Fossil fuel use is killing us
Regarding the proposed expansion of the Dakota Access pipeline: We have been warned, repeatedly, the last few years that we are way off course to fix the chaos that is to come from burning fossil fuels. And the newest reports on climate science indicate that we have been underestimating even what that will mean.
Pipeline leaks are one risk. The successful use of oil as intended is another.
We are heading toward the wall going 90 mph. Instead of slowing or turning away, we are accelerating toward our own destruction. And the Dec. 29 Tribune story (“More oil, more risk?”) presented the oil company version of this situation as if it was a good thing. After all, we’ve been enjoying the ride so far.
The World Meteorological Institute states that climate impacts are hitting harder and sooner than indicated a decade ago, and we now face an increased risk of crossing critical tipping points. And still, our annual emissions of greenhouse gases are increasing.
And there was only a brief mention of the perilous situation we are in being decided by just a few appointed officials — officials whose only concern is to continue business as usual. “Businessas-Usual” is the title of an Inter
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We were married on Dec. 28, 1958, and after a one-week honeymoon at Starved Rock State Park, we were driving to our home in Chicago when we got a flat tire. It was late in the day, darkness approaching and temperatures below freezing. To make matters worse, the car’s heater was malfunctioning, so we only got heat when the car was moving.
I had all the tools to change the tire, but the bolts, probably frozen, couldn’t be budged. I raised the hood to signal our distress and wondered how long it would take us to freeze to death. In those days there were no cellphones, so we had no way to summon help.
Fortunately, a farmer pulled his pickup truck behind our car on the shoulder and offered his help. In no time he had the flat tire off and the spare on. He would accept no money and drove off.
Today, my wife is 90, and I am close. We’re thankful we are still alive. and he worries that more money will come out of his pocket. He is missing the point that many of the services he thinks people should just pay for themselves are preventive or proactive in nature. Opinions like his are shortsighted and, if followed, will more often than not lead to higher expenses in the long term, as afflictions get worse and more expensive to treat.
Howard concludes with the stale trope of “let people choose the coverage they are willing to pay for” to argue for keeping government out of heath care. His is a typical “let the free market work” argument, but it’s false because medicine and the medical insurance industry are nowhere near a free market. For a market to be truly free, the suppliers and consumers should be on roughly equal footing. That is not the case now and never will be. The complexity of the science of medicine and its technology, along with the arcane, complex rules of the insurance industry, will never allow consumers to be able to make well-informed decisions. The suppliers always have the upper hand, and society suffers.
Economics and medicine need to be divorced as much as possible, and health care needs to be treated as a human right.