Those Damn Brown Poor People Causing Global Warming

This is the same despicable lie coal and chemical companies use to deny compensation to victims of their toxic materials because they also smoke and therefore are really to blame.

Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

I’m not minimizing the fact that inefficient cookstoves in the developing world cause a lot of problems, including lung disease in the women who use them, deforestation, and other important issues. In fact, there’s been a multi-decade effort to introduce more efficient cookstoves into the developing world.

But to hear American leaders talk about cookstoves in Bangladesh and Ethiopia as a primary culprit in global warming is completely fraudulent.

In the United States, you have massive vehicle emissions, the agricultural industry, the heating and cooling of ever-growing megamansions and large office buildings, a road system designed for environmental inefficiency, etc., etc. These things all lead to gargantuan carbon dioxide emissions.

Not to mention the industry in China and other nations that serve American consumer interests.

And the U.S. is going to focus on an Ethiopian woman cooking injera on her stove.

I guess if there’s no political will to do something about climate change in Washington, we can always blame poor brown people.

If we must be imperialist assholes in refusing to address global warming, let's at least try to avoid being arrogant, condescending, hypocritical, racist imperialist assholes.