Environmental Talk

Part of the U.N. assistance program….

There are very few things in life that consistently provide the kind of Alice-in-Wonderland type entertainment as the global warming debate.

Take the current U.N. climate conference, for example.

The two-week conference is “considered pivotal in efforts to reduce industrial and other emissions warming the planet.”

You wouldn’t expect the U.N. to host such an important event at, oh, I don’t know … someplace like the U.N. headquarters. This is an “pivotal” conference so, naturally, it’s being held on the Pacific Island of Bali.

Being that it’s so pivotal and just maybe because it’s in freakin’ Bali, the conference is remarkably well-attended. By 10,000 conferees.

Wanna bet they didn’t all get there by canoe?

Geography wasn’t my strongest subject in grade school but I know Bali is really far from everywhere … except whatever island’s next to Bali.

And even that’s a 45-minute ride in a single-engine plane.

I was better in math than geography (plus I own a calculator), so some quick calculations reveal that 190 nations sending 10,000 people to a tropical paradise for an intense two-week session averages out to 53 people per country.

I’m pretty sure there aren’t 53 people in all of Luxembourg, so that means bigger places like South Korea and Sudan are doing their share to pick up the slack.

So, to recap: the U.N., in an effort to reduce global emissions, is holding a global warming conference in a place you can only get to by a long-haul flight on a Boeing 747.

And that doesn’t even include roughly 10,000 trips by taxi from the airport to the hotel in those highly energy-efficient cabs most island countries have.

The only way this conference could have a bigger carbon footprint is if they communicated by smoke signals.

One of the avowed aims of the conference is to figure out how to transfer money from industrialized countries to a variety of small nations in order to help these minor countries “adjust to climate change.”

Having 10,000 bureaucrats converge on an island paradise is a good start. By the end of the two-week session 40% of the hookers in Bali will be able to retire, thus helping to cut emissions of one sort or another.

As long as we’re transferring wealth, why stop at a country that has less people than you could find in your local Bennigan’s on a Friday night?

It’s starting to snow where I am, so I think I need to fill out a grant form so the U.N. can buy me a snow-blower to help me adjust to climate change.

I’ve got my eye on a Toro Power Max 828 XLE. At around $1500, there will still be enough money left over to help all these nations figure out how to deal with a three-inch rise in sea levels over the next 100 years.

It’s holiday season, so maybe a gift phone card is a good idea — then those countries that border the Pacific Ocean can call and get some advice from Holland.

global warming, climate change, Toro Power Max 828 XLE, snow blowers, smoke blowers, United Nations, boondoggle, carbon footprint