The planet has already been there and done that in the past, Obviously there is some kinda pattern to the weather changes http://www.c3headlines.com/2012/07/extreme-climate-change-severe-weather-events-1933-1938.html Mars is going through a global warming pattern too, must be all those little green men farting http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/may/31/mars-also-undergoing-climate-change-ice-age-retrea/
It is a legitimate measure in a capitalistic society to regulate via taxes. If a 'substance' or its emission has been considered to be taxed anyone should be affected. The industry/company AND each private person. The ‘issue’ with taxes is inconsistency, not the claim for them. The question is what is the govt. doing with those taxes and are there exceptions when claiming for them and how are exceptions reasoned? Is there lobbyism involved? Also the government has to make clear what will be done with those taxes. To invest those taxes to research for alternative technologies would be a reasonable use. The classic is CO2 taxation. All the debates about if CO2 is a pollutant or not are missing the point. The point is: Most of the CO2 emission comes from burning fossil fuels which are NOT renewable! The impact on the nature is the point. (Simple: Can one take all the time without to get it back?!) Taxes can be useful to get rid of old harmful technologies. A perfect example had been to tax vehicles without catalytic converter... Taxes which 'force' the use of renewable fuels/energy are reasonable. The point is not charging ... the point is: One can save those taxes when changing!
aside from the western countries, I do not think that China imposes any tax for C02 emissions, they out produce the U.S. in a multitude of areas http://www.visualcapitalist.com/china-vs-united-states-a-tale-of-two-economies/ Which does give China a larger C02 footprint than that of the U.S. I honestly can not see the people of China complaining about the ecology or their C02 footprint. So maybe some should open their self contained minds and realize the the U.S. is no longer the biggest kid on this world planet that's plugging up the toilet http://www.earthporm.com/23-shocking-photos-reveal-bad-chinas-pollution-problem-become/
Look at the very top of this thread... actually it is even at the very top of this page. What does that tell you about the value of a discussion, and "serious discussions" on MDL in general?
Most probably.... but we should not forget that all this has a very real background. It is called environmental protection, or, would you consider the way humans treat this planet out of their greed to be adequate? I cannot tell, if climatechange is all, or a lot, or a little, or not at all caused by humans. There is not much difference between the pictures from China I saw last night in the news, about the air in their cities, and about but the oil in the Dakotas reservation.... or the Exxon Valdez or the Louisiana coastline. I personally have learned in the last half century that most opposition is probably just a waste of time to pretend one is fighting the destrauction of the environment, and in the end all you do is simply to legitimize the "process"... but one can occasionally point it out?
"...what is the govt. doing with those taxes ..." In democracies this depends on the voters. As you have just seen, the population of "the greatest country in the world" had the choice between two very refreshing candidates. For us Europeans it is quite entertaining to be able to watch the populace of the US live a genius like Trump and pay for the upcoming bills. So maybe the culprit, the real problem is not CAPITALISM, which undeniably has created vast wealth. Maybe the real problem is the PEOPLE, who are toe greedy, too shortsighted, too egotistical, or, in one word, too stupid.
@ThomasMann: We are a disgusting species for sure. Just walk through the projects anywhere in the US and you will see. Filth everywhere. Apathy in epic proportion. Drug and alcohol abuse. Poor parenting / TV set babysitting. I too have looked at this garbage for about a half century, And I just don't know what we can do. We try to put our trust in our politicians, only to be betrayed for the almighty dollar. We watch our jobs leave, and we start to lose hope. The jobs that do come are only there because some large corporation needs help raping the land. And when you're starving, what choice do you have? A classic example of that is Puerto Rico, and what Johnson & Johnson (and many other companies) did. They went there, started factories, polluted the land and abandoned the people and the land, leaving behind a legacy of cancers and other diseases. A paradise where no one can live. Only a fool would say that we as a species are not responsible. We are. And when this world chokes itself to death, we have only ourselves to blame.
I think it's a wrong reasoning to compare to others and saying: "Why should I do, others who are even worse don't." Either it's reasonable to you(rself) or not! Here in Germany for instance the taxes for vehicles are dependent on the kind of engine and cylinder capacity which is proportional to emission. Also e-cars are 10 years period tax free. Together with the plan to leave nuclear energy this sounds reasonable (to me)... The history of China's industry is quite different and their degree of awareness for environmental protection is just 2 decades back. So one could say you try to justify by comparing to 'kids-experience' regarding environmental protection. China will be forced to learn as well... I agree, capitalism is not the real problem. The problem is a wrong self-identification. It affects (almost) all humans, I'd speak of a human mental disease. The problem is that this dysfunction is actually intensifying and accelerating. Not to speak of more than hundred million people who died a violent death at the hand of their fellow humans during history... "And I just don't know what we can do". To 'work' on own awareness...and with it the amount of humans grow until there are enough for a significant change...or until nature comes up with another species after we are all gone..
Yen, I am not using what China does as an excuse for what we have already done and hopefully learned something from, of course we do need to take of our planet and ecology. What some peeps here in this thread appear to be doing, is solely blaming western civilization whole heartily for all that's going wrong with taking care of the place where we live. I was only stating my opinion that it is not just the west doing all the harm. We already are making strides to clean up our past mistakes, all the while other countries are still ignoring the fact that they are making themselves a toilet to live in. Speaking mostly of poorer third world nations and the east
@Yen: Most people do not even think of history. We concern ourselves with the present moment. How do we feed our families. How do we keep ourselves from becoming homeless. How do we keep our jobs. Plus, we watch those who fight to change things get ground into the dirt. Their lives are miserable, because they can not change it, not to mention that they live in ridicule, shunned from society. Not because the message is not true; quite the opposite. People have become individualistic. And as resources become more scarce, people will become more like the animals that they eat. To quote Roger Daltry from "My Generation" "I hope I die before I get old..." Well it's too late for Me. I'm already old. All I can do is try to be kind to others and foster the only thing that we can take with us when we leave this world. Love.
What I wanted to say is that it makes no sense to blame 'the others' for it. In this context I agree with you, it makes no sense to blame 'the Westerners (only)' for it. It’s actually easy. Without own awareness of something no understanding can develop. This applies to anything in life. Hence I said 'To work on own awareness'. But what we can do is to have a look there where industrialization has started and where is most experience. And that is the west. I travel a lot to S/E Asia. Many went to there to manufacture there because the workers are cheap….and they work under conditions we 'the westerners' would never do. Hot places, piecework, little salary, harmful agents, catastrophic safety conditions, polluting the environment… Also tourism has a huge impact there…..have a look there 25 years ago… The so called third world there is overrun by western influences. Tourists who are rich enough to travel and investors who can make more money there. The problem is: Due to lack of own awareness and knowledge there the people do not know what we know already. They do not know that plastics last for at least 500 years, they don’t know about industrial recycling not to speak of missing infrastructure to realize it. And the manufacturer do not care either because profit is made when the product is produced and sold. The cheaper the manufacturing costs, the more profit. Anything later is out of interest… In this regard Trump is a big idiot and a gasbag. His daughter (a family member) produces in ‘evil’ China “Ivanka Trump” Anything he favors are own interests only. His paroles about to make US great again are just ridiculous. The difference of East and West is....very simplified of course... West was first and the East is doing just the same mistakes....BUT while the East is doing the mistakes the west shamelessly profits from it....
I agree.... it's called capitalism, where it's legalized to take advantage, plunder and pilliage the people and their resources until it is useless (less profitable) and then move on to another pasture. Next target> Indonesia! Advertisers here in the U.S. today brag... Made in America! They neglect to say S.America, Central America or Mexico
I understand what you mean. In this regard (I think it was Churchill) said: "Life is just one damned thing after another" Fears for the future are still common even in our actually rich society...which indicates that our products we can consume (or not) do not change our awareness on self-identification. People need a minimum of things to live and it's sad to know that there are still many of us who do not even have that. Anyway -it may sound cruel- one would lose ability to act when undertaking all the worlds suffer and hence become depressive and hence fail to recognize what can be done within our own human possibilities. It can be a hard event to know that actually the thing to do at first place is to work on own awareness and that all efforts to change/think about 'the others' is of no real progress before own awareness has changed. I know that there are others who might disagree..at least it's the way I think about it..... Still many actually with a good intent meant actions might still be ego related...I am not an exception but try to work on it.... Finally anything what we ever are doing depends on the present quality when doing it..and not on a fictional thought of the future. BTW: There were cultures where 'age' had been respected as a source of wisdom and also the old people....hmmm..in our 'western' modern society old people often are just a PITA to be sent to a retirement house....because they are useless to 'work' (for others) anymore.... I also would consider myself as not young anymore, lol....To be 'old' also means that one can focus on the 'real' things....and take benefit of all things recognized as unimportant and which others still have to find out......
Modern Science and Technology have not been invented by the "East" (Arabs, however much they contributed long ago; Hindus; Chinese; Japanese etc.) but by the West. Hence "we" must be held responsible for its "failures" just as "we" should get "praised" for its achievements. "Capitalism" has various models and some are less nasty than others but all of them create conditions in which plunder is "natural" and "necessary" - to the bitter end, for "if we do not, our competitors will and then we are doomed, so better we do it to everybody else, than vice versa"... "We" have been industrially polluting at incredible levels for centuries, seriously contributing to an increase in temperature on Earth, plus an untold other nasty things we can not be proud of, whereas some countries have only started but that is OK because "it's giving us an opportunity" of pointing a finger at "them", so "we" can justify and rationalise what we want to continue doing to everybody, including the idiotic and unnecessary fossil fuel raiding and polluting of mother Earth? Because pollution knows no national boundaries and these issues can NOT be defended as "sovereign decision each country has to make"!!! Make no mistake: "East" is not just in Asia but in EU, also! Too close for comfort? More than 30 Polish cities are in the bottom 50 EU cities suffering the worse kind of pollution (over reliance on coal etc.) that there is, in EU. One can't "justify" or "rationalise" this if one has any brains whatsoever - cosmic cycles or not. Unless one is a child, hence irresponsible...
Fossil fuels are a necessary commodity for any industrialized or non-industrialized nation, can't get around that until another source of energy is made at a reasonable price. So gorski, please invent something that would replace fossil fuels cheaply asap and I'll be first in line to buy some of it
@Joe C: Take a look at the research that has been done with Alternate Energy, especially with cold fusion and generation 4 nuclear reactors. http://www.world-nuclear.org/inform...-reactors/generation-iv-nuclear-reactors.aspx In it's simplest form, the idea is to use the thermal / fast neutrons of fissionable materials to produce more fissionable material that can be reused. And not produce weapons grade nuclear materials. (I'm not talking about dirty bombs; that's an old weapon that has been around for ages.) Here And here I can -EASILY- build any of the devices shown in those videos. (Many of you have seen pictures of my engineering lab.) If I can do it, why can't it be turned into cheap, clean fuel? Because the current powers that be are suppressing it. That's why. @Yen, et.al.: Please feel free to critique the tech I'm showing you and share your opinions about it.
MJ, please do this on a massive industrial size scale and you'll be as famous as Nickola Tesla or Westinghouse
@Joe C: I'm working on it. Here's the problem. You can generate a plasma in many different ways. How do you convert the energy into a form that can be used to power devices? The answer lies in Magneto-hydrodynamics and a simple equation thought up by Kirchoff L(dI/dT) Create a plasma inside of an inductor and use Kirchoff's law to convert it into electrical energy (By the 'flyback' effect) As I said. I'm working on it.