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comprising the European Union contributed, a combined 6 trillion tonnes (BBC 2005, news.bbc.co.uk); thus, the
US is contributing 13 times more CO 2
than the average EU country! While the Europeans have ratified the Kyoto
Protocol, the Yankees have their own protocol. Building their own Noah’s Ark, I presume? Truth is stranger than
fiction. Ostrich-like, the Yankees have been burying their heads in the sands of time, if not in the deserts of
science, refusing to face the awesome truth dramatized in the documentary by a Yankee himself, eco-pusher Al
Gore as the modern Atlas, his film An Inconvenient Truth: A Global Warning, directed by David Guggenheim
(2006). The Yankees are a United States of Denial. If the Yankees will not be a winner against climate change, we
can only be a whiner against the Yankees. Atlas cannot carry the whole world on his shoulders alone. I’m now
thinking of a book I will be very sorry to write alone: While Atlas Shrugged, The Yankees Demurred.
Time to listen once more to one of the world’s most respected global thinkers, Lester R Brown, another Yankee,
who in his latest book writes that we must now and we can be eco-friendly and save ourselves from the clear and
present danger of global warming. His book is entitled Plan B 2.0: Rescuing A Planet Under Stress And A
Civilization In Trouble (2006, New York: WW Norton & Co; the whole
book is free to download if you go to earth-policy.org). Translated,
that would be transforming Plan B into what I call Planet B, if we
could get beyond our global ignorance or indifference to the global
meltdown that has startlingly started, as shown dramatically in Gore’s
documentary. The Yankee attitude: The proof of the flooding is in the
swimming.
Gore’s inconvenient film in fact comes after Brown’s inconvenient
book, the first edition having come out in 2001. The Yankees are not
listening; Gore and Brown are prophets not without honor except in
their own country. In the Preface to the 2006 version (page ix), Brown
says, ‘The purpose of this book is to make a convincing case for
building the new economy, to offer a more detailed vision of what it
would look like, and to provide a roadmap of how to get from here to
there.’ And how do we do that? We focus on cars. Brown says:
If economic progress is to be
sustained, we need to replace
the fossil-fuel-based,
automobile-centered,
throwaway economy with a
new economic model. Instead
of being based on fossil fuels,
the new economy will be
powered by abundant sources
of renewable energy: wind,
solar, geothermal,
hydropower, and biofuels.
If economic progress is to be sustained, we need to replace the fossilfuel-based,
automobile-centered, throwaway economy with a new
economic model. Instead of being based on fossil fuels, the new economy will be powered by abundant sources
of renewable energy: wind, solar, geothermal, hydropower, and biofuels. Instead of being centered around
automobiles, future transportation systems will be far more diverse, widely employing light rail, buses, and bicycles
as well as cars. The goal will be to maximize mobility, not automobile ownership.
The throwaway economy will be replaced by a comprehensive reuse/recycle economy. Consumer products
from cars to computers will be designed so that they can be disassembled into their component parts and
completely recycled.
The Yankee Dawdle