Ted if the degredation would be eliminated or greatly reduced for a resonable cost almost no one would be against it.
Tim, it cost billions to damage the environment so why would you hope it would cost pennies to fix it?
But if there is a huge cost to our wealth and freedom for a tiny improvement in the environment then IMO its stupid to push for the change that causes this tiny improvement.
First, not all environmental reform costs billions...those costs usually occur in the worse cases of degradation, requiring massive cleanup. Secondly, good things usually cost more.....most people don't balk to pay more for a better quality house, so why should we balk to get a better quality environment.
Thats why I am pushing careful analysis of costs and benefits rather then the current arguments along the lines are "the sky is falling so we must do X, Y, and Z to stop this disaster". If every environmental proposal that you would support would pass we would still have environmental damage and still have areas that are made ugly or even dangerous by human activity, and species would still die off.
Why do you say that....as laws are passed, the environment improves. There will be losses like extinct species but eventually the damage may heal assuming that I am wrong and that we have not gone too far the wrong way.
I can't say what you would then do but IMO many environmentalists would then point to these areas where horrible things are still happening and use it as an argument for even more restrictions and regulations.
Of course we don't actually make the decisions but if we did and I compromised by say supporting the Kyoto treaty that wouldn't end it. Sometime soon instead of fighting Kyoto I would be fighting Kyoto II with even more draconian restrictions costing atleast hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars and if I accepted that there would be some other cause.
What I don't thing you understand is that in some ways the US is the tip of the iceberg..yes we consume nearly 30% of the world's available fossil fuels and that's not good but you don't see that quantity of oil or burning up in front of you. Nor do you see anymore the kind of degradation that was once fairly common in this country where whole hills were ripped down, forests leveled or burned off, streams
dammed and rerouted, lakes filled with more and more pollutants etc. Those kinds of things have pretty much stopped here....but in 3/4 of the world they continue.
That's why its critical that all developed nations, including us, start to really clean up are act [so to speak] not only to serve as an example of but to offset some of the more horrific abuses in other parts of the world. If we can act as policeman to the world which so many of our leaders including dubya's father think is important, then I contend its equally as important for us to set an example as a proponent for good environment and maybe do some policing in that area. I further contend that's its as much in our best interest to keep the global environment healthy as it is to keep nuclear war from breaking out. I believe that an unhealthy environment could lead to our demise just as easily as nuclear war.
ted |
