I'm not a fan of Jon Stewart, though he is (intentionally) funnier than Glenn Beck, smarter than Rush, and far less annoying than Bill O'Reilly.
Kind of funny, isn't it? And terribly sad too.
I don't know if America is just lazy. Really addicted to foreign oil? Maybe spoiled by the big money kick backs from BP and EXXON and the like.
But as Friedman has called for all along, we need a green revolution and not just lip service. People have to get hurt in a revolution. Look at it how it is now, who is getting hurt by the spill? Who is still part of the party (and enjoying a yacht race while his company's leak spews tons of oil into the ocean every day)?
2 comments:
Calling for a "green revolution" is easy, but implementing it is more complicated than just "going green."
Want ethanol? Check into the costs and the use of fossil fuels to manufacture it. It is only the name that is green; the process is not. And think of the increased cost and decreased availablitity of the food products used to produce the ethanol.
Want nuclear? Accidents (like the one in the gulf) can always happen - may I say WILL happen - when machinery and humans are involved, even with careful oversight. An oil spill is bad; a nuclear spill would be worse. And that's not even addressing the possibility of nuclear explosion.
Yes, a "green revolution" will hurt more than a few people. It is inevitable. It will also inconvenience, indeed impede, the lifestyle we enjoy.
We are accustomed to cheap energy, warm homes, full gas tanks, financially accessible travel, lights, TV, computers. It will not be easy to give these up due to unaffordable and controlled energy. And it seems green energy will be expensive and probably rationed, at least for a long time.
Some of us need our transportation to get to and from work, even if we give up all driving for pleasure. Most of us do not want to live in grinding poverty due to high cost energy.
For these reasons, going green needs to be done very gradually taking time to find green ways that will actually be beneficial to the environment as well as to the people.
A "green revolution" should not occur; rather, a gradual greening of the world should be encouraged.
Thanks for the feedback. I still hold out hope for a green revolution. Sure, some will get hurt. If paying ten dollars for a gallon of gas will help shift the emphasis from fossil fuel technologies to looking at wind or solar or whatever someone is tinkering with right now in their garages (the same way Bill Gates or Steve Jobs did with their personal computer ideas - look what happened to the technological revolution those things triggered), then I'm all for it.
Americans have become used to consuming and over consuming. When gas jumped to five dollars per gallon in large cities, subway used skyrocketed. So we might have to carpool more or - God forbid - walk to work and sell the SUV and second or third vehicle, but that would be a good start to the revolution.
But gradually or overnight, I sincerely hope the revolution comes.
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