There’s a famous airfield north of Paris, called Le Bourget. 88 years ago, Charles Lindbergh landed there after making the first solo flight across the Atlantic. Commercial flights haven’t landed there for years, but every other year, it’s the site of the Paris Air Show.
Right now, Le Bourget is where representatives of 150 countries are meeting, trying to figure out how to save the planet from global warming. Barack Obama and Justin Trudeau and a half dozen of Canada’s Premiers were there when the Climate Summit began. A lot of the same people will be back when it ends, 10 days from now.
Al Gore is part of it all. He probably will never admit it, but as he gazes at the Oscar on his mantle, Al is quietly glad that he lost that election to Bush 43 15 years ago. He was already rich then, but he’s gotten a lot richer being the poster boy for climate change.
The objective of everyone who’s involved at Le Bourget is to move the planet away from burning fossil fuels. Even if it ends in a unanimous agreement, which is highly unlikely, it’s probably still too late to stop what’s happening in the atmosphere. There are also still quite a few naysayers who argue that human activity has very little to do with what’s happening to the climate of the earth.
It’s undoubtedly a good thing that we’re moving ahead with alternatives, particularly electric cars that can drive themselves. No doubt Lindbergh would love to had some of that wonderful technology on that lonely flight across the ocean. The Spirit of St. Louis was a flying bomb. When he took off from Long Island, barely clearing the power lines at the end of the field, Lindy was surrounded by tanks of fuel.
Many times that amount of fuel is being burned, flying all those folks to and from Le Bourget in 2015. Will any of it make a difference ? You have to wonder.
I’m Roger Currie
Photo by John Kerstholt / Wikipedia
