White Roofs

I don't have time to research this again so I can give you the particulars, but I saw some news article this week that reported that Steven Chu, our energy secretary, has suggested that we all paint our roofs white to be more green. You can look at the following site for more details: http://http://green.yahoo.com/news/afp/20090526/sc_afp/climatewarmingusbritainchu.html

I don't know how to post the link without the whole address visible - sorry.

Anyways, although it is not something that would cause 30 million people to starve to death, it kind of makes me think of Mao. In fact, I realized the other day that I think that is what all of the hype over going "green" has made me think of. I used to think, "We go through some interesting fads in our society." However, this latest story made me think about history. General Mao asked his people to do some pretty incredible things, like melt down all of their iron, if I remember right. He asked them all to plant crops, even though not every Chinese person knew how to do that. But somehow, the people all joined in, and, tragically, they paid for it with tens of millions of lives.

I'm not saying that's what is going to happen to us if every American homeowner paints his/her roof white. I'm just saying that it's interesting how a few people can sometimes influence an entire nation to do something, and I don't think it usually ends up solving the problem. This is probably a bad correlation, and maybe I'll be really embarrassed I shared and I'll delete this, but the article kind of got me thinking . . .