We're number 114!

Posted July 8, 2009 at 12:32 PM

http://exurbanleague.com/2009/07/08/were-number-114.aspx?ref=rss

I studied Spanish for a year in Costa Rica, (¡Olé, oléoléolé, Monstruos, Monstruos!) and I love that country dearly. I want to retire there someday, and my wife and I have plans to go back there on vacation as soon as we can.

But is it the happiest country on Earth?

Nope. It's not even the "greenest" country on Earth.

First off, Costa Rica really doesn't really have a manufacturing base: It's primary sources of income are tourism and banking. Sorry, Kermit, but it's easy being green if you don't really make something, just shuffle tourists and money around from one place to another.

And even Costa Rica's much-vaunted "eco-" tourism isn't that ecologically sound. If an ugly American wants to commune with nature in the Monteverde or snuggle up to a sea turtle in Tortuguero, they have to fly there. On a plane. A big, fossil-fuel burning, CO2-bleching plane.

And fly coach? With all those breeders? Ewwwww.

Once you land in San José, the taxi that'll take you to your hotel was probably made 20 years ago in some Eastern-bloc country and hasn't seen a smog check sensor since Bush was President.

George H.W. Bush, that is.

On the ride to your hotel, you'll be breathing in the rich aroma of exhaust fumes from cast-off school buses from all over the U.S. and Canada pressed into use as public transport buses and blast past billboards advertising all manner of Japanese, European and American consumer goods, all imported into Costa Rica via large, CO2-burning container ships.

But don't worry, you'll soon be feeling very green. With nausea, that is, because being an environmentally-friendly country apparently means never filling in potholes. Once all of that is over and done with, you're dropped off at your hotel and walk into it's lush, palatial lobby with floors made from purpleheart, cocobolo and ironwood, all taken from old-growth rainforest trees that were chopped down just to give the tourists a little nicer place to stay.

It's a happy place, though. As long as you ignore what's around you.

I don't mean to seem so down on Los Ticos, but let's face it: "Eco-tourism" is a contradiction in terms. A mi, me gustá el Volcán Arenal y Playa Manuel Antonio mucho, but I enjoy it for what it is, and I don't think my going there will help save the planet.