RE: YES Passionate
You know Tallcal101; I think that the focus was more philosophical in nature than what actually is happening in our twisted bi-party world. I am not defending W, far from it I have to say that with Kyoto, he did the right thing but with some of the corporations, he has fallen short to my standards – especially of late.
But since you opened up the door, I have to ask you what purpose would the Kyoto treaty actually do, it subjugates the US, GB and a few other countries to the whims and wants of the third world with a shift in wealth and a point system that is close to what you would even consider too way left at the same time not even considering the fact that the US led the seriousness of pollution controls to the point that we have had the cleanness air in the world outside of Tibet and we have been making serious strides in tightening up our pollution standards every 3 years, look out retrofitting your truck is around the corner. WOW that was a lot!
In addition to this if you look at Europe, they are struggling with the EU, a lack of a true coherent government structure, nationalism forming within France and Germany again and cities that are as polluted if not more polluted as we were 30 years ago. They still have a serious acid rain problem and most of the illnesses related in the cities are a direct result of ignoring obvious signs of pollution. They lack the political system that allows things like the EPA to be more or less in the center with oversight to create progressive policies and not be a political pawn in the bigger picture of things. China, Russia, the pacific rim, India, South America and others are not held to any real standard under that treaty only the “industrialized†nations are. Read the treaty summarization out there.
As for Global Warming, when I was in college I had to take a lecture on cause and effects of global climate changes and the solar system, yes it was boring and it had a lot to do with the chemistry make up of the earths many layers of atmosphere and how it is effected by the space and things happening out there. It was a lecture taught by one of the people who run NASA today, forget his name right now. See the problem is that we humans only contribute a small percentage of the global warming, most of which is a nature occurrence that cycles over 800 to 1000 years. What we can do is little when you think about it; one natural occurrence (very bad solar month) can effect the earth as much as five years of man made pollution can. In addition to this, I have to point out that places like Greenland were actually green 1000 years ago, Europe had their warmest years 1000 years ago, there was a big population boom 1000 years ago and the ice caps were a lot smaller than they are today. This lecture from what I understand is still being taught as it was 25 years ago.
But the question is can we do better? Yes we can but not with any treaty forcing us to do things that would damage our country. With that I am done - sorry to go off topic.