Year 2, Month 4, Day 17: Little Bee Sucks The Blossom, Big Bee Gets The Honey

The Khaleej Times (UAE) notes, unsurprisingly, that rich and poor countries seem to have a different set of priorities when it comes to dealing with the issues surrounding climate change.

Sent April 8:

The inequality between rich and poor is indeed a profound complicating factor in the global struggle against climate change. None of the world’s poorer nations wish to abandon the dreams of economic growth; the richest fear that their own comforts and conveniences will be undermined by measures to mitigate the threats of atmospheric warming. But these arguments are misleading. The “wealth” of developed nations is largely a function of the ready availability and relative cheapness of fossil fuels, and both of these qualities are illusory. As oil becomes harder and harder to extract, it will be both rarer and more costly; as we confront the costs of putting a century’s worth of burning carbon into the atmosphere, it’ll become self-evident that oil and coal are very expensive indeed — and that aspiring to the high-consumption lifestyles of the developed nations is like envying a drunkard’s delusions of grandeur and omnipotence.

Warren Senders