A Time Magazine article which noted that while the reduction of US GHG emissions was slow, it seemed to indicate a clear shift away from heavier fuels and towards cleaner fuels and technologies. According to the article, US Energy DeCarbonization has begun with 11% reduction in Greenhouse Gas emissions since the peak in 07 and down to levels not seen since around the 1990s.
Its good news, but the reality is that much of that progress comes at a unknown ecological price due to the increasingly reliance of Fracking to sustain natural gas production. In addition to shift from high carbon coal to low carbon natural gas are improvements in building efficiency and manufacturing processes thanks to the green business movement and sustainability initiatives. Fracking or Coal-bed Methane has reduced the cost of natural gas to the point where its now more competitive than coal. The result is that more power plants are being powered by natural gas and less by coal.
But does the long term impact of shale gas on the environment make it just as bad or worse that using coal? I would assume there must be great pressure from the powers that be to disregard the true environmental costs of coal-bed methane and fracking and that this is affecting the quality and reliability of the information we're getting about the potential risks and benefits of this technology.
So lets hold back on the popping of the champaign bottles...the reality is that despite the improvement that this rate of reduction indicates, it will take until the end of this century to get this country at more sane CO2 emission levels. The reality is that can't wait that long to get the US emissions levels more in line and proportional to its percentage of the total world population. The US has about 4% of the world's population but emits about 18% of its CO2.
And what if the fracking has disastrous impacts on our clean water supplies and overall condition of the environment? Will be it worth destroying our underground water resources to reduce our CO2 emissions by relying on natural gas instead of more bona-fide renewables like solar, wind and biomass?
Well I am from the USA and I know the capitals of many if not all of the provinces and all the major cities. Yes it is really striking. While I think we can be overly-judgmental of people who are "geographically challenged" and this has been a topic for a self-shaming process inside the USA. Example: I must have read 100 articles with similar topics to this one over the last 20 years.
Its not like the intellectual and media class in the USA is in denial that this has been a problem for a while, but the denial centers on the fact that not much at all has been done about it among the educational leadership class - to make sure that at least our college students have a concept of geography from not just a place orientation, but more holistically in terms of culture, environment, politics and economy. The US can get away with this kind of lack of general knowledge about geography because it is one of the biggest countries in the world and the world's lone remaining superpower. Yet with these kinds of blindspots in the general consciousness of the people who are supposed to the elite/leaders of tomorrow, I could not see such power projection as being sustainable over the long term.
Regardless of all that, you would think that one thing they would make sure is that all the students going to these prestigious schools would know the capital of the countries, just for PR's sake so we American's don't come across like idiots in articles like this one.
I think we correctly assume that anyone going to Harvard would be an intellectual and that would be a mandatory requirement. It could be argued that a serious intellectual would not only know the capital of Canada, but would have a comprehensive knowledge of geography with respect to the world as a whole.
But why would we assume that these schools really truly reflect the best and brightest of not just the USA but the world? The best minds are often not a product of our conventional educational system anyhow. People learn and remember what they learn, when either they believe it is important to know as individuals and citizens and/or when it is impressed upon them upon the larger social systems of which they are apart. When this is lacking, you get the kind "oh stupid me...hehehe...I don't know...is it Ontario?" responses that in my view, make a mockery of the notion of many of the values of Western civilized world which we are supposed to hold dear in our supposedly liberal democratic societies.