Am I supposed to feel guilty for being an American and using up so much energy? Sorry, but that's not going to happen anytime soon. I don't care what people say about my carbon footprint or that I'm hogging too much of the world's finite energy resources but there's no way I'm giving up my air conditioner in the summertime. It's not like if I sweat my ass off on a hot night that some poor sap across the planet will all of a sudden be freed from plowing his barren field behind his scrawny ox while hoping that it rains some time this decade. That's his hard luck he was born there and my good fortune to be born here.
If that guy lights his home at night with candles and I light mine with florescent lights, well, I'm sure not going to stop, nor am I going to his country to adopt one of his kids like some damed movie star to make myself feel less guilty, like I was eating his lunch or something. I don't feel guilty at all. This is the society into which I was born and I kind of like it. I'm not going to ride a bicycle everywhere either, since I'd be sucking exhaust from all the cars around me, sweating and putting myself at the mercy of New York traffic. No, thanks. And even if I did do such a thing, that guy with the ox would still be waiting for rain, an education for his kids, electric lights and running water and maybe an annual visit from some overworked doctor.
Sure, I'd love to use less energy. I'm not crazy about high electric bills or the ridiculous price of gasoline. I'm also not crazy, which I would be if I tried to live in this modern nation in these modern times as if I were a Berber tribesman. In America, places like Arizona were very sparsely populated until Mr. Fedders got busy and invented air conditioning. Now there's plenty of people there, so many that they are constantly bickering with surrounding states over who gets to use the trickle of water available to the region. It's the same in the Sahara, minus the creature comforts. Why it got so heavily populated with no amenities at all is a mystery to me. Sounds like somebody's ancestors lost a war and had to settle for sand castles while the victors took over the fertile and comfortable climes.
Again, not my problem. I live in New York City where we've got other problems, but plenty of water. And I don't really care that various august world bodies criticize the United States and other industrialized nations for using up a disproportionate amount of energy. There's not a population in the world that wouldn't take full advantage of the amenities their society offers them. The name of the game is human progress, and if making one's life easier is not progress, then what is? Feeling guilty because the rest of the world lags behind? Who ever said life was fair?
I've already investigated the available solar power products for my little house and so far it's too much money for too little power, but I'm wide open if somebody invents something better. And it turns out those weak-ass low-energy lightbulbs I've been buying are loaded with mercury, so to hell with them. Make me a car that gets 60 or 80 miles to a gallon and I'm there. But for right now, with what's available to me, I'm living my life. As with any commodity, I try not to be wasteful of energy, since waste is... such a waste. What will it take to have the whole world modernized, educated, air conditioned and highly mobile? Probably a very long time and a fundamental change in how people live their lives. And it will take a lot of money, more money than is currently available to many nations.
But even the poorest nations pay for large expensive armies and palatial lifestyles for their leaders. Look at India, with half a billion people living on less than forty pennies a day (!) living side by side with an educated, air conditioned, high-rise living and highly mobile elite, spending billions on nuclear weapons to counter a threat from Pakistan, of all places, another haves and have-nots country. How's that for national schizophrenia? In Africa, where millions starve and many millions more eke out a grim and primitive existence, there's plenty of dough for AK-47 machine guns and helicopters to wage constant war. Indeed, Africa should be prosperous. It's fertile and loaded with valuable minerals. It's not the fault of my air conditioner on a hot night that there's so much poverty over there.
Should America help other nations modernize themselves? Absolutely. Should we do it at the expense of setting our own human progress clocks 50 years backwards? Absolutely not. The idea is to set and maintain a standard, not live down to the standards of others less fortunate or less industrious or living in countries run by rapacious kings and dictators. Education needs to go hand in hand with foreign aid, otherwise that guy behind the ox stays there for another century. And they don't have to have a government mirroring our own, just one that looks out for their citizens. Meanwhile, it's getting hot and I'm going to turn on my air conditioner and watch me a baseball game, see if the Yankees can salvage a split from the Red Sox.
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