Third World Stove Soot Is Target in Climate Fight by Elisabeth Rosenthal

I enjoy being able to blog in freedom and everything, and am grateful for the right to vote and worship whichever god I want, blah blah blah, but America really sucks sometimes. A lot. I'm going to take the next few moments and bitch about my country, so if you love America, read no further.

The New York Times printed a story today stating that after CO2 emissions, black carbon (soot produced by open cooking fires) is the number 2 cause of global warming, and eliminating these emissions would improve climate conditions. I guess black carbon contributes something like 18% and CO2 emissions something around 40%. Most of black carbon emissions from small coal fires are produced in small villages in the poorest of areas, like rural India and China.

The United States got some token Indian guy to return to India to help in a new project to get stoves for all these people in all these villages. I can only assume they run on propane or some other kind of gas, because it's probable that these villages don't have electricity. So the idea is to give them the free stoves, and hope they can pay for the fuel it takes to run them. I suppose that won't be an issue, especially since the fires they cook with now are fueled mostly by animal dung. The reporter was quick to note that while a mother cooked the food for the day over the fire her children were coughing from the smoke.

Here's what really pisses me off: Here we are in our first rate, top-producing, top-earning, wealthiest-demographics-in-the-world country, deciding that a great way to save the environment is to make the poor women who COOK ALL THEIR MEALS ON A CAMPFIRE become the people who must take responsibility for global warming and change their routines. Thankfully we as Americans can still drive inefficient cars and have air conditioning and a refrigerator and a billion other things that take a shit load of energy to produce and run and not have to change any part of our lifestyle. Oh wait! I take my own reusable grocery bags to the store instead of using wasteful plastic ones! We Americans sure are doing our best to alert other nations on how they can do THEIR part to curb global warming.

I think Team America sang it best when they said "America! Fuck yeah! Coming again to save the mother fucking day yeah!!"

Read the article here.

In Defense of Marraige...

My husband is driving me absolutely nuts right now. I love him to death, but I have to admit, there are times (times like this, I might add) when I wonder if our marriage will last. Sometimes it just feels like the love and respect are gone from the relationship, even though we still go through the motions of saying 'I love you' and try to go on a date every now and then.

Believe me, I could go on for about a hundred pages of all the stupid shit he does that annoys the hell out of me, and list all the things he doesn't do that I wish he would. But that won't solve anything. It won't even make me feel better. In fact, it would only bring to mind even more circumstances that I hate about our relationship. So I won't waste my time.

What I do know is that I'd rather work through all the messes and hurts of our lives and our marriage, even though it will most likely be painful and difficult, than ever consider a divorce. It's true, marriage is much harder than just being in a committed relationship, but I guess that's what marriage is for: helping two people who belong together remain in a life-long partnership, no matter what.

Substance Abuse In The Wild

I was at Lola today getting a coffee with my little bean Ilse when my friend Zak wandered in after just waking up. He partied a little too hard, apparently. "It's Thursday," I said. We talked for a little while about his camping trip, which, he informed me, was spent mostly blitzed and baked. I thought that sounded totally miserable, being that you have no proper toilet or soft warm bed to make you feel better the next morning. But Zak disagreed saying, "You never get hung over in nature." I LOVE that statement.

He means of course that with all the exercise and fresh mountain air it's just not possible. I thought it over and figured he must have been right. I remembered a few drunken camping trips on the beach in Mexico that ended up surprisingly in my favor. But what really matters about the conversation is that he said "You never get hung over in nature." Genius.