FROM THE DESK OF QUINCYStop Pushing Pork for Corporate Polluters!
Aside from trying to make the guards laugh in front of Buckingham Palace or hanging around Soho watching Ola Onabule perform at Ronnie Scott’s, one of my favorite things to do in London is to ride around on the double-decker busses and smell the fumes because it smells just like French fries and do you know why? It smells like French fries because some of those busses use biofuels made from the old oil of potato chips grease. But did you know that a recent study suggests that the production of biofuel from cooking oils causes 70% more greenhouse gas than those caused by fossil fuels?
That’s right. I just read here that there is a ‘full cycle’ of new studies showing that biofuels actually cause more pollution than fossil fuel. Plus, once the oil is put into the fuel tanks, it’s no longer good to cook with. So what I want to know is “why”? Why is perfectly good food being used in our gas tanks that we could all be eating?
Everbody is trying to invent ways to run cars and trucks and busses because the planet is running out of oil but what I want to know is, why doesn’t everybody just start taking the train, riding their bikes and walking more and just say “NO” to food guzzling and intoxicated vechicles drunk on ethanol? ANOTHER highly suspicious problem -- perhaps the deepest of all --- is when politicians like John McCain want to reward offenders by pushing a lot – I mean A LOT of pork at corporate polluters! How this helps save the world’s bacon, I am not exactly sure………
And why does Al Gore say John McCain should be trusted on climate change? Could it be that he, too, has a special, unhealthy interest in PORK? Hmmmm.
Anyway, Soho is a wonderful place. I could always walk from 2Truthy’s aunt’s residence in Belgravia to Victoria Station and then take the tube to Leicester Square and get a little exercise but instead, I enjoy taking the bus because it’s more fun and then I don’t have to sweat. Besides, it rains a lot in England and I’d rather show up to the clubs au natural, sans a brolly and trenchcoat so walking is not always expedient.
Back to riding the double-decker busses. It’s all so delightful. Not only does the conductor let me run around and sing on the upper deck and hang my snout out the window, but the bus passengers are much friendlier and less cranky than all of those stuffy accountants and Versace clad carbon-cap traders who ride the tubes. But when I’m riding on the bus, it doesn’t really matter that most of the passengers don’t speak English, because when traveling, the universal language is the “smile” which, in my case, I have to be very careful about in order not to be misunderstood. One time, I smiled at an old lady who, I think, might have been a Croatian gypsy. Anyway, she thought I was smiling at her in order to take her seat so she slammed her handbag at my head and then her bottle of Scotch fell out. When I tried to pick it up and hand it to her, she screamed obscenities and then the driver pulled over and threw me right off the bus, shouting “pull that bloody hell again on my bus and next time I’ll drop you at the Tower of London and see you’re locked up!”
Now, whenever I ride the double-decker busses, I just pretend I don’t see old ladies (even when I do) and just keep staring out the window at all of the wonderful sights to see in London. But now, it appears we have bigger fish (NOT PORK) to fry back here in the States.
Here is a link for everybody to join the growing grassroots campaign for sensible global warming legislation. Take action now. Help keep the pork out of the greedy hands and gullets of those politicians who would rather feed French fries to vehicles than to the masses.
Cheerio,
QUINCY
3 comments:
Well, Hi Quincy! You cute little piggy you!
I've always heard that pigs are intelligent, and you are living proof. As TooTruthy has probably already told you, back in the olden days, during the 1970's, we did a lot of things to conserve energy. We walked, rode our bikes, drove smaller cars, had our cars equipped with standard transmissions instead of automatic transmissions, consolidated our shopping trips so we didn't jump in our cars and buy something every time the thought came in our heads, we turned down our heat, and turned off our lights. We didn't like it, but we even cut our speeds down from 70 mph to 55 mph.
People don't want to feel affected by the high oil prices. Instead of taking conservation measures, we prefer to buy exotic vehicles or use exotic fuels in the mistaken belief that we are helping the environment. We should always search for solutions, but using oil and gasoline a little more wisely will go a long way.
Let's hope we can help restrain our government from playing too fast and free with our taxpayer money by sending obscene amounts to these green startup companies. As your nice friend TooTruthy always says, the green bubble could dwarf any other bubble we've ever seen in our lifetimes.
And let's not forget that the green startup companies, if they show the slightest signs of success, will be bought up by the profit-hoarding energy companies (they'll let the taxpayers assume most of the risk, then magically appropriate the returns).
As for why we're burning food in our gas tanks, sadly, it is what America wants. Most people I know would like the magic energy fairy to sneak into their garage at night, wave a wand, and transform their SUVs into a clean-burning, low-cost, low-maintenance, but in every other way, identical vehicle to what they already have.
And we have built our entire lifestyle based on the idea that cars will always be there to facilitate the most stupid of ideas. In the Chicago area, we build new suburbs far from any jobs, with no public transportation, just figuring that $2/gallon gas will return once the market "settles down."
Al Gore, I think, has become a little puffed up. I actually admire the way he's taken abstruse scientific principles and packaged them in a user-friendly way (though he's been more than a bit over-rewarded for doing so - Isaac Asimov explained harder science better than Gore, and received no Nobels). But Al has come to believe that he transcends such earthly concerns as politics, and transcendence may well create stranger bedfellows than does politics.
"Let's hope we can help restrain our government from playing too fast and free with our taxpayer money by sending obscene amounts to these green startup companies."
You said it! CC, For every half-baked business plan that gets funded, a roomful of vcs and execs reap the profits at the expense of Joe Taxpayer. This globe doesn't have the resources to sustain the growing billions of people. Period.
The Iraq "war" and the one planned on Iran are about distribution control. We can stop driving all the luxury cars we want, and not too far down the road, it still won't stop the bleeding.
Androcass, the former VP and newly minted venture capitalist and in-the-know friend to the Tech Lobby, Gore, is no stranger to how the oil industry operates. He's lloking to make 'friends' wherever he can find 'em. The firm KPCB funds green start ups with plenty of cronies on their boards who stand to go green $$$$ bigtime by rolling them into, as you point out, "profit hoarding energy companies." Can you say 'Stockola payout'?
What I find interesting is how much he must really hate Billary to want to lump the clueless McCain into the same "feel good" camp.
Is just that Gore may not be too bright or does he not really care? My guess is that he is too easily co-opted, but otherwise, like Obama, a "decent" and nice guy. (He likes the Grateful Dead, A-OK in my book.) But the fact that he backed ousting Saddam by coup and that he supported the most comprehensive genocidal sanctions ever imposed on a country that killed approx. 1.5 million or more Iraqis including over one million children under age five is unspeakable. As a businessman, it is now in his best interest to suck up to McCain as the criminal class of elites are, of course, bipartisan. The show goes on, and Gore is the darling of what's left of a collective voice to clean this place up.
Your sentiments, verbatim, have been voice by yours truly: "Isaac Asimov explained harder science better than Gore, and received no Nobels.)"
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