It's only plant matter — or a planet matter

    Those who oppose the president's initiatives to reduce carbon emissions appear to fit into three camps.

   The first, exemplified by Sens. Marco Rubio and James Inhofe, choose not to believe what's said by the vast majority of those who know the most about climate.

   The second, embodied by Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, are those who say the climate may be changing, but the only reasonable response is to adjust to a new reality. You know: Wear lighter clothing. Drink more fluids.

   The third, embodied by noted biologist Michele Bachmann and the morning team of "Fox & Friends," are those who say that carbon dioxide is not pollution, so what's the problem?

   In fact, says the latter group, trees and shrubs need carbon dioxide. It's good for them. And even if the Earth is warming, warmer temperatures are good for plants, too. Right?

   How wrong could people be?

   To the Rubio-Inhofe group: The greenhouse effect is not a theory. It is as provable as a basic eighth-grade science assignment using plastic wrap. For something not wrapped in plastic, the uninhabitability of Venus shows one big spinning, boiling, and vaporous greenhouse effect.

   To the "just get used to it" group: Tell that to the inhabitants of India and Bangladesh whose life source is the Ganges River, whose own source is Himalayan glaciers. If the depletion of the latter continues at its present pace, the glaciers will be half gone by 2100, and the Ganges will be on life support.

   As for the "CO2 is good for you" group, would some basic biology actually matter? I think not. For the rest of us, however, it might:

  You bet, carbon dioxide facilitates plant growth; so does heat. But an excess of either ultimately saps photosynthesis of its magic.

   In Australia, studies at the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment show that increasing CO2 causes plants to adapt (just as the Exxon CEO says we should), but not in good ways. Leaves get bigger. Evaporation accelerates. The ability to store carbohydrates drops.

   In the short term, more CO2 accelerates plant growth. In the long term, it means less-healthy foliage, and ultimately less foliage, period.

    What about heat? Don't plants crave it?

    Yes, they do, but when things don't cool down sufficiently after dark, plants don't get a good night's sleep. They sap themselves of the energy needed for growth. The International Rice Institute blames increased temperatures in Asia for a steady decline in yields of the so-called "miracle rice," variety IR8, credited with averting an Asian famine in the 1960s.

    No, excessive carbon dioxide is not a neutral presence in our atmosphere, though it is invisible, odorless, and fits into the life cycle just like sunlight and oxygen.

   Of course, we shouldn't have to dip into plant biology to understand that reducing carbon pollution is good for all living things. For when we do it, we reduce other forms of pollution –  ozone, hydrocarbons, mercury, sulfur dioxide, and everything else that comes with our addiction to fossil fuels -- including selective wars.

   What the barkers of the status quo do is exactly what Big Tobacco did for so many years to challenge concerns about second-hand smoke. It argued "no evidence" relating it to cancer. In fact, it hardly mattered what illness we were actually talking about – asthma, emphysema, heart disease – it was all bad.

   Those who resist efforts to shift to clean energy alternatives, who believe that "drill here, drill now" is the answer, don't really want to address long-range reality.

    What we are doing to our planet is wrong in myriad ways. Is man responsible for climate change? Ultimately that matters less than this: Man is responsible for Earth. That is what matters.

     Longtime Texas newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

Your four-door hamster wheel

   The grave tone of the TV reporter conveyed end-of-the-world stuff. Brace yourselves, Americans. Events in Iraq likely would cause a jump in gasoline prices.

   To which a grave listener would reply: "This is news?"

   Whether it's instability overseas or America's accelerator-foot summer itch, something always is causing gasoline prices to jump.

    Whatever the cause at the moment, hustle that racquetball-court-on-wheels to the nearest pump and plunk down the requisite $150 to fill it. And then find someone to blame for why gasoline prices are so high.

   It's always interesting to hear people who seem so savvy about market forces turn oblivious about the market forces that pertain to petroleum.

    They understand the law of supply and demand -- until it comes to their insatiable demands for strained and volatile oil supplies.

   Sure, times are tough, Bunky. But a lot that is tough is self-inflicted.

    We're motoring through an age in which one would assume gasoline was water-fountain cheap and that operating an automobile was as carefree as dangling one's feet in a pond.

   Complain (and we will) about taxes, but nothing taxes our existence like the cars we drive.

   Occasionally when intersecting with high-end residential developments, I ponder the prices of the homes, and wonder, "Is there that much money in the whole world?"

   The same applies to the vehicles in those driveways. And let's face it, cars with staggering price tags are not exclusive to the exclusive.

   Consider the 2014 Ford Expedition. Not considered a luxury car, it's very much a staple of the American road. The low-end version costs $41,975.

   Consider the 2014 Dodge Ram 1500 Big Horn. Without add-ons, it costs $30,240.

    Let's assume, as one must, that whatever household has either of these vehicles has another vehicle, or two or three.

   Any car owner knows that the expenses associated with each far exceeds sticker shock and the blur of dollar signs at the pump. How much? Most of us are afraid to tally it, but the AAA isn't.

    AAA estimates that operating a large sedan for around-town driving (10,000 miles a year) costs almost a dollar a mile – 97.5 cents, factoring in fuel, tires, maintenance, insurance, financing and registration.

  What this means is that whatever costs Americans might face, whatever financial goals they may have, their vehicles are the principal reason why they seem to go nowhere. It's not interest on credit cards or mortgages, not taxes on income or property.

    The good news is that we do have alternatives, or most of us do. A while back when I realized that in driving to work I spent as much time pressing the brake as the accelerator, I started taking a bus. It has become an infatuation.

    One transportation alternative that gets too little love from policymakers is sidewalks, one of the best investments a community can make. Unfortunately, though cities will not blink at building and rebuilding streets, they'll find any reason whatsoever not to build walkways.

    Where I live, Fort Collins, Colo., the bicycle has become the focal point of a renaissance – a vast network of trails, a city "bike library" that avails wheels to all comers. Bicycling has sparked the kind of enthusiasm that even snowfall can't dampen.

     Amid all of the forces that cause us to become more and more addicted to oil and asphalt, here is some good news: The U.S. Department of Transportation reports that the number of young Americans (ages 20-24) with drivers licenses is at its lowest point in 50 years: 79.7 percent.

   But isn't car ownership a 21st century necessity? Maybe. Either these young Americans don't want to get ahead, or they don't want the cost of driving a car to put them even farther behind.

    Longtime Texas newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

Comparing two insurgencies

   They have set their sights on the capital. And by now, who would doubt their designs?

   Key districts are in their clutches. Their latest stunning victory causes jaws to drop. But why the surprise? God is on their side. Infidels, prepare to fall.

    Believe what they say as they pull down the statue of Eric Cantor.

   If readers thought the above description had something to do with the insurgency inflaming Iraq, that's understandable, because of the loose parallels between the two insurgencies.

    What the tea party offers for the United States sounds very much like what the ISIS, the force making tracks to Baghdad, seeks to do over there. Divide. Fracture. Cripple. That is if it can't rule.

    A harsh assessment? Please. What else could be the tea party's vow but this: Be sand in the gears of a nation that dares to become inclusive, compassionate, and – yes, unified amid all its differences.

    When the United States invaded Iraq, some analysts warned that it could result in not one but three countries, with the Kurds splitting away, and with Sunnis and Shiites parting ways, each in separate protectorates. Most assuredly, if the ISIS can't accomplish conquest of a unified Iraq, it gladly will take the alternative – an Iraq in pieces.

    On these shores, when Barack Obama became president, the barkers of fragmentation and division, even outright secession, found their voices.

    While actual secession was so much talk, the "let's split" dynamic assumed actual form when some states went to the Supreme Court to evade Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. Suddenly the law of the land became the law only of some of it, or some of us.

   Now we have the tea party aspiring and conspiring to take the "in" out of "one nation indivisible." Let's face it. Division is the only way it can ever hold whatever power it holds now.

    It is a minority of a minority in Congress -- the Associated Press estimates that it holds one-third of the House's seats -- but looks to hold hostage any and all action anyway.

   Don't accuse the tea party of being a one-trick pony. However, by taking down Cantor for fraternizing with the other side, it has found a special purpose. It has established itself as the NRA of immigration reform – ever vigilant to block even the most reasoned compromise.

   True, the tea party doesn't troll dusty highways with assault weapons like the ISIS, or, say, Cliven Bundy's buddies, but for this group of patriotic Americans, the hard line can never be harder. Moderation isn't just a vice, it's the ultimate sin. For them, conciliation is (presumably like homosexuality) a communicable disease.

   The tea party seeks to conquer, but politically it has a demographic problem. Ethnically it is far more similar to a gathering of lutefisk fanciers than of the richly diverse nation it portends to lead. Of course, the same could be said for most GOP precinct meetings.

   Thinking of the ethnically identified insurgents 6,000 miles away from Washington, there on the hot sands of Iraq: They may have occupied towns and villages, and staked a claim in Sunni-dominated parts of the country, but they cannot take the country. Mostly that's because they are a splinter group – well-armed, but not even close to being representative of the nation they seek to rule.

   The same applies to the tea party. It may rule in regions where more diverse populations lie in hibernation or intimidation, but it can never aspire to represent a nation made up the way this one is. Leaders of the Republican Party, the ones who actually aspire to national leadership, understand this. They can count.

    Longtime Texas newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.