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.
I do love America, and for that reason I chose to read further. But rest assured I read that shit smuggly. Like a real American, Yeah! I haven't read the article yet, but that's a nice little find. Thanks for angrily sharing. Happy Earth day by the way!
ReplyDelete