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Saturday, October 31, 2009

Scientists agree: "Death of newspapers good for the environment."

The Center for the Study of Physical and Intellectual Pollution has just released a study that proves that the much anticipated death of the newspaper industry will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 897,465,000 tons annually.


It seems that everything we read has an environmental angle. The NY Times, writing on the launching of the world’s largest cruise ship can’t stop itself from telling us that

“…such sailing behemoths are damaging to the environment.”

This article was reprinted for some reason in the Virginian Pilot, and got me thinking.

On Friday Rush Limbaugh commented on the Washington Post’s reporter Lisa de Moraes writing a column on a marketing program for an upcoming TV program which would include skywriting. She went to the trouble of getting someone to determine how much lead and CO2 would be released by the fuel used in the airplane engines and waxed indignant about it. Disney, the show’s produced cancelled. I wonder if Lisa de Moraes owns a car or uses public transportation because either way she is spewing tons of CO2 as well as distributing environmental hysteria from her computer (made by using heavy metals, plastics and toxic solvents) which is powered by pollution-generating power plants.

The editors of the Virginian Pilot, the cross we Virginians bear, oppose coal fired power plants (despite Virginia’s economy being heavily dependent on the production and shipment of coal), opposes the mining of uranium for nuclear power plants, opposes the installation of wind farms off the Virginia coasts, opposes exploration and production of oil and gas off Virginia’s coasts …. in fact I cannot offhand think of a single source of traditional energy that the Virginian Pilot supports. I’m fairly sure that were someone to propose the construction of a solar power plant somewhere in the area (improbably given Virginia’s weather), the Virginian Pilot would quickly discover that the environmental impact of such a facility would be destructive … and would oppose it.

I have been intrigued for years, ever since the environment, global warming … er … “climate change” … (cough: covers both warming and cooling, more and fewer storms, in fact any change at all) and Gaia became the primary religion for Liberals that one of the biggest sources of pollution, the daily newspaper is never mentioned. I’m not really puzzled. People in the newspaper industry are 99.44% pure Liberals so criticism of their brethren and the industry is verboten. (FOX is not one of their brethren).

Every day the newspapers generate thousands of tons of environmental waste. What is more frequently disposed than the daily newspaper? And what does it consist of? Newsprint made in paper plants that pollute our air and water and is made out of trees that produced healthy oxygen before being cut down in the prime of life; printer’s ink that is toxic and is made in factories that use our limited energy and destroy our precious resources. All this trash is made in printing plants that expose its workers to chromosome damage while using all of the energy sources that the Virginian Pilot despises. Finally, this compact bundle of pollution is delivered by people to our doors in trucks and cars using out limited supplies of oil and gas. And for what? The opinions of the “ink stained wretches” who have become as technologically obsolete as buggy whips? Information that by its very nature is guaranteed to be at least 12 to 24 hours old?

Meanwhile, the sort of people that these newspaper producers (aka: “destroyers of the planet”) consort with advocate killing your dog to save the planet. At the rate the newspaper industry of shrinking, it looks as if our environment will soon be free of one major source of pollution.

1 comment:

Jim Owen said...

Thank you - this analysis is long overdue.