Sun in the Morning and Ki-moon at Night

If the United Nations called a summit to find ways of ending world hunger, it would be in extremely bad taste to employ terminally malnourished people to cater their luncheons. I would like to apply this cheeky logic to the climate change conference in Bali, where untold billions of fossil fuels met their maker so that my fellow Americans could spend several days hemming and hawing over an agreement to combat global warming. An extra day was even tacked on to the itinerary so the unconvinced parties could sleep on it, though I think it was to buy time for another go-round at Hard Rock Cafe Bali.

Everyone came around on Saturday, possibly thanks to clever and resourceful protesters like these:




But sunny faces are not enough. In fact, aren't they counter productive? What the hell good is making yourself look like the sun if you have to wear a tree to do it? And what's up with these yahoos? Are those polar bear suits organic?



The energy crisis and climate change are inextricably shacked up, and we're the idiots who set these lovebirds up. Our constant attention to their relationship only makes their marriage stronger, their children smarter, their house bigger, their sex better. And a whole United Nations conference? Well, that's like a second honeymoon!

In his 1975 essay, Letters from the East, essayist E.B. White addressed this curious human tendency to cause our own headaches:

"Just the day-to-day activity of concerned citizens bent on solving the energy crisis is itself a great drain on fuel: lights burn far into the night in the halls where the planners do their planning and the debaters hold their debates. I drove over to south Brooksville not long ago to attend an evening forum on nuclear power, sponsored by the public library. To get over and back, I had to travel twenty-five miles, which must have burned up a gallon and a half of gas. And the hall had to be lighted. And the representative from the Central Power Company had to burn up a great deal more gas than I did, because he came a long distance for the powwow. People in this age are adjusted to the free use of power; they do not readily change their habits, even for a power shortage. On my way home over the road after the meeting, I noticed that most of the houses I passed were brightly lit- people sitting up late to watch television, with the oil-burner grinding away in the basement and the water pump leading into the action of the bidding of the pressure tank and the hot-water heater eating up the kilowatts in answer to the thermostat. A hundred years ago, denizens of those same houses would have been abed long since. They would have neither power nor a power shortage - merely a long night's sleep. We don't really know yet whether we can have energy all day and Johnny Carson all night. It just isn't clear."


In the thirty odd years since White's Letter, it is safe to say we have cleared up the question of energy use - we cannot have energy all day and Hard Rock Cafe Bali all night. I would argue that we can have climate change and our climate change conferences, too. We just need to, to quote the great American film Reality Bites, "show some ingenuity. In-gen-uity." Cutting the emissions of developed nations by 25 to 40 percent by 2020 may be "ambitious" but it sure as shit ain't ingenious. Ingenious is cutting industry by 25 to 40 percent. Ingenious is knocking down Hard Rock Cafe Bali and the encroaching communities of businesses and factories that produce crap like this:



and this:



and this:





But that, like renewable energy, might send Mr. Energy Crisis and Mrs. Climate Change straight to divorce court. And that, like the Kyoto Protocol, would be bad for business.