Just realized the irony of something I wrote about recently at work. Not that each day at Big Company (TM registered to Jennifer Myszkowski) doesn't drip with irony, but this week's "find" really hit a new low.
I've been rather disgusted by how little the Bush Administration has been doing about global warming. They won't require automakers to increase fuel efficiency, turn up their noses at alternative fuels (unless the alternative fuel is called "coal," of course), and have refused to sign on to the Kyoto Protocols, among other things.
However, that's not to say they're doing nothing about global warming. They are.
Just this week, in fact, I learned that the Administration is requiring manufacturers of albuterol inhalers (mostly for folks with asthma, like yours truly) to make inhalers all of their products without nasty fluorocarbons by 2008.
And here I am, liberal tree-hugger of the Western World, who realizes I've been carrying around one of these deforesting, sea-level raising tools of destruction for years now. Every time I took a puff, apparently, I was making one more polar bear swim for his life.....
Who knew?!
Thanks to the FDA, all of my fellow asthmatics can breathe easier now--once the new inhalers get in circulation, we won't have to choose between filling our lungs or ruining the environment.
Whew!
Of course, the beauty part is that not only can the Administration look like it's doing something about global warming with this idle gesture, it's also making its pals in the pharmaceutical industries happy. For of course, the new "green" inhalers may be free of fluorocarbons, but they're new, so they're not free of patents. As a result, they'll be a lot more expensive than the old, generic polluting albuterol of yore.
Ah, the GOP. Can't help screwing the American public--asthmatics, for pity's sake--even when doing "good."
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