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Wednesday, April 13, 2011

U.S. Military: Climate Saviour?

I'm an American living in Canada. How'd that happen? Well, I was living in Maine, and one day I was really hungry. I smelled maple syrup, and I just kept following it.

It could happen to anyone.


I've now been in Canada for about four years, or in Canadian numerals, "one-sixth of a two-four" if the contents of the two-four were years instead of cans. During this time, I've learned three lessons:

1) Canadians really are very good, decent, and abiding people. Even their most divisive, cold, shrewd politician would be eaten alive in the ideological iron smelter that is the U.S.A.  All that would be left would be his perfect hair, somehow indestructible, floating to the top. 
It would look like this, only gray. And evil. But mostly gray.

2) Canadians know music. Forget hockey. They play hockey in Arizona now. But they don't make music like they do in Canada.

3) Canadians hate the U.S. military. Hate hate hate! If a visitor to Canada wants to see the exceedingly rare "Canadian temper", they only need bring up Uncle Sam's militaristic tendencies. It's guaranteed to bring forth the most imbalanced, least inclusive language of which a Canadian tongue is capable (angry Quebecois notwithstanding).

So it is with exceedingly - some would say gratuitously, nay, nauseatingly - good cheer that I present to you Canucks an article, written in the seminal Canadian journal of note the Tyee, that puts forward evidence that the U.S. military is blazing new, visionary, exciting - and big - trails in reducing reliance on fossil fuels. Check it out here.

And let the brow furrowing begin!

p.s. And I would like to apologize to the nameless person whom I mocked so many years ago at an anti-Iraq-war rally in the States. Sir, when you stood up and railed against the carbon footprints of the U.S.' fighter jets, I thought you were an untethered loon. Turns out you were a visionary military strategist, albeit one with very dirty clothes. My bad.

1 comment:

  1. Ever seem like there's an inverse relationship between the scale over which someone is held accountable and how decent they are?

    ReplyDelete