The Anchoress has such a way with words. Today’s offering:
Rationing Bono &; Other Gaia-Saving Ideas
Eschewing teleconferences that could reduce their carbon footprints to almost nothing (assuming they all own computers and work in offices appropriately outfitted with vision-wrecking fluorescent overheads), the usual bureaucratic suspects have gathered in Cancun, Mexico, for another round of United Nations’ “talks on climate change”—that malleable and useful crisis upon which every weather variant and geological shift may be blamed without proof, for as long as the scam can dependably line the right pockets, and infringe upon our daily living without discomfiting the elite.
See what I mean about a way with words? I could have said they are down there blathering on again, but would that have had have the impact her words do? No, not at all. She goes on:
These determined negativists, having parked their private jets at the shady end of the tarmac, are currently meeting, eating, greeting, and presenting to a standing choir that needs no persuasion, their increasingly unpersuasive scientific “studies” forecasting the inevitable death of planet Earth.
Oh, I do love the Anchoress. Here’s more of her good words on these people about an article she quotes from the Daily Telegraph:
Well, we’re not sure how that sentence was supposed to end, but perhaps goods that require a lot of energy to manufacture will no longer be available to the masses of great unwashed, who—being peasants—shouldn’t really need much more than an icebox, a milk cow, and a cabbage patch, anyway.
She goes on:
Curiously, no one at these conferences ever suggests that less-draconian measures, affecting a relative minority of human beings, might be worth exploring. Beyond canceling their annual exotically-located meet-up in favor of efficient teleconferences, for instance, these people might want to take a good, hard look at the entertainment industry in general, and rock bands in particular.
Uh oh, Bono is going to get it now, read this:
Let them start with U2, the Irish rock band that—even as our put-upon saints in Cancun are weeping over Gaia—has landed its current extravaganza, “The 360 Tour,” in Australia. Billed as the biggest tour ever mounted, and at a daily cost of $850,000, the show requires six 747 jets, 55 trucks, and an assembly crew of 130. “You compare a tour by the number of trucks they use,” production manager Jake Berry said. “The Rolling Stones ran 46 trucks. A massive range of buy discount cialis bargain prices pessimistic elements hover around making the sexual instinct miserable one. Pumping Machine This type of machine is prescribed by a levitra wholesale doctor. It has got anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant properties to boost up libido and bring back the youthful liveliness curing the problem of excessive nightfall. sildenafil for sale Performance pressure faced by men makes them conscious, as a result they fail to sustain this erection during making love. free samples of levitra We are running 55. This is the biggest.”
[….]
That’s a pretty impressive bit of consumption, but let’s add into that the air-conditioning at the indoor venues. Add into it the trains, planes, and automobiles used to transport hundreds of thousands of people to the shows. Add to it the klieg lights used for every televised interview, the trees killed to print every magazine promo and the $30.00 posters sold at all 157 shows. And consider if you will the souvenir teeshirts—possibly stitched together in some hellish Indonesian sweatshop–that weren’t even made out of bamboo fiber!
One wonders: had U2 had not run the ZooTV tour twenty years ago, would the planet be in its very death throes today?
[….]
As we read the dire news out of Cancun, that food and material goods may need to be rationed among the little people, for the good of the earth, we may take comfort in knowing that, before we retire to our cold-water flats, we will still be permitted to expend large amounts of our hard-earned cash for the privilege of being entertained and lectured by extremely wealthy musicians who inveigh against greed and endorse big-government solutions to social and environmental problems, even as they move their assets to tax-reduced locations, and fly their multiple 747’s and drive their scores of trucks to their next profitable, ephemeral gig.It is a funny sort of global crisis that requires sacrificial amends and rationing—with the accompanying restrictions on earnings and opportunities—from some people, while others are permitted to continue living their lives and making their profits pretty much as they always have.
This is just what I saw as the best part of a very long and intelligent post. Read it all here.
