Oh...you mean like the $200 billion deficit (so far) that you�re leaving them? Also, as a case in point...

From today's NY Times:

U.S. to Seek Waiver on Weed Killer Harmful to Ozone Layer

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

The Bush administration is considering seeking scores of exemptions for industries that want to keep using an ozone-depleting pesticide that is to be banned by 2005 under an international treaty.

Environmental campaigners say the result, should all the exemptions be granted, would be years of further delay in undoing damage to the ozone layer from decades of emissions of the pesticide, methyl bromide, and other similar compounds.

Experts said that the exemptions from the ban would undermine the Montreal Protocol, a 15-year-old pact protecting the ozone layer and widely perceived as the most effective environmental treaty ever negotiated...

Under a timetable set by the treaty, industrialized countries have steadily decreased use of methyl bromide since 1999 and are to end all use by 2005, except in situations where there are no effective substitutes or markets would be disrupted.

But more than 50 applications for "critical-use exemptions"' have been submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency, by agricultural groups and businesses as varied as chrysanthemum and strawberry growers, flour millers, universities, and golf-course groomers.

If all or most of the exemptions were granted, American use of the pesticide could rise sharply in 2005, exceeding levels now allowed under the treaty and federal law.

A senior federal official involved with assessing the proposed exemptions to the chemical ban said that most of the agricultural users have legitimate worries...

In a related effort, the American Farm Bureau, Florida officials and other lobbying groups have written members of Congress this week seeking bill language that would allow use of methyl bromide to increase 20 percent from the amount currently allowed. Environmental groups assert that the chemical needs to be banned and the treaty honored. They are pressing the White House to winnow the exemption requests greatly, pointing to some businesses that are seeking to increase their use of the chemical.

"If the Bush administration abandons the phase-out of methyl bromide, the safer alternatives will wither on the vine, and the hole in the ozone layer will keep growing," said David Doniger, an expert in international environmental policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Government and administration officials said they would not limit the number of exemptions submitted just to ensure that use of the gas continued to decline.

Methyl bromide is one of a variety of chemicals that are being phased out under the treaty because they break down the high-altitude veil of ozone molecules that blocks harmful ultraviolet rays...

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Yeah, so anyway...I actually didn�t listen to his whole speech, so I guess I shouldn�t comment further. Frankly, the man just nauseates me and I couldn�t stomach the ordeal of sitting through his speech. Plus, I was still working when it started anyway. So instead, I watched a Buffy repeat, followed by Gilmore Girls and The Real World. Oh, I also ate a Cornish Game Hen and washed dishes in there at some point.

Boy howdy, that Real World pad is just filled with nonsense this year. What�s up with Irulan getting all upset with Alton (yes, those are their real names) cuz he was macking on other chicks when, hello � SHE is the one who has a boyfriend at home?! I totally know what happened. They�re so transparent, these kids. For those of you who don�t know, Alton fell in love with Irulan, who has this boyfriend at home (with whom she has an "open relationship," but his one request was that she not get involved with any of the roommates because he knew if they lived together any fling would become far more than that. Oops). Although the two of them were obviously very close, Alton was intent on keeping his options open so that his little heart wouldn�t get broken when the end of their trip comes and Irulan goes home to her boyfriend. Duh. But the fact that Alton was hooking up with other women didn�t sit right with Irulan � because I guess he was supposed to be her surrogate boyfriend while they were living in Las Vegas and then just be sitting alone nursing his broken heart when she goes home to her boyfriend.

I know Irulan was upset because she actually cares for Alton, too. But, hello already! Get a clue, kids. If you want Alton, go for Alton and give up the other boyfriend. Otherwise it�s totally unfair to expect him to act like you two have a committed relationship when you have a boyfriend back home.

Of course, then Alton lied...he didn�t want to admit to Irulan that he had hooked up with other people and so he lied about it, rather than stand up and point out the obvious. That was a stupid move, because other people in the house knew he was lying.

Man, I need to get a life of my own.

So in regard to my pizza...I haven�t ordered a pizza in a long time, actually. The restaurant I order from is great � expensive but great. However, last night they screwed up my pizza. As we all know, my favorite toppings are sausage and green bell pepper. Well, there was no sausage on my pie, dammit! I had a bell pepper pizza! How very boring.

Actually, though, it was still quite tasty and let�s face it � it was much better for me without the little wads of pig fat.

I was writing the other day about my watching the Outdoor life Network recently. I�ve now become addicted to another show on that channel: Global Extremes. All of these people are going through rigorous challenges in an attempt to earn a spot as one of a selected few to climb Everest for free next year.

Damn...I swear, had I known about this I totally would have given it a shot. Of course, they would have laughed me out of the competition and people world over would have mocked me incessantly (actually, there are only three people on the planet who watch OLN, so really only three people would have been mocking me and that�s pretty reasonable in relation to how many people mock me on a daily basis anyway), but it would have been worth the shot to me.

My main problem in the competition, aside form the cold which would drive me batty, would be skiing. I am not a great skier. I am not even a good skier. In fact, I pretty much suck in a huge way.

I have a bad knee, you see. Old softball injury. It�s amazing how much you have to use your knees when skiing.

I think it�s unfair to include skiing in this competition, anyway. You don�t have to ski up Everest, after all.

But my point is that I have been obsessed with Mount Everest for the last several years. I will never climb it, I know, but every season I keep myself abreast of what�s happening on Everest: who�s climbing, who�s dieing. Morbid, I know, but it happens every year.

I won�t climb it not because I couldn�t face the physical challenge. I mean, I couldn�t face the challenge right now (she says, thinking of the leftover pizza waiting for her in the fridge), but it wouldn�t take me long to get in to shape and I assume I would have had advance notice of this competition. I won�t climb Everest because of the following:

1. I value my life. Every person who climbs Everest has a 20% chance of dieing up there. It doesn�t matter how experienced you are (note the 1996 disaster in which two Everest guides were among the twenty-or-so killed on the mountain that year). Once you get to an elevation that high, you are totally at the mercy of the elements. As far as experience goes, you�re lucky if you have your full mental capacities so that you even remember your expertise. Even oxygen bottles don�t seem to help much at that elevation. Sherpas, or people who grew up in the area, are of course exempt. But I ain't no Sherpa.

2. The mountain is too crowded with dorks like me who think they can climb it, anyway. The truth is, Everest is such big business that you don�t even need to know what you�re doing to climb it. If you are in decent shape and have a spare $40,000 you can go with a guide who will even strap you to a Sherpa who will lead you every inch of the way, if need be. Therefore, every year the mountain gets more and more crowded. The mountain may be big, but the main route and easiest trail is narrow. More importantly, there is a very small window of time during which you can even climb Everest (approx. 3 weeks in May) and to top it off you have to wait until the weather is right to go for it. Twenty-one days, maybe half of which are actually good days to climb, weather-wise, and hundreds of people clambering to get up a narrow trail; you do the math. No wonder it�s so dangerous.

3. The mountain is becoming a huge garbage dump. It�s filled with discarded oxygen bottles and tents just left by people when they no longer needed them (or, let�s face it � when they died farther up the mountain). I would be willing to go up there as part of a clean-up team.

4. I hike and climb to be part of nature and appreciate it. I also get a kick out of discovering what my body is capable of. Climbing Everest sounds simply horrible from that perspective. Usually, people make it to the top and don�t even have time to appreciate what they�ve just done or the beauty that surrounds them. They�re exhausted, of course, but they�re also suffering from oxygen-depletion. You also have a very quick turn-around time � only so many hours you can be up on that mountain. First of all, there are hundreds of people waiting below for you to come down so they can go up. Then there�s the fact that if you take too long you will run out of oxygen (assuming you�re using supplemental oxygen, which we all know I would be). Also, the weather can change literally at a moments notice. If you�re lucky enough to summit, you�d better hurry your ass back down or the weather may turn on you.

5. The affects of oxygen-depletion on both the body and the brain are extremely scary to me. You may have supplemental oxygen for the last few hundred feet of your ascent, but by that time you�ve already been climbing for weeks and you�re already at a higher elevation than humans are physically prepared for.

a. Lack of oxygen eats up muscle-mass. By the time they summit, most climbers have already lost like 20-30 pounds because of this, on top of weeks of bad food and over-exertion.

b. You simply get wacky in the head. Some people tested at different sections of the South Col route (the easiest to climb) can�t even do simple addition by the time they get to Camp 3 (the final camp before the summit bid).

c. Edema is a huge risk - blood leaking in to the brain due to lack of oxygen. Pulmonary Edema is another risk, wherein the blood leaks in to your lungs. Neither are fun; both are life-threatening.

6. Should anything go wrong and you actually need medical attention, it�s not like there�s a hospital down the street. You can�t even be air-lifted off the mountain � the air is too thin. You would need to make it back to Base Camp, where a helicopter can land. Good luck.

So yeah, I won�t be climbing Everest any time soon. But it�s a nice little obsession of mine.

And now I�m off to warm up some bell pepper pizza...

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