By Joshua Daniel Hershfield 10/25/06
Two people were arrested Monday October 23rd for
protesting outside the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
building in Silver Springs,
Maryland. The agency, which studies climate, weather,
and the oceans, is being criticized for suppressing information on global
climate change. The two demonstrators
who were arrested, Ted Glick, 56, and Paul Burman, 23, unfurled a banner that read “Bush:
Let NOAA Tell the Truth.”
Other protesters blocked the entrance to the NOAA. The group of demonstrators, members of
Chesapeake Climate Action Network and US Climate Emergency Council, demanded an
immediate change in US
policy toward fossil fuels.
The 2006 Living Planet Report, which extensively addresses
issues of concern for the sustainability and continuance of human habitation on
planet earth, reported that the use of fossil fuels, whose heat-trapping
emissions are largely to blame for pushing up world temperatures, is the
fastest growing cause of strain on the planet.
Global warming has been implicated in the growing amount of
floods, hurricanes, heat waves, wild fires, melting ice sheets, sea-level rise,
habitat loss and species endangerment and extinction, and the spread of disease
within human populations. Recently NOAA
scientists have reported that global warming is contributing to the devastating
loss of coral reefs by heating up the toxic soup of industrial pollutants that
is floating in our oceans.
The Bush administration has failed repeatedly to act on this
most vital issue. They have consistently
repressed information and inhibited progressive action on the issue of global
climate change, while maintaining a front of concern. The State Department, in the Global Issues
section of its website, has recently “retired” climate change as a
global issue.