Obama: “The planet will boil over!” UPDATED

Obama in Africa: We’re used to him preaching this stuff to our sinfully prosperous nation, but it seems odd to hear him tell a continent full of developing nations that they’d better temper their own aspirations and dreams, and not aim too high from their sphere.

Ultimately, if you think about all the youth that everybody has mentioned here in Africa, if everybody is raising living standards to the point where everybody has got a car and everybody has got air conditioning, and everybody has got a big house, well, the planet will boil over — unless we find new ways of producing energy.

Well, the wind turbines are a view-spoiling, bird-killing letdown and natural gas (and fracking) has its environmental objectors who doubtless will strive to limit and super-regulate. Not sure where Obama is going to pull the energy from — the political hot air in Washington? — but what really strikes me here is Obama’s artlessness: he’s an American President who manages to make it sound like cars, air-conditioning and big houses are bad things that “everyone” should not have. Because the planet might “boil over.”

Maybe it was a joke. Or maybe it was one of those sensationalistic images that grifters and salesmen use when they think their mark is really dumb.

Well, Obama does sort of think we’re all dumb and he’s the smartest guy in the room.

Or, maybe Obama — who entered office promising “sprawl stops now!” and saying we couldn’t all drive our SUV’s and keep our houses as warm as we’d like — actually believes there is something wrong with too many people having cars and air conditioning and single-family dwellings and control over their room temperatures. Obama never seems to sing this tune to his Hollywood friends, his music-industry friends or his athlete friends, so maybe that stuff is only for the elites, after all.

I’m all for getting rid of the McMansion mentality, by the way, but that should ultimately develop from a personal evolution, not a government project in social practice.

Things are changing quickly. Check your rear-view mirror. Some part of us is really going to miss the speedily-fading notion that in America, you were basically free to run with your own head, dream your own dreams — even if you were just a regular person.

UPDATE:
The planet might boil over…that’s why your power will come through soccer balls!

Image courtesy of shutterstock.com