Past Absurdities of the Week

While the world's richest countries cannot agree on steps to be taken to reduce emission of greenhouse gases, the coral reefs of the earth's seven seas are dying - 25% thus far - in part because of global warming.

Mountain top removal - the scalping of the landscape to mine coal - as practiced in America's Appalachians takes a fearful human toll as groundwater is polluted, vegetation-stripped slopes turn into mud slides, and retaining dams burst in devastating floods, but with the United States unquenchable thirst for growth and the power needed to feed it, what's likely to happen to the bucolic Appalachians in the years to come as world oil production peaks and begins its inexorable decline?

While obesity becomes a distinguishing feature of the American national character, 30-40,000 people, primarily children, starve to death every day and another billion go to bed hungry.

Ranchers in fast-growing Arizona, driven out of business as a prolonged drought turns grazing land into desert - due, many believe, to global warming - look for salvation to their influential senator, John McCain, a man who opposed signing of the Kyoto Accords by the United States.

In a recent advertisement, ExxonMobil admits that "to meet estimated oil demand in 2030, production from new developments will need to reach nearly 100 MBD, an amount greater than today's global production," while recognizing that production from current resources is set to begin an inexorable decline and offer only pie-in-the-sky technological advances as the hope for obtaining the required future production.




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