Senator John Kerry (and his wife Teresa) are currently touring the country to promote their new book, This Moment on Earth [1]; last night, as part of that effort, they did a public sit-down with Charlie Rose at the 92nd Street Y.
John Kerry gives the impression of a man freed from fetters; that's not a coincidence, given that he's decided to withdraw his hat from the 2008 ring. Whether the country is well-served by that is another question entirely, but it certainly seems to be working for him. There's a new looseness there, for want of a better expression, a feeling that he can now say what he wants to say without fear of consequences. In part, this new ability to speak his mind without having to parse every statement has led him to a position of leadership on Iraq - check out SetaDeadline.com [2] - and one that's coincidentally far ahead of any of the current contenders for the Oval Office (cough Hillary cough); it's also in part manifest in this new book.
The most ordinary items of our daily life - perhaps especially these items - are worth reevaluating in light of our precarious relationship with the earth. Even something as simple as, say, a baby's diaper.
He goes on from that to examine the environmental impact of the humble disposable diaper; among other things, the eighteen billion diapers used annually in this country make up fully a third of the solid waste disposed every year in U.S. landfills. That's an interesting conversation to have from an environmentalist point of view; of course, if he were running for President, certain conservative cable news networks would now be running screaming headlines to the effect that John Kerry wants to take away your baby's Pampers.
Thankfully, the nation won't be enduring that particular bit of creative idiocy from Fox. We also won't have the chance to have this thoughtful (if occasionally verbally challenged) man serve as our President, and I'm not sure that we're in turn well served by not having that option. But in the interim, we can read his careful take on the state of our environment, and ponder what might have been had he prevailed two years ago.
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