Let's talk about ideological blinders! If anyone has any lingering doubts about the overwhelming anti-Bush, anti-US bias of the popular, 'non-partisan' Worldchanging activist blog, please note that it has now been two days since the announcement of the Bush administration's excellent, workable, and promising multilateral treaty on reducing methane emissions (methane produces a greenhouse effect 20 times more powerful than CO2), mentioned here yesterday - and there's not a Worldchanging word about it.
Ironically, the most recent post there on climate change is a 'quickchanges' link to a Joi Ito post insisting that "we must understand that we are in a situation that requires immediate action." Yet the most concrete and effective international initiative for reducing greenhouse gases (while simultaneously facilitating economic development in the nonindustrialized world) - the most 'immediate action' likely to have an actual effect on greenhouse emissions that we've seen - is ignored? Because it is authored by the Bush Junta? Because it doesn't sacrifice the economy on the altar of the environment? Because it focuses on a greenhouse gas that we can actually effectively reduce instead of CO2? Maybe they're working up a really long, comprehensive post on it, but I'm not holding my breath... Instead, we've got posts complaining about how American movies need to be, you know, less white. Worldchanging? More like WorldCOMPLAINING, right??
Gary Jones, who has some observant words as to why the methane treaty is likely to work, also comes up with a pretty good metaphor for these folks so invested in their partisan 'worldchanging' worldview that they can't be bothered to see the progress happening in front of their eyes, written in reaction to the Ito piece:
Naive politicized nutters like Ito are irrelevant, spoiled children in the back seat whining "are we there yet". We need much more energy to improve the lot of the majority of humans who currently suffer grievously for lack of it, and that much improvement again to serve the needs of the increased number of humans expected. To do this we need better technologies. We know this and are hard at work developing them. If the spoiled children would grow up a bit and help instead of hindering society the task would be a little easier, but it will happen whether they ever quit whining or not.