I was listening to the greatest hits album of Canadian singer Bruce Cockburn a couple weeks ago and he has a few pro-environmental songs on there. One was lamenting the cutting down of the rainforest to make farms and all that. From up here in North America that makes a lot of sense, but there's always something that seems hypocritical about it.
Look, I'm not someone who wants to cut down all the rainforest or thinks global warming isn't real. The thing is, though, if we're going to tell people in Brazil not to cut down the rainforest, then maybe we should help them find another way to make money. Because from where they're sitting, they look up at countries like America who clear-cut their old forests for farms and industry and became hugely wealthy. Why shouldn't they want a piece of that? Because it might kill some polar bears or penguins? Can you really blame them for thinking, "Saving the rainforest ain't going to put food on my table."?
So yeah it's nice when artists say we should save the rainforests and all that, but what's your solution to preserving the rainforest and letting the people there have a little Western prosperity?
There's a lot of the same hypocrisy involved with nuclear weapons. The US is always saying that North Korea and Iran can't have nukes and if they try we'll go bomb them or hit them with sanctions or whatever. From their point of view, though, why shouldn't they want to build nukes? Their enemies have nukes; why can't they have them?
It's even more hypocritical when the US says they can't have nukes because they won't use them responsibly. Who's the only country in the world to use a nuke against another country? Oh, right, the US of A. And who conducted tons of nuclear weapons tests on the ground, in the air, underground? Yup, the US of A. (Not to mention Russia, China, France, etc.) So really, where do we get off saying we can have them and no one else can unless they're our buddies? It really makes the US look like a bunch of douchebags.
In a sane, rational world we'd find reasonable solutions to these problems. Instead we'll just continue to grandstand and saber rattle and maybe drop some bombs to create far worse problems.
I really believe in saving rainforests, especially now that I know penguins and polar bears live there.
ReplyDeleteHa ha. But you know how it is: you have to save rainforests so global warming doesn't melt the polar ice caps, killing the polar bears and penguins who live on either pole.
DeleteI thought the number one cause of polar bear deaths was when they enter into a grand battle to save all the multiverses because God is old and senile.
ReplyDelete*crickets chirp*
No? Nobody out there read the "His Dark Materials" Trilogy. That's a shame.
But you've got a point on the one hand: We should help other countries get more prosperous by putting our money where our mouth is: Maybe we could rent the rain forests from them. Pay protection, as it were.
Brazil: "Hey, United States: Nice climate you've got there. Be a real shame if all these trees in the rain forest just fell down and suddenly your eastern seaboard is under water."
US: "Here is 1/10 of what Mitt Romney made yesterday. Will that do?"
Brazil: "I am surprised that you managed to fit a Mitt Romney joke in here. Do you know how dated that will seem in a year, when Grumpy Bulldog is a famous author and people flock to his blog?"
ME: "This is really an inane comment."
GRUMPY BULLDOG: "I should delete this comment."
STEPHEN HAYES: "How come I'm never in one of these dialogues."
My god, I need some sleep.
Yeah you should stop reading the Federalist Papers and get some sleep. Though that would be enough to put me to sleep.
DeleteYou know, it was that nuclear test ban treaty that ended the Orion program. I think it was - crap, I forgot who it was - Ed Teller maybe that wanted to use nuclear weapons to solve all the world's problems. Seems like he wanted to use them for mining, clearing land, um, killing insects.
ReplyDeleteSigh. What a world that would have been. Anyway, it takes the resources of the whole world for the US to maintain the society we've all come to expect. Of that guy in the rainforest wants his - he should move to a first world country, not chop his down.
The US is mostly douchebags, so it's not much of a surprise.
ReplyDeleteThe United States is hypocrisy in action, and they police the world AS IF they really did own the place. It's kind of an interesting lack of humility for sure.
ReplyDeleteAs far as a nuclear weapon goes...yes, the United States is the only country to have used one. But it is also the country that is in the best position to understand exactly just how terrible this weapon is. But it seems like the only way to gain respect in the world is to have access to a nuclear weapon. Other countries simply do not take you seriously if you don't have one.
The issue with Iran I think is not that they want to have a nuclear problem but with their transparency. Their deliberate obfuscating of the facts under the guise that they have a right to do whatever they want to do in their borders makes Israel very uncomfortable. And Israel unfortunately is the cause of all of the U.S. problems with the middle east. It is a mistake that the U.S. never should have condoned in the aftermath of World War 2.
As long as Israel continues to exist, there will be war in the Middle East. That seems apparent and inevitable. And as long as there is war, there will be the threat that nuclear weapons could be used. The United States created the mess...therefore it is up to us to monitor it to make sure it doesn't get out of hand.
I don't know, Michael. That's like saying as long as there are black people, racism will exist. We've had to learn to get past our racial and cultural issues (and, yes, I know we're still working on it, but it's so so so much better than it was 100 years ago), and they need to learn to do that, too. All I can say is that it's a good thing we didn't have nukes during the Civil War, because they would have been used (now, there's an interesting premise for an alternate history story), and that's why we have to make sure that they -don't- use them.
ReplyDeleteWow! Really deep topics and truly thoughtful dialog, I have nothing to add - I'm not smart enough to keep up with y'all. I'm gonna go take some Vicodin and drink a glass of Bordeaux! ;) Grumpy, this one made my head hurt ( or maybe it's the double root canal).
ReplyDelete