By now it�s become obvious that politics are a huge issue in the world and especially the United States. With the elections coming up, we have all kinds of politicians vying for our support. Ultimately it all comes down to November, when the votes will be tallied and (hopefully) the winner will be declared.

Recently, though, I�ve been thinking that it�s all getting a little ridiculous these days. Politicians are spending enormous amounts of money just to be elected into the oval office. I began wondering why the whole wind up, the whole run before the President is actually decided, is the big shebang? Why do we hear more about what a candidate is doing before he or she becomes President than we do after he or she is in office? I�ve been thinking that maybe its time to find out what our President (use this term loosely) has done while in office, and what my research has found is positively frightening.

To start with, George Bush has positioned a frightening number of ex-corporate CEOs into high positions in office. For example, there is the Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O�Neil, who is the former CEO of Alcoa, an aluminum industry that is one of the biggest polluters in Texas; Ann Veneman, Secretary of Agriculture, served on the board of Calgene, a company responsible for both genetically altered foods and killing off numerous family owned farms; Don Evans, the Secretary of Commerce, was CEO of Tom Brown Inc., a massive oil and gas company, and he also served on the board of TMBR/Sharp Drilling, a, you guessed it, logging company; Don Rumsfeld, our Secretary of Defense, was CEO of the G. D. Searle Pharmaceutical Company and General Instrument, he�s also served on the boards of Kellogg�s, Sears, Allstate, and the Tribune Company; our Secretary of Labor, Elaine Chao, has served on the boards of Dole Food, Clorox, C.R. Bard, the Hospital Corporation of America, and Northwest Airlines; Colin Powell, our Secretary of State, sat on the boards of Gulfstream Aerospace, and AOL; Andrew Card, the White House Chief of Staff, was CEO of American Automobile Manufacturers Association; our Director of the Office of Management and budget, Mitch Daniels, was senior vice president of Eli Lilly pharmaceuticals; and Condoleezza Rice, our National Security Advisor, served on the board of directors for Chevron, Charles Shwab, and Transamerica. I won�t even get started on the number of corporate sponsorships and corporate stocks that high officials in the White House have, as the list would be so long that even I wouldn�t take the time to read it. The basic point I�m trying to make is this: What are all of these big business people, who know how to run huge companies really well, doing running my government? Personally, I don�t think that anyone who has spent their life trying to manipulate large amounts of both human and natural resources around to make the biggest profit for themselves should ever find themselves running the government of the United States. I�d guess that these people are going to keep doing the same things they did when they were CEOs once they come into office, and I�d be right. That�s exactly been going on in the White House. Why else have these people not been passing bills and laws to protect the environment, sponsor human rights in every country, or raise the workplace standards for low class workers? I�ll tell you why, it would cost the oil industry, the industry relying on sweatshops in third world countries, and basically any big corporation today one heck of a lot of money. I could go on forever about the tangled web that has been woven around Washington D.C. as of late, but really I�d rather not. We all know that it is big and sticky and dripping with oil. I think its time for these big business people to be given the boot, and that real politicians and people who care about the community, not their wallets, should step into their rightful places. Lets not forget that Abraham Lincoln himself grew up poor as mouse, and he was an all the better President for it.

Continuing on, I�d like to point out a small matter that I find so revoltingly disgusting that I feel ashamed even to type it. We all know that global warming is a big issue, and recently scientists have been finding more and more catastrophic things that could happen because of rising temperatures. To briefly sum up a lot geological history, and not to make this too boring, I�ll try to make this quick. Basically, the good old Earth that we live on has actually been through several ice ages. Though the causes of ice ages remain controversial, many scientists agree that they are caused in part by the amount of green house gases in the atmosphere. Now, normally the fluctuation of green house gases takes a long time, as in millennia. With industrialization, however, we�ve caused the green house gases in our atmosphere to increase dramatically over a very short period of time. An ice age normally happens right after a period of great heat. The planet gets really hot, and then suddenly it�s too much, and everything freezes. This is caused by a numerous number of really boring factors, and we�re trying to keep this fun, so I won�t get into to it, but be assured that this is how it happens. Normally these ice ages come on slowly, as that�s how geological stuff works. The glaciers slowly grow and grow and everything slowly gets colder and colder. The only problem with what we�ve done today is that if the earth gets warm enough to trigger an ice age, its going to come on fast and freaking hard. We�re talking flash floods and tidal waves from melting ice caps followed by insanely destructive and terrifying storms so big that your poodle won�t be the only one hiding under the bed. We�re talking scary stuff. We�re talking New York City first being buried under three stories of water, and then being completely frozen solid. Sound like fun? Just wait until the glaciers roll on in. Just for a little perspective: There was, not too long ago, a massive earthquake in Alaska. We�re talking so big that the water in Texas got choppy. But guess what? The glaciers in the actual state of Alaska didn�t move one millimeter. There�s just something about thousands of tons of crushing ice, it doesn�t seem to like to be messed with. In fact, glaciers can survive nuclear blasts and keep on coming. Personally, I wouldn�t like to wake up one morning and find a glacier slowly creeping towards my house and eyeing it hungrily like it�s the breakfast its about it eat.

Now I can hear you all saying Julie, seriously, this all very fascinating, but why on earth are you talking about ice ages in the middle of an article on politics? Well, there�s a very simple reason. The last ice age was caused by a change in temperature of a little over ten degrees Fahrenheit, and guess what? We�re already halfway there. Not only that, but statistics are showing that if global warming continues on as normal we will see a rise in temperature of over ten degrees in the next hundred years. I can hear those big icy glaciers just licking their chops already. I guess I can at least be reassured that my grandchildren will never have to worry about buying a reliable refrigerator.

Just take a moment to reflect on that. Our grandkids could be seeing an ice age if we don�t knock it off and stop ripping the atmosphere to shreds. Honestly, am I the only one who is feeling just a little worried about this?

Evidently I�m not. In the early nineties a group joined up lobbying to bring the people of the world together to stop global warming. This group got an enormous amount of support, and many different countries helped it to write up the Kyoto Protocol. It calls for a reduction of six different green house gases by five percent in industrialized countries by the year 2012. Basically, it�s a surefire way to slow down global warming. One hundred and twenty countries, including the US, originally signed the Protocol. Now the Protocol requires that these nations actually ratify the treaty, meaning that the nation can�t just say �Wow, that�s a fun idea,� but that the nation actually has to do what is stated within the Protocol. Currently there are 122 countries that have ratified the treaty, because as any five-year-old could see, it�s a good idea if we don�t all fancy the idea of chipping Disney World out of the ice before spring break rolls around.