Sunday, June 15, 2008

We’re Number Two, We’re Number Two

Here’s a little piece that didn’t get front page press in the US until I saw a one paragraph item on page 14 of the Dallas Morning Snooze yesterday. Googling revealed that the non-news event was first published about eighteen months ago:

What Now Greenies?

So, how does that work to fuel your paranoia? We’ve been weeping, wailing, gnashing over the climate change crisis while those industrious little Asian hordes have been blowing carbon dioxide all over us at an exponentially accelerating rate. Have they no conscience? Or maybe they simply don’t care when they recognize that their choice is to develop industrially and technologically or stifle their advances in anticipation of an event that either isn’t probable or even if it is, won’t happen for a hundred years or more.

Am I now to rationalize our carbon footprint by modifying my mantle of guilt to include that even though we don’t lead the world, we’re more evil because there are fewer of us? I don’t think so. What I think is that the squeals of the greenies about our non-subscription to the Kyoto Protocols ring quite hollowly. Watching the Hollywood airheads prattle about carbon offsets and their quest for mediocrity in America is increasingly meaningless when the most rapidly growing nations in the world are pressing on regardless.

When the pollution generated by the rest of the world simply stops growing at the current rates; it doesn’t have to be lessened, only stop increasing, then maybe I’ll begin to take the environmental whackos seriously. I can’t listen to Sen. Obama tell me that he thinks I shouldn’t drive an SUV (I don’t) or have my thermostat at 72 (I don’t) or eat all I want (I do) if depriving myself will be insignificant in the global scheme and our enemies don’t seem to give a rat’s butt about it.

No comments: