The UAE is the new USA
On the environment, that is. And it isn’t a compliment. The AP reports:
The average person in the [United Arab] Emirates puts more demand on the global ecosystem than any other, giving the country the world’s largest per-capita “ecological footprint,” [World Wildlife Fund] data shows. The United States runs second.
But the oil-rich Emirates is considered a developing country, and even as a signatory to the United Nations Kyoto protocol on global warming, is not required to cut emissions.
But at least the UAE is trying to do something about its poor environmental showing, even if its hyper-American culture of consumption won’t be reformed easily: “The federal environment agency is devising strategies to cut emissions, including a public campaign that may offer economic incentives to those who turn down their air conditioning.” It has what one official calls “an action plan”.
The same, alas, cannot be said about Bush’s America, which has a poor record on the environment, period, including global warming, which it essentially denies. (There have been rumours circulating, based on a British newspaper report that quoted a source close to Blair, that Bush would publicly reverse his position on global warming in his upcoming State of the Union, but the White House has denied them.)
But my own country, Canada, isn’t doing much better. Although there is far more of a commitment to the environment here, not to mention a recognition of the reality of the climate crisis, even from our Conservative (and Kyoto-unfriendly) government in Ottawa, we rank fourth in the WWF report, behind Finland and ahead of Kuwait. Not good.
We can all do a lot better.
6 Responses to “The UAE is the new USA”
Yeah, we can all do a lot better at conservation, and as Tully points out at Stubborn Facts, the AP can do a lot better at objective reporting.
That has nothing to do with this report, C. Give it a rest, please.
It would seem that even some “moderates” are lagging behind even Exxon in finally admitting that the evidence is clear.
This is very unfortunate, because for sound and foreseeable reasons, “clean power and green technology is the industry of the 21st century” Tom Friedman. Friedman questions whether we’ll be a player or “We enjoy importing our Prius from Japan. God knows what we’ll enjoy importing from China in terms of clean power and green technologies.”
Yes, we need to reduce our environmental footprint. If China consumed like we do, it would take the resources of 4 planet earths to supply. But the uber-capitalists here are too stuck in their ideology to even cash in on the next big growth area. And the administration, fighting it tooth and nail, tossing subsidy after tax cut to petroleum interests while smarter nations (ouch. that’s sad to have to think of China that way) get ready to, once again “clean our clocks”.
Please anyone who hasn’t watched Friedman’s concise and cohesive 3 minute video on the subject, watch it. It’s powerful.
CP,
Why isn’t it relevant that the story was an opinion piece dressed up as straight reporting? The facts support that we need to conserve, but when news agencies take it upon themselves to editorialize instead of report, the audience becomes polarized and the part of the audience that needs convincing will tune out instead.
Didn’t really read like an Opinion piece to me, but maybe it’s just me.
You can start where Mr. Stickings leaves off, where the reporter says things that aren’t true. To wit:
As I pointed out, the US has NEVER been “bound by Kyoto.” And Kyoto wasn’t “rejected” by the Bush admin, but rejected by the US Senate in 1997. Unanimously. Bush wasn’t President then.
Of course, in determining the editorialism content, one could just count the adjectives and such. When the writer can’t get past the first paragraph without using the phrases “squandering the earth’s natural resources” and “the ravenous consumption of Americans,” it’s a Really Big Clue that impartiality and fact-seeking take a back seat to the author’s agenda.