Thursday, July 09, 2009

Blaming The Developing World

While I've breathed in my share of horrible emissions from gas-guzzling buses in the last few weeks, let's be honest, claiming that cleaner transportation systems in the developing world is going to be a major battle to stop climate change is ridiculous. This story deflects blame for climate change off the U.S. and other developed nations and onto Nicaragua, Indonesia, South Africa, and other poor nations. Certainly it's important to limit carbon emissions in developing nations, but it is far, far more important to limit those emissions in the U.S. itself. Reducing air travel, cutting back on SUVs, and finding alternative power sources to coal for U.S. domestic consumption would do so much more.

But it's a lot easier to blame other people.