Letter to Jeffrey Sachs

December 30, 2007

Jeffrey Sachs

@The Miami Herald

One Herald Plaza

Miami, Florida 33132-1693

RE: A small risk assumed for a greater cause – I ain’t the Queen but my year end Honors List beats hers by a 7 league carbon footprint. A comment on your article in today’s Miami Herald.

My dear Professor,

Having just completed a 3411 mile round trip in a SUV, a gas guzzling, CO2 belching, ice berg melting, polar bear drowning, rain forest destroying hunk of Detroit iron – xenophobically Buy American am I – I was going to slide gently into 2008.

Having read your column at dawn, and how grateful I am for each new day of consuming conspicuously without worrying about its effects on the various WOGs of whom you write, I am taking up the cudgels of “Culture Man”. It is an identity I assume when I see Western Civilization threatened, particularly by one who benefits from it so well and so hypocritically.

There went my weekend.

I am going to take a risk, a risk that can be described as Lilliputian, that between now and tomorrow at midnight a bigger horse’s ass will appear in the public arena. Should that happen it would be Brobdanaglia cubed.

I therefore declare you

HORSE’S ASS OF THE YEAR.

This is an honor not lightly given. That you have well and truly earned it there can be no doubt. Your award will be a series of 6 foot high mirrors that can be arranged in a circle. Like Stonehenge. Get some 3^rd World Wormwood to assemble it with you inside the circle. There you will have to try to find your ass using both hands plus the mirrors. No easy task for you to be sure. I am comfortable that you will prevail around the time of the vernal equinox. Thank God for Leap Years. It gives you an extra day.

A close reading of your article is all the evidence needed. It is like a 21^st century Q.E.D. That’s Latin. I hope there is somebody, anybody, left on Morningside Heights who can help you. If not, send a SASE.

#1 – “The world was sufficiently united that it forced the United States to end its intransigence.”

Are you saying that Paraguay, North Korea, and Burkina Faso, coupled with the stout Flems and the mighty Walloons, brought the Yankee colossus to its knees? Let’s not forget the Italianate hand of the Palestinians together with the wily Catalans when it was time for the short strokes.

Not for nothing did Marley’s partner say, “I’ll retire to Bedlam”.

You mention the “deadlock” of Kyoto. Why, a skeptic might ask, don’t you mention the fact that the Clinton administration never submitted it to the Senate for its advice and consent as the Constitution requires? Was there anyone in the United States Senate then who would have voted for it?

T.E. Lawrence, the noted multiculturalist and champion of diversity, said “Not much could be gained from a sure win but much could be gained from a sure loss”.

Why didn’t the Clinton administration and particularly its Vice President, Alpha Gump, AKA “Cementhead”, who gave us the immortal phrase “no controlling legal authority” demand an up or down vote?

#2 – “Poor countries do not and will not accept a system of climate control that condemns them to continued poverty.”

Do you know what you are saying?

I don’t.

If you live in Dahomey, where a knife and fork are signs of wealth, are you saying that aggressive air conditioning in Houston will send them over the edge? Are you saying that Dahomey wouldn’t be so poor if Houston weren’t air conditioned? Are you saying that Dahomey wouldn’t be so poor if Houston were poorer?

What, pray tell, is Dahomey going to do about it?

One thing you can do is to pick either July or August of 2008 to turn off your air conditioning.

Suffice to say this. Since the end of World War 2 the “rich” nations have been sending money to the “poor” nations. One thing is certain. It hasn’t worked.

Only an academic, a multi-degreed, internationally acclaimed academic, one like you, could look at the record of the last 60+ years and say, “Eureka! I got it! Let’s send more money! This time we’ll include mosquito nets!

#3 – “The most important challenge is to reduce and eventually nearly eliminate, carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal.”

I doubt if the country can go nuclear by next year’s Rose Bowl. I doubt if I can get all the cows, sheep, and itinerant goats to stop their unregulated borborygymous activities.

Here’s a stop gap measure.

If carbon dioxide is the problem let’s all, starting with you, hold our breaths. As you go flat line you’ll have the warm, fuzzy feeling you really, really did something good for personkind.