It's Good To Be A Superpower

Personally, when George W. Bush said, "America's way of life is non-negotiable" I cringed inside. I still cringe whenever I think about it.

Because I just don't believe that anymore, for various reasons, including:

1) Unless someone comes up with an alternative energy source that is as cheap and efficient as oil, there simply won't be enough oil to keep our 'way of life' running. It just won't exist.

2) Our 'way of life' is ruining the entire planet. The amount of waste America produces is simply mind boggling and wretched. There are middle class people, known as freegans, who live in NYC and actually eat out of dumpsters to protest our way of life and conserve resources. http://www.nypress.com/19/24/news&columns/feature.cfm

3) The amount of energy America uses is so unbelievably disproportionate to the rest of the world that I'm surprised they don't rise up and kill us all just for that. It's simple: we waste a ton of energy, while many people don't have any at all. This kind of equation simply cannot persist - history is littered with the corpses of empires that became fat on their own gleanings. Just like us.

4) The disproportionate amount of food we have. Billions of people are starving and undernourished around the world - I can walk down the street and get a bigmac, slice of pizza, meatstick, subway sandwich, Carvel, a breakfast sandwich, sushi, etc. People around the world are starving. How can we morally live like this anyway?

Finally, Lou Dobbs has something to say about this, and our non-negotiable way of life. It's good to be a super power!

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/08/15/dobbs.august16/index.html