[speeder]

I read the news just last night and learned that the administration's
f riends at the international policy network, which is supported by Exxon Mobile
and others of like mind, have issued a new report that climate change is
a myth, sea levels are not rising and that scientists who believe
catastrophe is possible are an embarrassment.
I not only read the news but the fine print of the recent appropriations
bill passed by Congress, with the obscure (and obscene) riders attached to
it: a clause removing all endangered species protections from pesticides;
language ;prohibiting judicial review for a forest in ! Oregon; a waiver of
environmental review for grazing permits on public lands; a rider pressed by
developers to weaken protection for crucial habitats in California.


I read all this and look up at the pictures on my desk, next to the
computer– pictures of my grandchildren: Henry, age 12; of Thomas, age 10; of
Nancy,7;Jassie, 3; Sara Jane, nine months. I see the future looking back at mefrom those photographs and I say, Father, forgive us, for we know now
what we are doing I am stopped short by the thought: That's not right. We
DO know what we are doing. We are stealing their future. Betraying their trust.
Despoiling their world.
And I ask myself: Why? Is it because we don't care? Because we are
greedy?
Because we have lost our capacity for outrage, our ability to sustainindignation at injustice?
What has happened to out moral imagination?

On the heath Lear asks Gloucester: 'How do you see the world?And
&Gloucester, who is blind, answers:_ I see it feelingly.'I see it feelingly.
The news is not good these days. I can tell you, though, that as ajournalistI know the news is never the end of the story. The news can be the truth that sets us free – not only to feel but to fight for the future we want.
And the will to fight is the antidote to despair, the cure for cynicism, and the answer to those faces looking back at me from those photographs on my desk.
What we need to match the science of human health is what the ancient Israelites called – the science of the heart... the capacity to
see... to feel... and then to act... as if the future depended on you. Believe me, it does.