Since this is the weekend I will suggest that your
question is tainted. How can you not say the Soviets'
Chernobyl disaster wasn't worse than anything ever done
in the US? I haven't been to Shanghai but there have
been plenty of posters on various threads who have, so
I can say that the pollution there is a disaster with
no concern about mis-stating the situation. Pictures
help on this, and there have been plenty. These are not
the only points that are contrary to your assertion.
The real problem is that we are our own worst enemies,
where "we" is a collective perspective on a very open
society where everyone is free to criticize the work of
others without providing better solutions. You must be
careful in defining "better solutions" because ideas
that sound great or work to a small degree do not count.
They do not solve the big problems.
As a society - and this is my opinion only, one of some
serious frustration with those who take for granted the
work of others - we are the most self-centered bunch of
whiners ever to exist in the history of this planet. We
expect every solution to be perfect according to our own
sense of what should be. What is does not matter. Facts
do not matter. Reasonable compromises will not work in
our present governmental system because there will always
be a judge somewhere who will rule for some whiners who
have the funds to press their agenda in court.
We are in gridlock on key issues. We are self-destructing
and doing it by spending ourselves into a catastrophe. As
a society we are due our comeuppance. If you think things
are bad in the world now, just wait until you see what
happens when someone else is in control. I hope to never
see that day myself.
Our ancestors, especially grandparents and before, worked
very hard to build a society that provides opportunities
that are reasonable for anyone who will work hard, which is
all that should be expected.
The only thing that those of us born after WW2 seem to add
is the ability to nitpick and harass each other in court to
the point that we can make no progress without a disaster
occurring first. This is what a lawyer-driven society has
to offer. Lawyers offer no solutions that will work, but
they can stop anyone who tries. Remember we graduate about
10 lawyers for every US born engineer. In Asia it is more
like the other way around.
Some day people will have to recognize that solutions will
never be perfect, especially not for everyone because we
all have different agendas. Some agendas are to just plain
destroy the ability of others to function.
Sorry for the rant, but this is what I see.
Now let me add this - our approaches are not perfect, and
we could learn some from other countries. We don't know
everything here (and that is rapidly becoming an understatement
with the degrading K-12 education). As an example, France
has had little trouble with nuclear energy. From what I
have read (I'm not an expert), they build them all the same
so that when they find a problem all their reactors can be
fixed the same way. We should be ashamed that they are
beating us where it counts in the nuclear field. However
this is a long ways from claiming that the rest of the world
is so much better than we are. That is crap. I should also
point out that Japan and Korea are using large volumes of
LNG, and have for years with few problems. Now that we are
in need of LNG in the future, what we get in the US already
is a tidal wave of lawyers fomenting fear with exaggerated
claims that are just ridiculous. At this rate, the NIMBYs
will destroy us.
There are two reasons immediately obvious as to why you
have that illusion. First, the most glaring is that most
of the world does not have an open society like in the US,
so their "warts" are not visible for us to see. I also
think that some US citizens don't want to admit that other
societies really are worse than ours. Second, people in
the rest of the world are working to improve their meager
lives, not criticize themselves. They are proud of their
efforts and will not give their detractors cannon fodder.
With respect to reasonable government policy development,
we are behaving like idiots in this country.
Finally, the most important part of this is that the news
media in the US is not interested in doing their job as the
so-called 4th sector of government, which is to provide the
citizens of this country real information that is needed for
people to make good decisions.
Finally - we (or our children) will get to see the world
from the perspective of the rest of the world because with
society deteriorating the way it is, and no effort by US
citizens to rally around what we have in common instead of
focusing on our differences, our quality of life will be
seriously degraded in the future. This is coming.
Ed |
