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Here is a recent tweet by South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint after the heavy snowfall down in DC a few weeks ago (as pointed out in Friedman’s Global Weirding Is Here article in the NYTimes). He was ovbiously taking a jab at Al Gore, claiming that if it’s snowing this much in the middle of winter, global warming must certainly be some kind of hoax. I’m not even going to go into the topic, because I think that more than anything, it’s a distraction. I want to say, WHO CARES if the global climate is truly changing or not. How about we focus on what we can do to better ourselves as Americans and if, at the same time, we happen to help the environment a bit, so be it. Let’s take a look at how much the U.S. spent on oil imports last month (data sourced from PickensPlan.com)

$27.5 Billion sent overseas, out of the American economy which is struggling so much to create jobs for unemployed citizens. I wish Senator DeMint would stop making comments such as the one above, and start thinking a bit more like Friedman, which would be by “investing in renewable energy, energy efficiency and mass transit — because this insurance will also actually make us richer and more secure. We will import less oil, invent and export more clean-tech products, send fewer dollars overseas to buy oil and, most importantly, diminish the dollars that are sustaining the worst petro-dictators in the world who indirectly fund terrorists and the schools that nurture them.”

Why does that concept make so much sense to me and not others? Why are people praising DeMint’s tweet on website’s such as this? I’ll say it again, its a distraction. Friedman reiterating the point one last time: “Iran, Russia, Venezuela and the whole OPEC gang are high-fiving each other. Nothing better serves their interests than to see Americans becoming confused about climate change, and, therefore, less inclined to move toward clean-tech and, therefore, more certain to remain addicted to oil.”