You've got enough

Western societies have enough.  We don't need anything more.  And we need to do more to help others, not ourselves.  That's what a high level UN official thinks:

Environmental concerns have caused one high-ranking UN official to declare that “the West” does not need more cars, televisions, and other consumer luxuries.

United Nations Development Programme head Helen Clark told AFP in an interview: “So the issue is how to get human development that will see it continue to rise for the world’s poorest people and people in developing countries. Because frankly human development in the West – we don’t need more cars, more TV, whatever. Our needs are by and large satisfied, although the recession has put a lot of strains on that.”

Clark, the former prime minister of New Zealand, also stressed the responsibility of richer countries to reduce their environmental footprint: "There is, in my opinion, a very heavy responsibility on the countries of the north to look at how they sustain their living standards with a much lower environmental footprint."

So, according to her, I have enough.  I don't need any more "luxuries".  Because she and her cohorts know better.

Why do I have a sneaky suspicion that she and the rest of her cronies at the UN haven't restricted their own consumption?

Thanks to CNS News for the story.

The "E" word

From House of Eratosthenes comes this reminder.  Use of the "E" word should generate a Pavlovian response that triggers these realizations:

If an alien from another planet, fully capable of understanding our language, competent in logic and common sense but entirely unfamiliar with our modern culture, were forced to live with us for about a week or so…I’m sure he’d come to the conclusion that this word we use, “environment,” has something to do with diminished expectations and/or lowered standards.

Companies who talk about protecting the environment, charge a goddamn fortune and their products & services don’t do anything.

Politicians who talk about the environment, just raise our taxes and make everything more expensive.

Scientists who talk about the environment, don’t even practice science.

And the everyday-everywhere-everyman who talks about the environment, is just a smug foppish snot who likes to feel superior to everybody else, doesn’t do shit, knows even less.

Yes, the pattern is becoming clearer by the year…in fact, by the week. You hear the word “environment” and the next thing you see is going to be someone wriggling out of being held to any standard. For anything.

And then examples to strengthen that reinforcement:

If a car is good for the environment, it won’t take you where you want to or need to go (this is the primary function of the thing we call a “car”). If you drive it and get in any kind of accident at all, you’ll be deader than Princess Di before you can say “Princess of Wales.”

If a shampoo is good for the environment, you may as well wash your hair with the wastewater from your dishwasher.

If a baby’s diaper is good for the environment, you may as well shove cotton balls up the baby’s ass.

If a light bulb is good for the environment, it won’t light the room.

If you stay in the hotel and the hotel is trying to protect the environment, it means the maid doesn’t do anything.

And…toilets that are good for the environment. Let’s not even inspect that in any kind of sordid detail.

If beer is good for the environment, it won’t get you drunk.

If drain cleaner is good for the environment, it won’t clear the clog in your drain.

If paint thinner is good for the environment it won’t thin the paint.

If you have friends & family who invite you to an environmentally-conscientious Thanksgiving dinner, there’s no turkey involved.

If swimming pool shock treatment is good for the environment, you’re wasting your time using it.

An environmentally considerate vacuum cleaner — it won’t even start to clean your carpet. And forget about sucking up that bowling ball.

How true, how true.

From The Onion??

You tell me....is this story for real??

China has agreed to join the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, after touring a cookstove exhibit with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Beijing on Thursday.

It's one of several new U.S.-China "eco-partnerships" announced during Clinton's visit, which has been overshadowed by human rights concerns involving blind dissident Chen Guangcheng.

"This illustrates once again that the United States and China can and will work together in new ways and through many channels to address our common challenges on energy and the environment, two issues that transcend politics," Clinton said at a ceremony marking the cookstove agreement. She did not address the Chen situation in her remarks.

Clinton launched the Global Alliance, a public-private partnership, two years ago. The stated goal is to save lives, improve livelihoods, empower women and combat climate change by bringing "clean and efficient cooking solutions" to families around the world. The total U.S. commitment to the cookstove project so far is $105 million.

China's participation will help the Global Alliance meet its goal of having 100 million homes adopt clean and efficient stoves and fuels by 2020.

In China, an estimated 80 percent of households rely on solid fuels such as wood or dung to burn the fires that heat their food.

Unfortunately, it is all too real.  Empowering women through better cookstoves.  Only in an Obama world.

And don't think that the $105 million is all.  Note the words "so far".  Plus, it's just one of thousands of other wacky ways to spend your money.  Yes, once again it's politicians and bureaucrats spending OPM.

Then again, it might be legit...I can picture Bubba Clinton saying..."Hey baby, let me show you my cookstove."

Right.

From CNS via a story at The Lonely Conservative.

Green is good for the environment

Green energy....it's good for the environment!  Well, isn't that what they tell you.

Perhaps not quite so.  From San Francisco's CBS Television website:

Three months ago, CBS 5 caught Solyndra tossing millions of dollars worth of brand new glass tubes used to make solar panels. Now the bankrupt solar firm, once touted as a symbol of green technology, may be trying to abandon toxic waste.

It’s a tedious process. Slowly but surely, the shattered remains of brand new solar panel tubes head to a recycling plant in Hayward.

Meanwhile the next phase of the company’s liquidation is under way. It involves getting rid of all the heavy metals left inside the building that were used to make the panels.

The Fremont Fire Department’s Jay Swardenski oversees the cleanup. He said some materials, such as cadmium, are toxic, and hard to dispose of.

“They don’t degrade at all, so we want to make sure we don’t allow these materials to get into the environment,” he said.

It’s not just the leftover hazardous materials, but also the machinery used to apply them to the glass tubes. “Certainly those tools will need to be decontaminated, cleaned up, handled correctly as they are taken apart,” he said.

Swardenski told CBS 5 the disposal process is going smoothly in Fremont, but what about nearby Milpitas?

Solyndra leased a building on California Circle for the final assembly of its solar panels. But the cleanup at the leased building in Milpitas is in limbo, because Solyndra doesn’t want to pay.

CBS 5 found the building locked up, with no one around. At the back, a hazardous storage area was found. There were discarded buckets half filled with liquids and barrels labeled “hazardous waste.”

The building’s owner, a company called iStar, claimed in court documents, “there may be serious environmental, health and safety issues” at the premises. According to the documents, they include, “numerous containers of solvents and chemicals…and processing equipment contaminated with lead.”

“Essentially it looks like they left a pretty big mess behind,” San Jose State Assistant Professor Dustin Mulvaney told CBS 5.

Green? Really? The only green was the color of the taxpayer's money that went down that rat hole.

Thanks to I Own the World for the pointer.

Watch your wallet

Fox News has a report on the upcoming United Nations Rio summit.  Those world-government do-gooders have a plan and boy will it be coming for you.

The upcoming United Nations environmental conference on sustainable development will consider a breathtaking array of carbon taxes, transfers of trillions of dollars from wealthy countries to poor ones, and new spending programs to guarantee that populations around the world are protected from the effects of the very programs the world organization wants to implement, according to stunning U.N. documents examined  by Fox News.

The main goal of the much-touted, Rio + 20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, scheduled to be held in Brazil from June 20-23, and which Obama Administration officials have supported,  is to make dramatic and enormously expensive changes in the way that the world does nearly everything—or, as one of the documents puts it, "a fundamental shift in the way we think and act."

Where have we heard about "fundamental transformation" before?  Oh, yes...now I remember.  It was part of that "Hope & Change" thing.

More from the Fox story:

That  huge catalogue of taxes and spending is described optimistically as “targeted investments  in human and social capital on top of investments in natural capital and green physical capital,” and is accompanied by the claim that it will all, in the long run, more than pay for itself.

Pay for itself?  Yep...sure it will.  Just like those florescent light bulbs.  Just like those electric cars.  Just like every other governmental "investment".

Read the whole story.  And remember.  The Obama administration supports these goals of "social justice". These are those folks who know what's best for the world.  Or so they keep telling us.  Do you believe it?