[xmca] “Talent comes from hard work—tobacco helps you become talented,”

[Peter Smagorinsky <smago@uga.edu>]

I support the Audubon Society, and get their excellent magazine, which includes an article in the newest issue about how the US is selling its dirty coal to China, which no doubt helps create the pollution evident in the picture below (many such images are available through google images). The author, Ted Williams, provides an analogy between the modern coal industry and the tobacco industry, which now not only markets aggressively in China, but is a sponsor of elementary schools. Read and weep:

Writing in Yale Environment 360<http://e360.yale.edu/feature/as_coal_use_declines_in_us_coal_companies_focus_on_china/2474/>, an online magazine, Jonathan Thompson draws an apt comparison between exporting coal and exporting tobacco, calling coal “the cigarette of our new age.” A quarter-century ago the tobacco industry was also comatose on the canvas. Medical evidence had given the lie to its mantra that smoking and cancer weren’t linked; no longer could it advertise on television or radio; and on its very packaging it had to warn customers against using its product. Then it found a market in Asia (mostly China) so lucrative as to “confound the imagination,” as a Philip Morris vice president effused. Tobacco companies sponsor at least 100 elementary schools in China, where 16 million kids under 15 smoke. “Talent comes from hard work—tobacco helps you become talented,” reads foot-high, gilt lettering on the side of China’s Sichuan Tobacco Hope Elementary.
http://www.audubonmagazine.org/articles/climate/kicking-coal-habit

As if they need our help:
[Description: https://encrypted-tbn2.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQrak5mDGB_Vu-oAP_0RFyKufkbG2LHhOF6lvpIxYLp0iSiRmTp]

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