11. I can't forget the issue of climate change. The US has unquestionably been the primary contributor to climate change over the last century, as the most industrialized nation in the world. Even today, as it's carbon emissions are surpassed by China, the undeniable fact is that on a per capita basis, we Americans dump far more carbon into the atmosphere per person than anyone in China, by a factor of five or more. Yet our country has been a primary obstacle to any real efforts to slow or reverse climate change. The US, during this administration and the last, has actively subverted efforts to reach international agreements to limit greenhouse gases, even using the National Security Agency's spying abilities to monitor other countries' negotiation positons and to blackmail leaders. It is simply sickening too, how the selfishness of Americans even extends to caring not a whit about the horrors that will be faced by not just our grandchildren, but even our children (the World Bank, no environmental radical hotbed, warns that today's teens will face a world that is a staggering 6-8 degrees Fahrenheit hotter by the time they are 80!). This is selfishness -- or madness -- on a scale that is to me incomprehensible.
I could go on, but I think eleven reasons to be ashamed of one's country ought to be more than enough.
It is for me.
DAVE LINDORFF is a member of ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent, uncompromised, five-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper. His work, and that of colleagues JOHN GRANT, GARY LINDORFF, ALFREDO LOPEZ, LORI SPENCER, LINN WASHINGTON, JR. and the late CHARLES M. YOUNG, can be found at www.thiscantbehappening.net
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
3
2
2
