About as dumb as it gets
Here’s what American exceptionalism means now: on a per-capita basis, we either lead or come close to leading the world in consumption of resources, production of pollutants and a profound unwillingness to do anything about it. We may look back upon this year as the one in which climate change began to wreak serious havoc, yet we hear almost no conversation about changing policy or behavior. President Obama has done nicely in raising fuel averages for automobiles, but he came into office promising much more, and Mitt Romney promises even less. (There was a time he supported cap and trade.)
It has been well over 100 years since the phenomenon called the greenhouse effect was identified, 24 years since the steamy summer of ’88, when many of us first took notice, and, incredibly, 15 years since the Kyoto Protocol. That agreement stipulated that signatories would annually reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases and was ratified (and even acted upon) by almost every country in the world, including every industrialized nation but one. That would be the United States. Now that’s exceptionalism.
How gullible can these people get???? No…don’t tell me, I’d be afraid of finding out!
NY Times food writer trying to do science, what else can we expect? He’s impossible to take seriously. Sadly, today’s chic food community has dived into food politics and every imaginable pseudoscience and bogus fear surrounding food and food production; and mainstream media gives them credibility and a platform. He’s also active in PCRM (aka PETA), by the way.
The U.S.’ consumption of resources is proportionately less than its share of global production. We should be praised for our efficiency.