Sir Edmond Hillary of Everest Fame Files Lawsuit Against The USA For Refusing To Save Glaciers

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

The first man (thanks to his Sherpa's guidance and wisdom) to conquer Mt. Everest is helping a consortium of ecology groups to sue the USA over global warming. Their latest petition to the UN is, American pollution is destroying many glacial parks in the USA as well as other lands.

From the BBC:

"The effects of climate change are well-documented and clearly visible in Glacier National Park," said the petition's lead author Erica Thorson from the International Environmental Law Project.

Globally, glaciers have lost an average 6m in height in 20 years
"Yet the US has not taken action to protect the world heritage of the park by reducing its greenhouse gas emissions pursuant to its obligations under the World Heritage Convention."

Straddling the US-Canada border where the province of Alberta meets the state of Montana, Waterton-Glacier was the first region in the world to be declared an International Peace Park.

Of course, the UN just asked us to close Gitmo, too, and we just refused.

When the UN asks Iran to not make nukes, we yell "You have to do this because the UN ordered you," but whenever the UN says bleep to us, we yell, "Shut up! Go away! Blue helicopters!" In other words, we cherry pick what we want to obey, sort of like Cheney and Bush with the law in general. Commit a crime then have the cops collude to cover it all up again.

The Sagarmatha petition is supported by Everest pioneer Sir Edmund Hillary, who said: "The warming of the Himalayas has increased noticeably over the last 50 years... this has caused several and severe floods from glacial lakes, and much disruption to the environment and local people."

Yay, Sir Hillary! A great guy. He, like myself, watches with horror as Nepal falls apart. Like my family, he knew the royals who were machinegunned down so brutally (the story the evil uncle who is now king is total hogwash!) and he mourns the destruction of Nepal and the many stresses ripping it apart these days.

If the glaciers melt once and for all, all the great rivers that were the birthplace of many great civilizations, will dry up and become mere seasonal rivers like the ones in the desert. I remember how various rivers in Arizona like the Santa Rita would run year round, the Palo Verde used to have huge cotton woods lining the banks, all are dry as a bone now except during monsoon season.

And so it will be with the Ganges. The Colorado River still gets snow melt from the Rockies but human use causes it to dwindle until it is nothing coming out into the Gulf of California. The snows are failing in the Rockies just as they are failing in all the glacial mountains even as excess snow blankets other parts of the planet. This oddity is another sign, global warming's changes of the atmosphere are altering the amount of solar energy heating high elevations. Anyone who has lived above 9,000 ft like I have in my own childhood, knows that when the sun is out, it gets very hot very fast even though it is very cold. So long as one is in the sun, it is hot. Wind blows or walk in the shade and brrr.

Global warming seems to have concentrated moisture so where it rains, it really rains and elsewhere, the sun blazes down. From Mongabay.com:

U.S. greenhouse gas emissions increased by 2.0 percent in 2004, from 6,983.2 million metric tons carbon dioxide equivalent in 2003 to 7,122.1 metric tons in 2004, according to Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States 2004, a report released today by the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

The 2004 increase is well below the rate of economic growth of 4.2 percent but above the average annual growth rate of 1.1 percent in greenhouse gas emissions since 1990. Emissions of carbon dioxide and methane increased by 1.7 and 0.9 percent respectively, while emissions of nitrous oxide and engineered gases rose by 5.5 and 9.6 percent respectively. U.S. greenhouse gas emissions per unit of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) fell from 677 metric tons per million 2000 constant dollars of GDP in 2003 to 662 in 2004, a decline of 2.1 percent, meaning that American industry because more greenhouse gas efficient.

The release comes just over a week after a United Nations conference in Montreal where the United States refused to join any talks for imposing binding limits on emissions of greenhouse gases.

Many people are now suing the USA over our ridiculous overuse of fossil fuels. From Breitbart.com:

The people of the Arctic filed a landmark human rights complaint against the United States, blaming the world's No. 1 carbon polluter for stoking the global warming that is destroying their habitat.

The Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC), representing native people in the vast, sparsely-populated region girdling the Earth's far north, said they had petitioned an inter-American panel to seek relief for Canadian and US Inuit.

Islanders, people living in any lowland ouside of Florida, people suffering from increasingly frequent droughts, everyone is beginning to sue our country because our actions are destroying their homes and their livelyhoods. It is destroying ours, too, only we are all acting like Cheney, being sour pussed about it and thinking it is everyone else's fault for being the the way when all we want to do is kill things for fun.

The lawsuits the North East started to stop the Midwest and South from burning a zillion tons of coal for airconditioning because it is killing our trees, killing our lakes and rivers and killing everything, we had to drop it because the Supreme Court thinks killing everything via pollution wasn't thought of by George Washington so it is OK. Gads.

Arrest the Supreme Court. Rats.

I am still very angry that my poor oaks and maples will have to endure yet another ozone alert summer, vicious droughts and wild storms dropping 7" of rain in a few hours time.