World Environment Day calls for end to carbon addiction

[freedomnorth]

Source: Reuters

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - The United Nations urged the world on Thursday to kick an all-consuming addiction to carbon dioxide and said everyone must take steps to fight climate change.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said global warming was becoming the defining issue of the era and will hurt rich and poor alike.

"Our world is in the grip of a dangerous carbon habit," Ban said in a statement to mark World Environment Day, which is being marked by events around the globe and hosted by the New Zealand city of Wellington.

"Addiction is a terrible thing. It consumes and controls us, makes us deny important truths and blinds us to the consequences of our actions," he said in the speech to reinforce this year's World Environment Day theme of "CO2 Kick the Habit".

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSSP221220080605

[defendandprotect]

1. Start chanting: "Nationalize OIL" . . . "ELECTRIC CARS" . . .

to everyone you meet --- and especially those in office ---
and car companies ---

[Baby Snooks]

2. In a perfect world. 30 years ago....

Nationalizing our oil reserves at this point won't make any difference whatsoever and the reality is whatever we do produce for our own needs will simply supplement what we will soon no longer be able to import from Mexico. We cannot escape the reality. Devalued dollar, market manipulation, lack of domestic drilling all mean nothing. The reality is we are running out of oil.

As for electric cars, the vast majority of Americans cannot afford any new car. How are they going to afford an electric car?

Many can use mass transit. In the few cities around the country that actually have mass transit. Most really do not. Not the type of mass transit needed to accommodate a growing number of Americans who are having to turn to mass transit as the price of gas keeps going up.

This is just more of the silliness of Americans. A growing number of Americans, Democrats as well as Republicans, claim to be green but really aren't - they build 5,000 + square foot "energy efficient homes" and then keep the thermostats at 68 instead of 78 and then add solar panels that do nothing really except provide some "supplemental" electricity and then jump in their Priuses ten times a day to run to the store because every time they go they forget something. And end up with a net mpg of probably 5 mpg.

Conservation is a word most Americans really do not know 30 years after the first energy crisis. And we are in an energy crisis. Far worse than we were 30 years ago. Just wait until you see the electric bills in most cities over the course of the summer as natural gas prices keep rising along with oil.

The silliness of now is the same silliness of then and it is best summed up by Betsy Bloomingdale's famous, or infamous, comment back in the 1970s that she took conservation seriously and had instructed her household staff to only run the self-cleaning ovens during the evening. Apparently she thought they used less electricity during the evening than during the day. She probably still does.