“Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.” Henry Kissinger

I have a problem with this quote, but I’ll come back to that later.

I actually looked for this one specifically because it so seemed to fit with my feelings in regards to the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change last week. The activist and eco-sensitive communities are pretty much untied in their opinion that a) nothing very much worth doing got done inside the conference (although there were some pretty funny protests facilitated outside), and b) politicians are useless at anything that actually requires backbone or common sense, but have a seemingly limitless ability to get stuff done that favors big business and makes no sense whatsoever.

For me, the highlight (and paradoxically, the lowlight) of the conference was the awarding of the 2009 Fossil Award to Canada for Mr. Harper’s continued resistance to anything that smacks of even a hint of ecological responsibility. Canada, former bastion of all causes green, is now the scourge of the free world, mired in as entrenched and myopic a position as is possible, while the ‘third’ world countries, those that would seem to have the most to loose if industrial standards of polluting behavior are actually tightened in any meaningful way, are suddenly the champions of taking the high road.

Harper is a joke, a puppet of the most serious order with less integrity than your average lawyer. Oh yeah, he is a lawyer.

Let’s be clear: The means to move to a more sustainable system of energy utilization, industrialization and transportation already exists. The technology is extant, but it’s less profitable for these buffoons to move towards it in a meaningful way now because it would require a retooling of their industries. Once that retooling is done, there will be more profits than they could shake their canes at, and the process of developing even more responsible technologies would require R&D loans and prompt business startups that would make a huge difference in our stagnant economy. But the profits might not go to the right people, so damn the torpedoes and stay the course, they say. Who cares about climate change, what kind of influence our actions are having on the speed of that change, and what our inaction might result in? There are profits to be made now, dammit, and being responsible or cautious will get in the way of that.

So our politicians line their pockets with our tax dollars while they suck at the tit of commerce and industry, stealing our money now and knowing that a fat appointment to the board of a major corporation awaits them at the end of their ‘public service’, just when they start to receive their monstrous pension payments at the expense of our pension plans and medical coverage.

Any one else feeling ill yet?

Maybe all of those lawyers at the bottom of the ocean that constitute a ‘good start’ need some company.

Oh yeah, my problem with the quote? I think that Kissinger is too charitable in his percentage split. 99-1 might be more accurate.

Or maybe that’s too generous too…