Talk to any environmentalist/green professional and they will tell you in a feverish tone that Obama is expected to be the long awaited leader who will usher in a green revolution to the United States, the type of leader that the country has been despicably lacking for the last 8 years. He's made promises for more renewable energy, more public transit, less dependance on foreign oil - all that good stuff. As a budding green professional myself, I'm pretty stoked over the fact that this will be happening over the next 4 years, and that I will finally start to hear about positive environmental progress from an American president, instead of one who's done nothing else than make his country the laughingstock of the global environmental community.
However, there is one part of Obama's speech that rattled me a lot. About half way through his speech he boldly states that "we will not apologize for our way of life" - echoing Dick Cheney's arrogance when he said "The American way of life is non-negotiable".
Now the United States has much to be proud of - they have built their country on freedom, prosperity and genuine hard work. No question. But having an unapologetic population of 300 million+ (a mere 5% of the world's population) who consumes 25% of the world's resources and who leads the world in per capita carbon emissions could be tad bit worrisome. Maybe it's time for the Obama administration to rethink things through and consider for once the massive carbon footprint that the American Dream has - but I doubt it.
I'm sure an intelligent individual such as Obama realizes it, but knows he wouldn't dare touch the subject or else he'd be maligned worse than Al Gore.
And besides, isn't it an American's God-given right to drive his Yukon 2 blocks to Wall Mart to fill up on flimsy imported electronics, bottled water tapped from municipal water facilities, and hamburgers that required more water to produce than what's in the Mississippi River?? This jackass from Arkansas sure thinks so.
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