Season 2 Premier - China leads the world in green energy...wwwhhhaaat??

In this episode:

-Lessons learned from BP Oil Spill?
-Who do we turn to for clean renewable energy?
-The implications of midterm elections.

Transcript of this week's episode of The Web-DVM:

Welcome ladies and gentlemen, to the first show of The Web-DVM’s second season. Again, I thank you all so much for your support, with 36,000 viewers having watched our season 1 finale. Since we last broadcast, a few things have happened. BP managed to cap the well stemming the flow of oil, and now seems to have successfully reinforced the tenuous cap with a static kill procedure, soon to be even further reinforced by a bottom kill procedure. Clean-up and recovery still continues on a massive scale, with many months ahead to make real tangible progress in removing the oil, while likely it will be many years for the environment to fully rebound. Still, we have to be cautiously optimistic at least the leak was plugged and that perhaps this event will be a lesson learned that we must embark in a major way, to get off oil once and for all, and pursue clean, renewable energy sources. I certainly hope that the urgency will hit home far more swiftly and urgently than it did following the Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound. To be fair, the Valdez happened at a different time, 1989, when certain revelations had yet to transpire. It also did not help that the Valdez occurred with our country under republican leadership that has proven, especially with this latest spill, that they will stop at nothing to protect the oil companies, let them proceed with the least possible regulation, and keep our nation addicted to oil for as long as they can.

Since 1989, our own safe drilling oil reserves have become depleted, making us dependent upon protecting our oil interest in countries that hate us in the Middle East, while making it increasingly necessary to drill in harsh, dangerous, and inhospitable places, such as 1 mile beneath the ocean surface. The consequences of these realities helped lead to 9/11, the Afghanistan War, the Iraq War, and many oil disasters, four in just the past 5 months. That’s right folks, since the BP oil disaster taking up all the news time, there were other major oil spills in Utah in a tributary of the Great Salt Lake, in Michigan in a tributary of the Kalamazoo River which flows into Lake Michigan, and a major spill off China’s port of Dalian.

Ladies and gentlemen, religious fanaticism, tyranny, with their inhumane consequences exist all over the world, yet we do not wage war wherever they exist. We turn a blind eye to inhumanity and tyranny in countries like Darfur, Ruanda, and Zimbabwe, while we feel compelled that we absolutely must bring democracy to the Middle East. Make no mistake, the reason we get immersed in the non-sense that occurs in the Middle East, put our young men and woman in harms way, and attract terrorism on our homeland, is not out of some moral purpose, it is because the Middle East has what we need and crave above all else, large oil reserves. Believe me when I tell you, ladies and gentlemen, if the Middle East had no oil, we would be perfectly content to sit on the sidelines as the countries of that region blew one another to smithereens, as they have done for thousands of years long before oil was ever discovered there.

Since 1989, clean energy technology has progressed by leaps and bounds, well maybe not here, but in most other developed regions of the world. As we speak, having strong government insight, incentive and pressure to move their nations into the new realm of clean and renewable energy, India and China have been well on their way to using green energy technology as a means to not only provide clean energy for the growing energy needs of their populations, but to drive their economies by creating jobs as they lead the world in green energy technology. This paradigm shift began during the 8 years that GW Bush and company did everything in their power to make certain we did NOT partake in that wave, striving instead to deregulate and enable oil companies to keep us pitifully dependent on, and addicted to, their filthy product.

Current republican leadership wants more of that same Bush administration’s drive to keep us in the past, slaves to dirty energy sources that destroy our environment, heat up the planet, and threaten our national security. But from a current party leadership that has tried to block desperately needed financial stimulus and state aid, health care reform, and Wall Street reform, even criticized the President’s huge accomplishment of making BP set aside $20 billion in escrow to expedite Gulf business oil spill claims calling it a “slush fund,” should we really expect any different?

Regarding our President and present democratic majority, while they should be commended for the huge steps in which they have taken our country forward with the passage of financial stimulus, health care reform, Wall Street reform, and being the people’s champion against oil giant BP, they currently lack the political courage with mid-term elections on the horizon, to pass sweeping energy legislation in the face of a country who still has yet to get the message about oil despite all that has happened in the past 5 months: oil is killing us in every way it possibly can. We must embrace green, renewable energy, or get left behind by a world that is!
There is one company in Fremont California that is creating jobs and making a killing on the sale of machines that build solar panels for use in harnessing the sun’s energy for powering buildings and for use in solar energy farms, called Owens Designs. They have clearly jumped onto a green energy future despite the fact that their country and its leaders, have not. They were recently showcased on the Discovery channel where a spokesman said that the majority of business they do is with China, not their home country, a prime example of why China is the world’s leader in moving an entire country to a green, renewable energy future.

You see, with a growing middle class and a massive increase in building infrastructure to sustain them, as well having recently had their own oil disaster to deal with at the port city of Dalian, China understands very well that oil is too dangerous, polluting, and a threat to their own national security to rely on it for their growing energy needs. As a result, the Chinese government has made it their primary mission to attain clean energy independence, making unprecedented investment in wind, solar, geothermal, and energy conservation technology.

I never thought the day would come that China would be more proactive and innovative than the great United States of America. But here we are, the proof is in the pudding, with China and even India already light years ahead of us on clean, renewable energy, and I am disgusted by it. Having been taken hostage by past leadership that made it their mission to maintain business as usual and sell our countries soul to big oil, and with a population that has become increasingly selfish, lazy, and unimpassioned, we are reaping what we have sewn, existing as a nation of oil consuming, polluting, global warming denying gluttons that feel safer to look backward, rather than passionately look forward. It was not this kind of existence that nurtured the greatest innovation and invention in the world as a leader in the industrial revolution, transformed a backward pre-WWII joke of a military to the greatest fighting force in the world in less than 2 years after the Pearl Harbor attack, and landed men on the Moon.

Well I for one am not a US citizen that is happy with the status quo, and demand that we get off of our asses to lead the way on green energy for ourselves and as leaders in the world. I will be being by imploring my fellow citizens to vote this upcoming election, and select candidates that want to pave the way forward, not pull us into the past. I call on all of you to reject the policies of 8 years of GW Bush, an administration that let us get lapped by the rest of the developed world as they pandered to big oil, among a multitude of other policies that drove our country to the brink of destruction. All the current republican leadership has to offer is a return to those failed policies: deregulation of oil, financial institutions and other big business, unpaid for tax cuts for the richest 2% of Americans, repeal of health care and financial reform, and for the Tea Party nut bags, even a repeal of Medicare and Social Security.

Don’t be fooled by Fox News and the party they promote, that just because times are still tough, that we need to put out of touch, jackasses like that back in power. Know that our President inherited a disaster of economic conditions and a culture of political cronyism that a Congress under his leadership has admirably taken action against time and again. When President Obama took office, our economy was shrinking at a record pace, hundreds of thousands of jobs were being lost per month, and the value of real estate was hemorrhaging. Under his leadership, the economy was pulled back from the brink while passing sweeping and historic legislation that moved our country forward. Jobs have been consistently increasing over the past year, and the economy is growing again. Things may not be great, but they would have been a heck of a lot worse, had the party of no been in charge. The stimulus bill that republicans overwhelmingly and vigorously opposed saved 40,000 jobs just in my home state of Florida in 2010 to date alone; indispensable jobs such as police, firefighters, and teachers. Not only are these vital jobs saved, but their income gets spent in my clinic and other small businesses, helping to keep my staff employed and with health benefits, so that they in turn may go out and pump their money into the economy. You see how this works folks? It is not rocket science how government stimulus is both necessary and effective during difficult economic times. Somehow, republicans do not see this, they just think they can tax cut their way out of the mess the GW Bush left, a policy already tried and failed by GW Bush!
When you go to the polls this November, do not forget the abysmal disaster that was republican leadership under 8 years of GW Bush, for the republicans’ current leaders offer nothing more than a return to those policies. Remember that it was our democratic President that held BP accountable, while republicans defended and even apologized to them. Remember who drove us into economic disaster, and who is tirelessly digging us out!

Now, despite having veered into the political a bit in my inaugural episode of season 2, it is my intention after having said my piece, to be a bit less political this season, since the BP oil spill kind of dragged me in that direction in the last several episodes of season 1. However, since the environment, wildlife, and our natural treasures are well within the scope of this animal based program, I plan to do my part to impassion our citizens, by dedicating a small portion of each show to illustrating a cutting edge green energy technology each week for the next several weeks, so stay tuned! Armed with this knowledge, you can pursue these technologies for yourself and your communities, as well as pressure your elected leaders to create policy amenable to making these technologies available and affordable.
That is my show for this Sunday, August 23, 2010. Remember, I also have a live call-in show that airs Wednesday evenings at 9PM EST at my blog at webdvm.blogspot.com, where listeners and viewers may call toll free to ask me questions or offer comments. See you next week.

Dr. Roger Welton is the President and chief veterinarian at Maybeck Animal Hospital in West Melbourne Florida, as well as CEO of the veterinary advice and health management website Web-DVM.net.