Michael, I am not sure what the relationship is between having a good time and protecting the environment. I think you can do both, and you seem to be arguing that the two concepts are mutually exclusive. There is nothing about the freedom to ride jet skis in the Constitution, and you have not addressed in your post how we balance your individual freedoms against everyone else's individual freedoms. No one has COMPLETE freedom. What do you have to say about that issue?
If you want to call environmentalism a religion, I won't object, because I think that loving the planet and protecting and nurturing it is a positive and beautiful belief system. Without the earth, how will everyone else even practice their religions? To trash it seems very shortsighted to me. However, environmentalism is NOT a religion in an important way, because it uses science, not belief, as its foundation.
The articles I provided in the urls I shared with you were from a wide variety of sources, including the Journal of the American Medical Association. Hardly a front for Greenpeace!!! You asked me to provide evidence about environmental damage and injuries and deaths from jet skis, and I did so. Then you trashed them. What you would need to do to be taken seriously on the issue is prove that they are all untrue, and I don't think you can do that.
Here is an editorial from yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle. Yes, I know it is a "liberal" paper. But it cites concrete statistics about jet skis. Facts are facts, regardless of the source. If you can refute these, I would be very interested in your response. The most amazing one is that exhaust from two hours of jet skiing is equivalent to that of a 1998 car driven 130,000 miles!!
One thing you do not seem to understand is that nature is not put there for people to destroy. If you call that "having fun", then have you thought of what our beautiful recreation areas will look like once they have been polluted and trashed and there are dead fish and birds floating by, and the noise level from the jet skis is deafening? How will families have pleasure there at that point?
What you do is bring arguments out that appeal to the emotions, trying to paint Greenpeace and the environmental movement as anti-family and anti-freedom, but there is no logic in your arguments. I will offer the same challenge to you that I did to Duncan--can you explain logically why some of the world's most prominent fossil fuel companies have embraced the concept of human-based global warming, and want to do something constructive about it, if there is no such thing? Can you understand even a little the argument that cleaning up the environment and stopping global warming does not have to be the financial disaster you paint it as? No country needs to end up like Romania!!!! That is just not logical in any way.
Frankly, I think the people at the Feelings thread who take the environment and global warming seriously are winning the argument so far, and it isn't even close!
Stricter Emissions Rules For California
Jet Skis
Monday, July 13, 1998
THE TIDE HAS turned against the manufacturers
and users of jet skis -- those annoying motorcycles
of water sports -- under siege by federal, state and
local agencies as well as environmentalists.
And that doesn't even include the angry throngs of
vacationers at America's lakes and beaches whose
tranquility has been insulted by the angry buzz and
rooster-tail wakes of speeding jet skiers.
Personal watercraft with two-stroke engines like jet
skis are especially offensive as a quadruple threat,
polluting air and water at the same time they disturb
wildlife and violate nature's quietude.
Exhaust from two hours of jet skiing is equivalent to
the emissions from a 1998 passenger car operated
for about 130,000 miles. About 30 percent of a jet
ski's fuel escapes into the air and water, carrying
the gas additive MTBE, a likely carcinogen.
Last week the National Park Service proposed
banning jet skis as early as next year from most of
the lakes, coastlines and waterways under its
jurisdiction.
Washington state upheld a jet ski ban in the waters
around the San Juan Islands, setting a precedent for
other states that want to outlaw the machines.
The California Air Resources Board is considering
the nation's toughest emission regulations for jet
skis, mandating a 75 percent reduction in noxious
exhaust by the year 2025, with the stricter rules
beginning with new models in 2001.
The strategy is to phase-in increasingly stringent
standards on jet skis the way the state forced
carmakers to cut pollution by 90 percent over 30
years.
The state Department of Health Services also plans
to reduce MBTE levels in reservoirs, which will
likely mean banning jet skis.
It's high time manufacturers were put on notice that
the public is insisting on cleaner and quieter jet skis.
Recreational boating brings an estimated $6.8
billion and 117,000 jobs into the state's economy,
so the stakes are high. While the number of jet skis
in America has grown to more than 1.2 million in
the past decade -- 161,000 registered in California
-- policy makers have imposed few controls on
them, until now. Jet ski manufacturers already have
the technology and know-how to reduce harmful
emissions, if they have the will.
California's proposed crackdown on jet ski
emissions should encourage -- or even force --
manufacturers to make the necessary fixes if they
want to sell the machines here. It worked with
automobiles.
sfgate.com |
