Grown Ups Talking

Think of all those poor Norwegians shivering away in the icy fjords and midnight sun. All year round they live in a peculiar alcoholic daze first waiting for the sun to rise for six months, then waiting for it to set for the next six.

Then the Nobel Prizes roll around. Suddenly they are the people on everyone’s lips. Attention resounds and they get to have their own version of an Oscar moment, handing out prizes, ecstatic achievers on the other side of the dinner table, generally being patrician benificence dolers.

But its all a little passive. People who have already done something magnificent, for instance Paul Krugman who “for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity", are celebrated and clapped on the back and given modest lottery-sized checks. They are the ones who have achieved something, the Norwegians are just clapping.

I think this time round they wanted to be more of part of what’s going on. Catch them young, point them in the right direction. Obama is just an innocent young president, set him on the right path and the Nobellers can give an encouraging shove along the way to salvation.

I mean face it, the U.S. President still has more power to affect more peoples’ lives than anyone else on the planet, why wait to see if he screws it up before giving him a prize?

Why not, gulp, help him out? I mean that’s what it’s about isn’t it? This human existence we have? This human existence that could very well come to a watery end if we can’t move as a species to change our habits and preserve our planet?

I think it’s great they gave his the prize. And I think we should all help him too.—Pomerol

John McCain thinks we may need to stay in Iraq for 50 years, in fact 100 years would be fine with him, as long as the Iraqis were nice to the troops. Journalist Jim Holt writes in the London Review of Books that perhaps Cheney & Co. really want to stay in Iraq because of the 115 billion barrels of light crude just waiting to be extracted and exhausted into the atmosphere. A 50 year occupation paid for by working Americans would help.

So consider: 50 years of US-paid-for forces bossing around a country full of pissed off occupants, not to mention surrounded by increasingly hostile neighbors, for a situation which has cost taxpayers almost $500,000,000,000 so far and it’s only been 6 years, so that Cheney and his pals’ portfolios will grow in the new world order? Or immediate comprehensive investment in carbon neutral technologies which will slow global warming, create new investment/money making opportunities, not to mention employment/humanity-saving/asthma reduction payoffs? DTM!—Pomerol

What are politicians – especially those in the United States – smoking? They must be high because I can think of no other reason why these elected officials are moving so slowly on the climate change.

First it took the Cowboy Bush administration years to admit that there actually is something in the air, namely too much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, that affects the planet’s weather. Now the crony-loving politicians that run the American government have admitted that the world may be heading toward a global crisis. With that in mind, they have agreed to vague action.

At last week’s United Nations conference on climate change held in Bali, Indonesia, the United States and 189 other nations agreed to develop a framework for negotiating carbon emissions caps. The decision to think about how the world should negotiate pollution limits came on Saturday (December 14), after two-weeks of talks. I would be fired for taking that long to come up nothing of consequence. They agreed to figure out how to negotiate terms. What does that mean?

Do you sense a lack of urgency here? I don’t want to seem like an alarmist, or to argue against Rolling Stone lyrics, but time really is not on our side. The European Union began dealing with caps in 1997, when the U.S. rejected the Kyoto Protocol, the first pact among industrialized nations (sans the Uncle Sam) to curb carbon emissions. Now, a decade later, not much more has been done. What gives?

I would say that politicians around the world are doing what comes naturally and moving at glacier speed on the issue – but thanks to global warming, the glaciers are actually moving faster than the heads of state these days.

The subprime lending debacle is crippling international financial markets (as the Boston Globe reported two years ago). The all-American double-talkers, who sold poor saps the kind of mortgages that would make a loan shark ashamed, have spread financial paranoia throughout the global economy creating widespread panic, the breakdown of democracy, and guaranteed failure of solving global warming.

Yes, it’s Christmas season again here at GrownUpsTalking, and a jolly happy wonderful time of the year it is. For some reason all this doom and gloom has resulted in more work for freelance designers (for those of you who don’t know, I, Pomerol, am an FD). Weird! Does impending disaster mean more advertising/powerpoint presentations/press kits need to be designed? Apparently yes.

While the economy teetered on a knife edge of success, buoyed up no doubt by large Halliburton contracts and Katrina relief rip-offs, I struggled to find work. Now that we’re really up the river, I’m finally thriving.

What’s that all about? Of course, don’t tell anyone or it won’t last.

Merry Christmas, and a slow economy to you all.—Pomerol