Another What The Fuck Is Wrong With Us Post
This is Kipnuk, Alaska, home to about 500 Inuit. The whole village is sinking because it is built on thawing permafrost.
What if someone offered a truly useful plan of action to address global warming? Would everyone finally wake up? Katherine Ellison is pointing out the problem in Saturday's Times:
If you, personally, are worried about this impending apocalypse, why don't you go get some power strips and flourescent lightbulbs?
Louisiana and Holland and the Maldives and those cute little orange frogs and coral reefs and glaciers will still disappear. And they will still be replaced with malaria, mosquitoes, Category 5 hurricanes in New York City and a new system of canals for streets in lower Manhattan... but it won't be your fault.
Marketing debacle, leadership failure, utter scale fuck. Smug liberal shitheadism at its worst.
To-do list for actually preventing the extinction of our species:
1. Stop burning coal by May 2007, even if it means rationing energy.
2. Focus all resources on wind, hydroelectric, solar and nuclear energy (nuclear=ugly. extinction of 95% of all life on the planet=uglier. I choose nuclear.)
3. HUGE gas tax
4. HUGE tax subsidies for natural gas, biodiesel, hybrid and fuel-efficient vehicles
5. Huge WPA-style effort to make public transportation work in the exurbs.
posted by fisher6000 at 8:30 AM
3 Comments:
i seem to recall having read [read: i'm not an expert]that the technology to make coal 'clean' is actually within reach. sure, it devastates landscapes, but clean coal will have to be a part of a pragmatic solution to our energy needs. more useful still would be to take away the winter tomato from the northern cities... that is, re-establish reliance on local producers for all but the most necessary goods. maybe a call for 'green' greenhouses in longisland?
xo
joel
Dear D,
Unfortunately, most people think it is uncool to be concerned about the environment these days in this part of the world. I think that is a huge part of the problem.
Being conscientious about these
things isn't sexy and the USA is busy selling sex while keeping prostitution illegal. It is so totally backwards. Just like the drugtrade. If being environmentally conscious could somehow become sexy to more people, I think we could sell it to them. Like feeding vegetables to kids - this is sometimes a tough and psychological job.
Anyway, love your list & thoughts. Wish we could enforce your list somehow.
*a
better ideas:
huge tax on EXCESS energy use (gas, electric, etc.) This avoids catastrophic impact on the working poor, acknowledges basic fairness, and rewards efficiency, at which point the market will produce more efficient vehicles, houses, industrial processes, etc.
Abandon globalization & consumerism. If you don't produce, ship, consume, and dispose of huge amounts of cheap junk, you save with every step.
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