This year’s presidential election is the most important in decades, so say both of the political parties that rule the United States.
If that is so it’s mighty peculiar how obsessed with trivia the Democrats appear to be as they plan the party’s nominating convention, the crowning event of the primary process. Caterers in Denver, the host city, are scratching their heads in disbelief over the plethora of requirements and restrictions under which they must operate to do their part in making the convention "green."
For instance, as the linked article points out, fried shrimp served on a bed of jasmine rice alongside a mango salad just won’t do. The party elders have imposed a ban on all fried foods and decreed that food should be local, organic, or both. While no one has ever eaten an inorganic shrimp the Mile High City fishermen certainly don’t find many shrimp in the crystal streams and rivers flowing down the slopes of the Rocky Mountains, while rice and mango don’t grow in locations with frigid winter temperatures. In any case the convention commissars insist that each convention dish must be comprised of at least three of five approved colors, garnishes not being allowed to count.
After downing the rainbow-hued, locally grown, non-fried delicacies, the conventioneers will be comforted to know that none of the plates and utensils will make their way into bursting landfills, since those items must be either compostable or reusable. The planners’ great minds, however, must weigh whether the compostable, starch-based forks and knives, imported almost entirely from Asia, actually leave a smaller carbon footprint, or whether the fuel needed to ship them across the ocean and continent would indicate that reusable plates and utensils are greener. Perhaps so but it takes a lot of energy to run high-temperature dishwashers to render the cutlery re-usable. So many decisions on which the fate of the planet depends!
The planning committee is developing a carbon-footprint calculator that will measure the environmental impact of each and every event. An offset fee will be deposited into a fund that matches carbon losses with carbon gains, just like Al Gore’s highly profitable (to himself) scheme of "cap and trade." There is nothing that escapes these green crusaders. The Democrats will have the perfect political convention: smoke free, fat free, carbon free. It won’t be alcohol free. Although increasingly politically incorrect, alcohol may provide the only chance the conventioneers can endure the event. The Democrats’ politically correct convention preparations foretell a future in which every activity, even those necessary for survival, will be wrapped in chains of self-induced guilt.
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