Climate Change = Class War
Gee, I guess Earth Hour is the new Islamic Menace to Rightwing bloggers, eh? Or did I just imagine reading a bunch of 'em bragging about counteracting any good effects of other citizens turning out their lights during Earth Hour by turning on more of theirs?
Clever. Except their Moms are gonna be sum mad when they get the Hydro bill in a couple of months.
Still, their behaviour ("let's spray pesticides in all the ponds to kill frogs so they can't be harbingers of bad environmental news anymore") makes it pretty clear that, for energy use to be reduced, users need to pay for the energy they consume. No more hidden subsidies for suburbanites and country farmers. Pay what it actually costs to live where you live and let's go from there to dealing with environmental clean up as a collective.
In other words, use less energy or pay through the nose for your suburban lifestyle that is one of the most heavily subsidized individual rights and freedoms on the planet.
Next to banks that give out sub-prime mortgages, of course.
Anyway, I think it's time the Left took over the climate change argument on behalf of poor people, who don't use up much of the Earth Resources and who should be lauded for that fact instead of encouraged to join all the other energy hogs on the planet by becoming rich and consuming more and taking up ever increasing amounts of space.
Being poor and not owning a car and living in an apartment should be the Holy Grail of our society. Enough of Al Gore et al. There is a political argument to be made by the Left that since poor people bear almost no responsibility for climate change, and rich people bear almost all of it, they should be the citizens held accountable at clean up time.
Because if you take a deeper look at the Right's actions during Earth Hour (of turning on lights instead of turning off lights) it's basically a rebellion against wealthy people, as personified by Al Gore, telling everybody else to cut down on energy use to save the planet. It's the most egregious example of "do as I say and not as I do" out there today in the public sphere.
So why has it been left (Left) to the Right to point it out? Eh? I mean, if you don't want to be excused of acting like silver spoon socialists, don't act like silver spoon socialists.
I've lived in a house in the suburbs and owned a car and now I live in an apartment and don't own a car and I can tell you - I'm doing my bit for the planet just by making minimum wage. It's egregious to me to be lectured by a wealthy person about climate change. It really is. And I'm telling you, whoever is reading this, that the Left needs to take a page from the Right's comic book and make the argument that environmental devastation is subsidized by our governments to the benefit of middle-class suburbanites and wealthy people - everywhere.
And that's not fair.
Oh, and don't forget that the added benefit of espousing the environmental clean up argument "Make the Rich Pay for It" is that you'll finally off load all those silver spoon socialists who like the idea of a pristine planet (if only for the resale value down the road) but don't want to actually be out of pocket for one.
