Denial is the gas on which these V-8 types run. One would think that, of all people, so-called conservatives would be doing just that -- as in taking a better-safe-than-sorry, precautionary principle, approach to the carbon problem. But there is something in the "conservative" mindset that hates anything new-agey, like recycling. In their minds it's all tied up with sexual liberation, messy body fluids, excessive partying and losing control, and their belief in a male sky-god driven dominion over nature -- a liberal invention that can't possibly have a mind of its own while choking on our fossil fuel phlegm.
It is not just the climate change deniers but our politicians as well. They always arrive in the most fuel-in-efficient and enormous black vehicles. Is black the new grey? Is a hummer-size conveyance the only option? Ever heard of setting an example? Or, is that car allowance so juicy that it pays for the most inefficient and conspicuous mode of transport? Hey, policemen in a Volkswagen would be so much less intimidating, and fuel efficient. Is the freudian cigar thing underlying our ecological disintegration?
In any case, it is all our little (and not so little) excesses that add up to one big growing environmental problem. For all of us air travel and, worse, air freight is an extremely environmentally expensive "economic" mode. But then we don't calculate "externals" in our "growth" models do we? That just might turn our "productivity" and "free trade" into expensive nonsense. In effect, globalization kills, via the slow drip of multinational jet fleets and tanker ship carbon emissions... powered by dangerous "economic" nonsense.
Most frightening, the levels of oxygen in the atmosphere -- the very air we breathe that feeds both life and enlightenment - continue to drop and measurements in big cities illustrate the problem, dipping to as low as ten or eleven percent in some cases. So many eco-alarms are going off and so many are failing to heed them today -- with the worst offenders being our own corporate and political leaders failing to set the right examples.
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