Maybe I Should Have Voted for Lieberman

I found and interesting newspaper article online today. It was called Lieberman proposal: Hybrid autos to combat manmade global warming. Basically, the article states that Senator Joseph Lieberman plans to introduce a bill requiring 10% of new cars to be hybrids or alternative fuel vehicles by 2007. Additionally, the bill would require 50 percent of new cars sold in America to be hybrid electric or based on other gasoline-saving technology by 2012.

I was very happy to hear about this bill. It's about time we started to push for more efficient cars to decrease our dependency on fossil fuels. This bill would be similar to raising the mpg standards for vehicles.

One other thing the article mentioned, was that Lieberman and McCain are planning reintroduce their Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act, which would mandate a rollback of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. to 2000 levels by the end of the decade.

Now, let's hope these bills pass through congress.

The Rain Finally Stopped

We saw the sun today for the first time in 9 or 10 days. It was a welcome and much needed sight. There hasn't been much flooding impact in Manchester, but elsewhere in the state has been hit hard. The worst hit areas are in the westerner part of the state, Keene and Alstead in particular. I drove over the Merrimack river today and it was higher than I can ever remember seeing it. The water is so high even though only a few weeks ago, it was about as low as I've ever seen it.

Jodie and I participated in the Breast Cancer walk at Greeley Park in Nashua. It was a nice walk, but I unfortunately volunteered to help set up. The walk was at 10:00 am, so I figured helping to setup would entail getting there around 8:00 am. Instead I was told to get there around 7:00 am. Jodie and I got there early and help set up a few things, but we really didn't do much. Soon, we found ourselves without much to do, and more than 2 hours to wait until the walk began. We ended up walking around Greeley Park and playing on the swings for awhile. I don't have a problem helping setup. I mean, I did volunteer, but I didn't really enjoy carrying about 6 boxes and then having nothing to do. I'm glad to help out, but if I'm not needed, I rather not show up early to stand around.

Overall, the walk was a success. We enjoyed the walk very much, and it's great to raise money and awareness for such a good cause.

Buffalo

Last night I saw a brief part of a show about Yellowstone National Park and the railroad industry. It was on NH Public Television, and was called YELLOWSTONE: AMERICA'S EDEN. It was very depressing. It started out showing footage of huge herds of buffalo roaming the plains. There used to be 60 million buffalo in the western US. The white men, railroad people from what I took from the show, wanted to own the land that was presently occupied by native americans. They noticed that the native americans relied heavily on the buffalo for survial, and they thought that a nice indirect way of getting rid of the native americans would be to kill off the buffalo. The show had pictures of enormous piles of buffalo skulls and said that St. Louis sold 200,000 buffalo hides a day! The pictures and facts were deeply distrubing about how incredibly quickly and thoroughly the buffalo were distroyed. In fact, the buffalo were thought to be extinct until about two dozen buffalo were found in what is now Yellowstone National Park.

Ironicly, the same railroad people saw the beauty of yellowstone and realized it was worth perserving. They were one of the main groups lobbying for yellowstone to become the first national park. Of course, the beauty to them was the number of people who would ride their railroad to see the natural wonders. Suddenly the buffalo, elk, sheep, and deer were valueable to these people. So valueable that they decided to kill gray wolf and bear to reduce the predators of these animals. As a result the population of these grazing animals increased. Unfortunately, the population increased beyond what could be supported by the small yellowstone ecosystem. The over population lead to over-browsing, which lead to the decline of beaver, which lead to the loss of wetlands, which hurt duck and fish populations, etc.

The program went on to show the vast influx of people via automobiles and the detrimental impact they had. They showed the park rangers cleaning Morning Glory pool of all the trash people put in there. They pulled 86 dollars of pennies out of the pool!

I went to Yellowstone a few years ago, and luckily a lot of the damage of previous visitors, such as trash in Morning Glory Pool, is temporary. Much of the damage has not been temporary. The buffalo still are a fraction of their original numbers, grizzly bears are not present in Wyoming like they used to be, nor or the wolves.

I was depressign to me to see such destruction to beautiful and innocent creatures and habitat. There is a delicate balance between enjoyment of our natural wonders and over use.

Ben & Kate's Wedding

Saturday was Ben & Kate's wedding. It was a lot of fun. The ceremony was very nice. It was at First Church in Nashua, NH. The reception was at the radisson in Chelmsford, MA. I was the Best Man. It was my first experience being part of the wedding party. I was a little nervous about having to stand in front of the church during the ceremony and giving my speech as best man. I was nervous during the speech, but I think it turned out pretty well.

It was nice to see several people from my family who I haven't seen in a long time. I suppose that's one of the best things about weddings is getting to see everyone. Todd Thamer was their photographer. I mentioned him to Ben and he ended up using him. I didn't know until he walked in on the wedding day, so that was a bit of a surprise. I kind of was able to have a day long interview with Todd. I got to see him work, and he did a nice job. I think he'll do a great job at our wedding too.