White roof and roads

Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize winning physicist stated that to protect us from global warming we need to paint the roofs or our houses and our roads white. What? Really?

I am no Nobel Prize (now doubting the validity of the award) winning physicist but lets just apply some common sense to the statement.

First off, we have roughly 300 million people living in the United States. In China and India they have roughly 2 trillion people. So why are we to blame for all the global warming? Are the people in China and India going to change the color of their roofs?

Next little question, What difference does it make when only 30% of the planet is even covered by land? I don't know how much of the land is covered by buildings and roads, but in the whole scope of the size of the planet, I bet not to many.

Where does all this reflective light go, once it reflects? My bet is it goes right into my eyes while I'm driving. Really though it has to reflect and then absorb into something. Last I checked the earth isn't a perfectly flat surface, so light will bounce in another direction and there is a good chance that it will hit something and absorb in the new object. Won't the heat generated warm the ambient air in the atmosphere as it goes to space?

OK, it is to help with air conditioning in warmer climates. Because of the heat generated by the sun it does keep your home cooler to have a lighter colored roof. I understand that. But what about all the people who don't live in a warm climate. I bet it might be a bit more economical for them to have a black roof so they do not have to heat their home as much.

Don't you think the people that live in warmer climates have already figured this out? Americans are not stupid, they are going to do things to help them save money when they built their house originally.

If I paint my roof white, when we get a good spring dust storm that turns my roof brown, do I have to go up and repaint it? What about all this paint that will eventually be added to all the landfills eventually, isn't it harmful to our environment?

I think this is just a strange statement from a scientist turned politician. My last question is for Secretary Chu; why the hell would you want to be working a political government job when you are a award winning scientist?