Firsty, I enjoy being a hippy. Secondly, it's fun to bash Bush - but in all seriousness, I realise that the Kyoto Protocol is just the first tiny step towards climate change reduction. Anyone who says otherwise is a fool. It's not the be-all-and-end-all because it won't solve everything. The fact that people can't sign onto an already outdated stepping stone is a bad sign.
Originally posted by Carl
1. the hole in the ozone layer is a natural cycle the earth goes through.
Proof, please.
3. a lot of the pollution on earth seems to be in under developed third world countries where there is no industry that could produce pollution.[/b]
Now that is naive. In fact, Third World countries do have heavy industries if you take a look - because they have a lot of raw ores, produce our goods, etc. The problem is that their machinery is old and very pollutant because they can't afford the cleaner machinery we have the luxury of. Christ, most of it is pre 1979 oil-powered stuff.
wEvil - this is an article I reproduced unedited not because I agreed with every word, but because I thought it raised some interesting issues, considering it was written by a right-wing financial institution. In other words, it wasn't
too lefty like you and I would like to scare off everyone else.

Which means everyone will have to SHUT THE F**K UP about genetic engineering & biotechnology- we need this technology to survive now, and none of your moral arguments will change this fact. Well, your precious morals will kill us all for no other reason than your inflexibility. pro-GM people are quite happy to take precautions and make intelligent concessions, whereas anti-GM people just want to get in the way - any way they can[/b]
I never said I was anti-GM - I actually think it's a pretty good thing if it saves lives, and that most of the negative press is scaremongering by people who should know better but are tied to ideological positions by their other beliefs. However, could everyone stop going on about Malthus? He was wrong. He was wrong 100 years ago, and he's wrong now.
Let me remind you of something, every nation that has money, worked for it, even the US I did not turn 18 and the government came to me and said "Boy you lucked out being an American eh? Here's your million dollars, your car and your house" No, we all worked for it, everyone earned it, and when it's gone they don't just go into their pockets and pull out more. They aren't going to give their hard earned money to nations who don't have any, out of the goodness of their hearts.
Why am I going to spend my money developing a nation that will turn around and compete with me on the global economy to try and take my money? Do Coke and Pepsi run around forming soft drink corporations to compete againest them out of the goodness of their hearts? We have people here who live below the poverty line. We have enough goddamn problems without the collective weight of the world. I'm very sorry these people are living in **** nations and dying, blame their governments for screwing them over, not me.[/b]
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Of course you were lucky to be born American. There's nothing that makes you inherently American from pre-birth (except having American parents...but you could be anyone from that).
I hope that you realise that competition breeds both wealth and good prices for consumers under a market system. It encourages firms to improve their products to retain market share, and to make efficieny gains. It avoids the pitfalls of monopolies. Consumers get a better deal because prices fall. Therefore, if America was in competition for some products you'd gain in lower prices just as much as you'd lose in lost business.
As for "their governments screwing them over", you have to remember that we also screwed their governments over first. Frankly, the insinuation in your post that Third World countries are on the ropes because their governments are uniformly corrupt and ours are sanguine borders on racism. Anyway, the world is far too interconnected to pin the blame on any one government. The poverty in the Third World is due to a combination of overpopulation, poor land, misgovernment and maltreatment by foreign powers. You can't divorce any country from the world around it in our globalized world.
And besides, disregarding that - what did these people do to deserve such crap land and crap lives? We've already mentioned that people don't, generally speaking have power over their governments. It's no different in Algeria than it is in America. Are you saying that from birth these people somehow
deserve their fate, and we're under no obligation to help our fellow man?
Remember that next time you need the care of a doctor or someone - Medicare, preferably.
