Chen-ou Liu's Translation Project: First English-Chinese Haiku and Tanka Blog

Friday, April 22, 2022

Green New Deal Talk Tanka

a giant slab of ice
shears off from Antarctica ...
in his SUV
the air becomes stuffier
after my Green New Deal talk


FYI: State of the Planet (the news site of the Columbia Climate School), December 16, 2020: How Buying Stuff Drives Climate Change

In fact, our consumer habits are actually driving climate change. A 2015 study found that the production and use of household goods and services was responsible for 60 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Not surprisingly, wealthy countries have the most per capita impact. A new U.N. report found that the richest one percent of the global population emit more than twice the amount than the poorest 50 percent; moreover, the wealthier people become, the more energy they use. A typical American’s yearly carbon emissions are five times that of the world’s average person. In 2009, U.S. consumers with more than $100,000 in yearly household income made up 22.3 percent of the population, yet produced almost one-third of all U.S. households’ total carbon emissions.