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OCT 07- OCT 14, 2014

Comparing New York to Tunisia, Running a Fool's Errand or What?

By Mike Hudson

October 07, 2014

Heather Liebowitz should tell Tunisia to stop selling oil.

Tunisia? For real?

An obscure Northern African country of camel-riding nomads with a population of less than 11 million was recently compared to New York State, a world financial and industrial center with approximately twice the population.

Who did the comparison? Something called the Environment New York Research & Policy Center, a statewide, citizen-based advocacy group, which advocates the elimination of coal burning plants such as Somerset in Barker to ward off global warming.

We don't know which citizens are based at the Environment New York Research and Policy Center but their spokeswoman, Heather Leibowitz, sounds a little cuckoo.

Without providing any comparative data whatsoever, she sent out a news release stating that New York State's coal fired power plants dump as much pollution into the environment as the entire country of Tunisia.

"When power plants here in New York create as much pollution as an entire country, we know the climate's in trouble," said Leibowitz, Director of Environment New York. "It's time to stop ignoring the nation's largest global-warming polluters, and start investing in clean energy."

Heather must have had to look long and hard for Tunisia, an Arab country that had its' last revolution, or violent overthrow of the government, just three years ago, in 2011.

The reality is that Tunisia produces more camel dung each year than the entire State of New York. You don't hear Leibowitz harping about that, do you?

Her screed came as activists and world leaders converged in New York City seeking solutions to climate change, which she believes, and wrote, are clearly linked to extreme weather events such as Hurricane Sandy.

It’s not clear how well Heather Liebowitz would be received if she told the people of Tunisia they should close down their oil fields..

 

Of course, hurricanes, volcanoes, various Ice Ages, asteroid impacts and various other catastrophic meteoroidal events have been taking place on the planet since long before human beings even existed. This is apparently lost on Leibowitz, who apparently makes her money trying to scare people.

The good folks of tiny Tunisia, humble as they are, would likely be embarrassed by Leibowitz's comparison of them to New Yorkers.

And Leibowitz, because of her sex and the fact that she has a Jewish last name, would probably not do well to go over to Tunisia - which is 98 percent Muslim - and ask them about it.

Leibowitz might send them a press release telling them to close down their oil fields, which produce 100,000 barrels of oil per day, and which, in turn, goes to countries that use it in cars that produce a lot of greenhouse gas that causes global warming.

"When oil fields in a tiny place like Tunisia create 1000 times more worldwide greenhouse pollution from selling oil than New York State, which has twice the population, we know the climate's in trouble," she might write.

The people of Tunisia, if asked to forgo their natural asset -oil - would probably have a fine word or two for her.

Tunisia produces about 36 million barrels of oil per year which produces 14,897,960 tons of CO2 per year. When you compare this to the 11 million tons of CO2 produced by the five leading coal burning plants in New York, Tunisia is not better than New York in pollution.

 

Dizzy Gillespie wrote and performed “A Night In Tunisia.” Heather Leibowitz is perhaps unlikely to spend a night there.

 

 

 

 

 

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