of CO2 absorbed as a result of each summer's harvest equals the annual greenhouse gas emissions of 185,000 cars.

Politicians take note: The public is EXTREMELY unlikely to swallow skyrocketing electricity prices as a result of climate fraud legislation

Regulators who responded to Deloitte's survey indicate that the public, for one, is willing to pay more for greener energy. The survey finds that more than half of the respondents (53.3%) believe the public would pay as much as 5% more in electricity rates to mitigate GHG emissions.

However, only 16.7% of regulators believed their consumers would accept a 10% increase in rates, compared to 29% of regulators who felt the same way last year - a phenomenon that likely reflects regulators' sensitivity to the economic difficulties facing their ratepayers.