poorest half of the poorest nation on earth, the streets and fields crackle with laughter. In homes constructed from packing cases and palm leaves, people engage more freely, smile more often, express more affection than we do behind our double glazing, surrounded by remote controls.” In Ethiopia, male life expectancy is 42.88 years. George was born in 1963. If the streets and fields are crackling with laughter, maybe it’s because the happy peasants are reading his syndicated column in The Gamo Gofa Times-Herald . No wonder they’re doubled up and clutching their sides. It’s not just the dysentery from the communal latrine.
Every civilization eats its own but rarely quite so literally. The western world worries about “the environment” as if we are trespassers upon it. If so, it won’t be for much longer. On the fast depopulating plains of eastern Germany, municipal sewer systems are having to adjust to the problem of declining use. Rural communities are emptying out so dramatically there are too few people flushing to keep the waste moving, and to get it flowing again they’re having to narrow the sewer lines at great expense. For the demographically dying west, it’s not a question of “sustainable growth,” but of sustainable lack of growth. One can talk breezily about western civilization being flushed down the toilet of history, but it turns out even that’s easier said than done. Long before Sheryl Crow’s celebrity pals have squeezed their last Charmin, it will be clear that the job of “saving the planet” is one the west has bequeathed to others.
DID THE EARTH SUMMIT MOVE FOR YOU?
The Daily Telegraph , August 31, 2002
“ THE WORLD SUMMIT kicks off in Johannesburg today, aiming to tackle poverty and protect the environment. . . . It will consume a huge amount of resources and create as much pollution in ten days as 500,000 Africans manage in a year.”— The Daily Record
“Caviar and Call Girls Find Their Place at the Earth Summit”— The Times
I’m glad I made the effort to attend the opening gala of the Earth Summit, truly a night to remember. The banqueting suite of Johannesburg’s Michelangelo Hotel was packed as Bob Mugabe warmed up the crowd with a few gags: “I don’t know about you,” he said, “but I’m starving. . . .” Pause. “. . . millions of people!”
What a master of timing! The canned laughter—an authentic recording of happy Ethiopian peasants clutching their bellies and corpsing—filled the room.
After the chorus of native dancers clad only in packing cases and palm leaves, Natalie Cole came on to sing her famous anthem to industrial development, “Unsustainable / That’s what you are,” and sixty-five thousand of the world’s most eligible bureaucrats, NGO executive council members, and BBC environmental correspondents crowded the dance floor to glide cheek to cheek under a glitter ball of premium ox dung specially flown in from Bangladesh. It glittered because of the 120,000 flies buzzing around it, their gossamer wings dappling the transnational activists below in a myriad of enchanting shadows.
And then I saw her. She was wearing a low-cut dress and had the most fabulous pair of melons. “Holy cow!” I gasped, as she approached my table. “They’ve gotta be genetically modified!”
“No,” she said, sliding into the chair opposite and giving me a good look at them. “They’re all natural.” She tossed them to Kofi Annan. “They’re for his organic juggling routine.” I had to laugh. Sabine Arounde is the Belgian delegate to Unescam, the United Nations Expensive Summits & Conferences Agenda Monopolizers, and, lemme tellya, when she’s in a room the rising temperatures are nothing to do with fossil fuel emissions.
“We met at Durban,” I reminded her.
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “The conference on world health.”
“Racism,” I corrected her.
“Whatever,” she said. “This one’s more my bag. I’m very into S &
Every civilization eats its own but rarely quite so literally. The western world worries about “the environment” as if we are trespassers upon it. If so, it won’t be for much longer. On the fast depopulating plains of eastern Germany, municipal sewer systems are having to adjust to the problem of declining use. Rural communities are emptying out so dramatically there are too few people flushing to keep the waste moving, and to get it flowing again they’re having to narrow the sewer lines at great expense. For the demographically dying west, it’s not a question of “sustainable growth,” but of sustainable lack of growth. One can talk breezily about western civilization being flushed down the toilet of history, but it turns out even that’s easier said than done. Long before Sheryl Crow’s celebrity pals have squeezed their last Charmin, it will be clear that the job of “saving the planet” is one the west has bequeathed to others.
DID THE EARTH SUMMIT MOVE FOR YOU?
The Daily Telegraph , August 31, 2002
“ THE WORLD SUMMIT kicks off in Johannesburg today, aiming to tackle poverty and protect the environment. . . . It will consume a huge amount of resources and create as much pollution in ten days as 500,000 Africans manage in a year.”— The Daily Record
“Caviar and Call Girls Find Their Place at the Earth Summit”— The Times
I’m glad I made the effort to attend the opening gala of the Earth Summit, truly a night to remember. The banqueting suite of Johannesburg’s Michelangelo Hotel was packed as Bob Mugabe warmed up the crowd with a few gags: “I don’t know about you,” he said, “but I’m starving. . . .” Pause. “. . . millions of people!”
What a master of timing! The canned laughter—an authentic recording of happy Ethiopian peasants clutching their bellies and corpsing—filled the room.
After the chorus of native dancers clad only in packing cases and palm leaves, Natalie Cole came on to sing her famous anthem to industrial development, “Unsustainable / That’s what you are,” and sixty-five thousand of the world’s most eligible bureaucrats, NGO executive council members, and BBC environmental correspondents crowded the dance floor to glide cheek to cheek under a glitter ball of premium ox dung specially flown in from Bangladesh. It glittered because of the 120,000 flies buzzing around it, their gossamer wings dappling the transnational activists below in a myriad of enchanting shadows.
And then I saw her. She was wearing a low-cut dress and had the most fabulous pair of melons. “Holy cow!” I gasped, as she approached my table. “They’ve gotta be genetically modified!”
“No,” she said, sliding into the chair opposite and giving me a good look at them. “They’re all natural.” She tossed them to Kofi Annan. “They’re for his organic juggling routine.” I had to laugh. Sabine Arounde is the Belgian delegate to Unescam, the United Nations Expensive Summits & Conferences Agenda Monopolizers, and, lemme tellya, when she’s in a room the rising temperatures are nothing to do with fossil fuel emissions.
“We met at Durban,” I reminded her.
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “The conference on world health.”
“Racism,” I corrected her.
“Whatever,” she said. “This one’s more my bag. I’m very into S &
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