Les Otten
May 31, 2017
Go ahead Donald, leave the Paris Accords. We don’t need your permission to act in an environmentally sensitive way. We have the right of self-determination when it comes to preserving the health of our planet.
Of course we care what Trump does about climate change, but he is not the commander in chief of how we live our lives, choose the products we buy or act on the science we believe. Our President is out of touch, out of line and insulated from my reality. More than 60-percent of Americans believe humans are making a significant CO2 impact on the planet and believe we should be doing something about it.
The Office of the President does not have the power to stop us from conserving energy and making smart decisions about our future. It cannot stop us from buying electric cars, biomass fuels made from renewables or more efficient products. We can choose to breathe clean air and have healthier lungs. We can choose to lead the world’s clean economy by our actions.
We have the ultimate power over the environment and the future of the planet. We have the power to adjust our spending. We can buy electric cars, use biomass fuels to heat our homes, bike or walk to work for health, use products made from renewables, keep our food cold in more efficient refrigerators, better insulate our homes, build homes that demand less energy, install micro-CHP (combined heat and power) in our houses and small businesses, and put solar panels on our roofs. The list is endless. The resulting economy created by moving in this direction would be a massive industrial revolution. It would drive a 3% growth rate of the American economy for decades and we’d replace the old with the new.
We don’t need the White House or Congress to legislate our future. We have the ultimate power in our free capitalistic democracy by deciding how to make our own personal investments into planet-saving products and services. The best thing we can do is use our wallets to let our President know he is out of touch, and he should lead, follow or get out of the way. He’s confused about how to make us great again.
The world needs to know that our country has the greatness that mainstreamed computers, invented social media, lead the industrial revolution, invented the electric light bulb and pioneered indoor plumbing. We did all that and a whole lot more without the government telling us what to do. Thank you, Westinghouse, for the refrigerator that took the place of our ice box and RCA for the TV that brought the Beatles into my parents living room so they had a clue. While we are at it, thanks Mr. Morse for the telegraph, the Wright Brothers for their historic Kitty Hawk flight and GE for all the good things you brought to life. Let’s have some more. None of this needed the 3 branches of Government.
Frankly, Washington, your record over the last twenty-five years has been rather abysmal. The Executive branch and Congress are much to blame for the last recession by sanctioning derivative trading of mortgages that should never have been written (Clinton); invading Iraq on bad intel (Bush) and not protecting our ambassador in Libya (Obama and Clinton pas deux) and now the current guy can’t separate his business from ours. And they are laying the ground work to convince us that the Russians are our friends when it was our allies of Europe that came to our side after 9/11.
We don’t need the President or the Republicans and Democrats in Congress to figure out what to do with our lives, our planet or our future. We have always as a people lead the world with our decisions on what we believe to be important.
Buy the products that make sense for the future and make decisions that are good for a renewable economy we want to fuel and the lives we want to live. Trump leaving the Paris Accords may be the freedom we really need to speak as a people through our actions, as opposed to those of our out-of-touch Government. Let’s just build our great country without the politics of Washington.
Leslie Otten has been working and building businesses and Non-profits in Maine and New England for over 40 years. Sunday River, Maine Energy Systems, The Boston Red Sox, and now the Balsams in Northern NH in business and Maine Adaptive Sports and Recreation, the Portland Museum of Art, and the Cromwell Center for Disabilities Awareness in the Non-profit world. He was a republican primary candidate in 2010. Go to WWW.BuildMyAmerica.com leave your name and email and a comment.