Thursday, December 13, 2007
Fly Ban Ki To The Moon
Ban Ki-moon has been slammed for planning a round-the-world trip that will generate thousands of tonnes of carbon emissions just days after he leaves the UN meeting in Bali.
The South Korean has organised a post-conference trip, starting on Sunday, that will see him fly to attend the concert in New York, adding more than 4,300 miles to his itinerary. When he leaves the island after the summit Mr Ban will fly to East Timor, and then to Japan where he will briefly stop before catching another flight to the US.
The flight from Tokyo to New York takes him the wrong way around the world to arrive in time for the reception of a Korean concert-at Carnegie Hall, where he is the guest of honour. The concert is titled Around The World In Eighty Minutes.
The stop will add about 4,300 miles to Mr Ban's itinerary and generate about 1,684lb extra of CO2 emissions for each member of his delegation.
[...]
[The UN] estimates the cost of its off-setting [of Moon's trip] at $18 a tonne of CO2 produced. At that rate, the cost of off-setting Mr Ban's extra mileage to attend the concert in New York would be $13.50 a head.
Mr Ban has been criticised within the UN for paying such attention to South Korea since becoming the world's top civil servant. Insiders speculate that he or his chief of staff, Kim Won Soo, harbour political ambitions in their homeland.
Pope Benedict XVI has launched a surprise attack on climate change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology.
The leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics suggested that fears over man-made emissions melting the ice caps and causing a wave of unprecedented disasters were nothing more than scare-mongering.
[...]
The 80-year-old Pope said the world needed to care for the environment but not to the point where the welfare of animals and plants was given a greater priority than that of mankind.
[...]
His remarks reveal that while the Pope acknowledges that problems may be associated with unbridled development and climate change, he believes the case against global warming to be over-hyped.
Or perhaps this little ditty, sung to the tune of "Come Fly With Me":
"Come fly with me, the global warming crisis is at High Noon,
Come fly with me I'm UN General Secretary Ban Ki Moon
Come fly with me let's jet set and spread some lies
Before some unimportant exotic species dies
Come fly with me, let's fly and let's fly soon...
Come fly with me I'm General Secretary Ban Ki Moon
Come fly with me I've got propaganda to spread
Come panic with me and lend me some street cred."
Someone needs to tug on the facial tissue of Ben Wa Balls and make sure that he's real and it's not just former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan wearing a mask.
©2007
Labels: Gore earth fever
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