Fix environment before Earth ends up as desolate as Mars

Last week, scientists said they finally have proof there was not only water on Mars once, but entire oceans. Top minds around the world agree if there was ever life on the red planet, water was a basic requirement. Now we know there was lots of it.
But that was long ago. Sometime, billions of years ago, something happened there. The climate changed. Now Mars is a barren, lifeless desert.
I’m sure some of you reading this are asking, “What’s your point?”
My point is this. What happened on Mars could happen here it we don’t soon wise up.
Down here on earth, people argue over whether climate change is real, whether it should be called climate change or global warming, whether Al Gore deserves a kick in the pants or the Nobel Peace Prize for making the issue hip and sexy.
There’s lots of talk. Far too little action.
Every day people debate the reality of climate change, the climate changes a little more. Every year that goes by, millions more tons of pollutants are pumped into our sky, into our oceans. They’re in the food we eat, the water we drink. They seep into our lungs, our blood, our bones.
Wars rage. Forests fall. Deserts grow. And our planet, the only home we will ever know, plunges towards destruction while people just talk.
Meanwhile, in the nation’s capital, even talk on the issue is in short supply.
Thursday, in the House of Commons, opposition parties accused the Conservative government of monkey wrenching the Commons environment committee to keep it from hearing testimony from an expert witness.
Conservative committee chairman, MP Bob Mills, stepped down rather than hear from a respected economist who publicly criticized the Harper government's climate change targets earlier in the week.
When no other Tory agreed to stand in for Mills, the committee hearings stopped dead.
NDP environment critic Nathan Cullen told reporters on the hill Thursday the government is “hell-bent” not to hear from certain witnesses.
"This is a page right out of (Conservative whip) Jay Hill's manual.”
The manual Cullen referred to is a leaked 200-page handbook for Conservative committee chairs, which detailed ways of controlling witnesses or shutting down committee work, if things didn’t go the way they wanted.
Cullen said with pressing issues and a huge agenda to get through, the environment committee has to be up and running again immediately so plans can be made for the fall session.
“We have to rise above this and work together,” Cullen said.
Wise words, words that smooth talking politicians in fancy suits and Cheshire cat grins had better heed, before Earth ends up like old planet Mars.
These issues affect every man, women and child on the earth, every bird in the air, every fish in the sea.
These issues are too important to be left in the hands of a few elected individuals whose only real goal is to be elected again. We have to stop thinking in terms of political parties, or provinces, or countries. We have to start thinking, and working together, as a planet, before we end up like Mars, where mighty oceans once rolled, and now, to quote the words of Percy Shelley, the lone and level sands stretch far away.