Its one thing to roll back environmental policies here in America (which he's doing at a fever pitch), its a whole different story to walk away from an agreement made to other nations around the world. http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/italy/03/29/.02/index.html ------------------ Everything you do, effects everything that is.
But the treaty was never ratified by the Senate, so its not binding. But its still a pretty ****ty thing to do. ------------------ Founder and President of the Houston Homers Club(HHC) - Are you a homer? Join now! The Rockets will be NBA champions. Believe.
Just look at the big picture. He is cutting taxes. Giving us money to spend. On the other hand, he is shortening the lives of every human being by not cutting back the pollution this country so carelessly spews forth. Now it all begins to make sense. ------------------ "Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."- (Aldous Huxley)
Instead of getting a "breath of fresh air in the whitehouse", America is getting a breath of heavily polluted air. Good job America! This was a great decision! ------------------ Hakeem "The Dream" Olajuwon is the greatest player in the history of basketball. If you disagree, you are not a Rocket fan.
Gee, a backwards thinking republican administration! Who would have thunk it??? This just in, Dubya challenges the notion that the Earth isn't the center of the Universe. ------------------ (===)
and Al Gore would now be passing bills to keep boring people from getting profiled . ------------------ "Eat your kids, play with your dinner and join the chat" - Dr of Dunk gives a public sevice announcement at the request of Mike Tyson .
ALL (sorry Clutch) Presidents wait until the last few days in office to do this, except I think Ford did it before his term was almost up when he pardoned the crook Nixon. ------------------ www.swirve.com I think my w**** is dead.
The Nixon Pardon hurt Ford's bid at re-election. If he had waited until the last days of his term, he would have had a better chance of defeating Carter. ------------------
How many Americans work in the oil and coal industries? How many build cars? Should everyone who works in an industry that causes pollution be out of a job? How come we have had plants with worse emissions for over a century, and we are still able to breathe the air and play in the sun? Exactly how long will it take before some of the dreaded effects of air pollution will begin to show on a global scale? Anyway, isn't there a lot less carbon dioxide in the air now than there was millions of years ago? How is it that the Earth still has an ozone layer? I am personally not too concerned with the health of the planet. Instead of b****ing about pollution and trying to enact new restrictions, how about switching to some of the alternatives that we have available? Nuclear power is very safe and has less air pollution. Why not switch over to that? Oh yeah, it is pretty hard to get a nuclear plant built anywhere because they produce spent Uranium rods and they have to be disposed of and that hurts the environment. Hydroelectric power, destroys the local ecosystem. Solar power, takes up a lot of space and only works in the daytime. Wind power, see solar power but it only works when it is windy. If there was a perfect solution then we would be using it. Right now we do the best we can with what we have. ------------------ "We messed with the Bull, and we got the horns." -- Larry Brown "quote" from AirBullard.com
I'd say the health of the earth is FAR more important than even a few millions of jobs. Typical republican attitude. Let the grandchildren take care of this, to keep the economy strong. Great plan. Maybe all these workers could receive training in new fields. Oil workers could become hydrogen fuel cell workers. Did you ever think of that? ------------------ Hakeem "The Dream" Olajuwon is the greatest player in the history of basketball. If you disagree, you are not a Rocket fan. [This message has been edited by ZRB (edited March 29, 2001).]
The Kyoto Treaty is a joke...it puts the US in a horrible position. Yes jobs will be lost...and I appoint ZRB to be the one to tell these folks they're fired...maybe he can help feed them and their families. Come on!! Again...the Senate never ratified this treaty. It has no binding effect on the US. The people who voted Bush into office knew that he would rescind the Clinton administration's position on the Kyoto Treaty. Hell, even Clinton himself knew that and knew the Senate would never ratify it. Great setup. I sure as hell wouldn't want to be president answering to the people who lose their jobs because we take drastic steps to reduce pollution. There are more gradual, alternative measures that can be taken. ------------------
Don't fire them, train them for new jobs. Non-polluting jobs. If firing was the only option, I'd do it. Republicans can say there is no problem all they want. The fact remains, that there is. This planet is in trouble. Believe it or not, we depend on this planet to survive. Preserving jobs is not as important as preserving the earth. I'd feel sorry for those people who lost their jobs, but I wouldn't regret it. I'm sorry, but people take this planet for granted too much. ------------------ Hakeem "The Dream" Olajuwon is the greatest player in the history of basketball. If you disagree, you are not a Rocket fan.
Hydra, Most of the alternative solutions that you suggest now have the ability to put energy back into the system, let alone persist energy for the user at night. "Solar energy only works during the daytime". LOL I've gotta meeting to go to, but I'd like to also discuss some of your ideas regarding the Earth's history later. Whether or not CO<sub>2</sub> has the ability to be reacclimated into the climate now, etc. The fact that forests are a fraction of what they were a 100 years ago, etc. (i.e. if we're pulling CO<sub>2</sub> out of the lithosphere w/ no balancer, what happens when the oceanic conveyor belt slows down (cold dense water absorbs gas), what do you build? an oven). For example, Dubya expects people to save stuff in the long run for themselves. Most of us don't expect SS to be around, so point for the republicans. What about other long range goals? What about other needs, i.e. that Houston doesn't get drowned by a 15m. rise in sea level? The planet is very variable. That's fine. e.g. Paleostudies show that even 18ka. the sea level was 200' shallower than it is now... great. But I don't know if you've noticed something... 18ka. the Earth's population wasn't 6 billion. 18ka. we were in the high of a glacial. There was a 100' sheet of ice on Manhattan. 300 mph winds blew off of the glaciers. The earth was windy and clouds made the Saharan a tropical paradise (up until 3 or 5ka). Since then, our population exploded... in one interglacial. Pavement instead of trees covers much of the Earth. If the Filsner Ice Shelf falls in the water... good bye Manhattan, good bye Charleston, good bye Houston, good bye Bombay. A species has one purpose... to defend it's genetic code. If you shut down the oceanic conveyor belt in addition to pulling extraneous CO<sub>2</sub> from the fetchin' lithosphere our species is ****ed. I've gotta go... I'll babble later. ------------------ (===)
Oh man, brilliant post Achebe. ------------------ Hakeem "The Dream" Olajuwon is the greatest player in the history of basketball. If you disagree, you are not a Rocket fan.
Hydra your post shows a great deal of ignorance. I dont know if your parents read you "the Bell curve" every night before you went to sleep or not, but they must have ingrained a certain degree of ignorance. The enviroment IS important. There are immediate effects ALREADY showing on a planatary scale. Have you ever heard of Asthma?? well noone had 50-100 years ago, but more and more children are born with athsma every day. this is already linked to air pollution. is there smog in Houston?? Phoenig, Las Angeles, YES!! was it there when your parents were kids...NO!! is cancer on the rise?? YES!! you mention radioastive waste as though it is unfortunate that the enviromenatalists dont let us bury it. you say it can hurt the enviroment. DAMN right it can hurt it, ant it will continue to be Lethal,, and poisoning for millions of years. More cancer, more law suits, that you the taxpayer will have to pay for. I know how republicans hate taxes, so I say why dont we do things right the first time. its alot easier than scrambling around cleaning up our own messes 50 yrs later. scientists have developes solar panels that are see though. yes windows that can produce solar power. these do not take up space as you already have windows in your house. we have electric cars, as well as hydrogen fuel cell cars and such. these suckers do NOT pollute, or rarely do(some have small gas engines for highway driving) but the Auto industry continuously makes bigger trucks and SUVs. you buy them and you destroy this enviroment. We wouldnt have to be drilling any new oil fields if we just bought littler cars, or more eficient ones. I dont know why I even try, Im sure these words are falling on deaf ears. All I really have to say here, is Think of others every once in a while. I mean your children, their children, and the scores of people effected every day by the ignorant planet destroying practices of your big business goverment backed projects. Peace ------------------ Hanta-Force Paintball www.hanta-force.com
Great Posts Acheby and VOR Pity the current Australian Government is just as bad as Bush when it comes to the Kyoto agreement, in fact i think australia didn't sign and said they want an emissions increase, disgusting isn''t it. Imagine if you owned a fish tank and never cleaned it, guess what will happen to the fish....... ------------------ "Repression never did me any harm (I finally ceased to include "stop masturbating" as one of my guilt ridden New Year's resolutions, but that's a different topic)." Achebe - programmer by day, Mrs Palmers Husband by night
Im not taking anyones side here, but environmental complexities work both ways. Are there less trees now than a 100 years ago? Probably, but as Achebe says the earth is variable. At one point in the past there were much less trees than there are today. At others there were more. The fact is we dont know for sure what effect humans are having on the earth. Maybe asthma is on the rise but other disease/conditions are on the fall, often because of cures found through dollars spent by these CO2 producing companies. Im sure everybody by now knows how people have been saying we would run out of food or other resources for over a hundred years, but their estimates are always off by a lot. Is Bush an idiot? Most definitely. Should other forms of energy be explored. Of course. But am I going to freak out or get all "Save Mother Earth" Nah. Call me an optimist, but Earth has always pulled through before. It will again. We just may kill ourselves in the meantime ------------------
ZRB, When I said I was not concerned by the health of the Earth, I did not mean because it is unimportant. I meant because I don't think the Earth is in any danger. It was here long before us and probably will be long after we are gone. The planet is NOT in trouble. Most likely neither are we. Heb, While the alternatives are putting energy back into the system, the system is fuel burning power plants or hydroelectric. All of the people that do not have solar panels use some of your energy. But there does not currently exist the storage technology to charge during the day and run everything off of stored energy at night, that is when the steady power supplies must be used. VOR, Have you ever heard of the plague, polio, smallpox, and a hundred other diseases that existed before but are no longer an issue. We should be able to take care of new diseases in much the same way. If my post shows ignorance, then does yours show illiteracy? I said that nuclear waste hurts the environment. I said it is hard to get a nuclear plant built. Do you really think that just replacing windows with solar panels will generate enough energy to power the entire country, including industries? I do not buy SUV's and trucks. I drive a Volkswagon New Beetle whick has relatively low emissions. I am not advocating making things worse. I would like to see a reduction in pollution. I think there are more gradual solutions than radical restrictions being placed on everyone. How about requiring a 1/2% reduction in emissions every year for the next 200 years. Then there would be no emissions, there would be time to develop reasonable solutions, and there would not be enough damage done to the environment to seriously threaten humanity. There is usually a slow and easy way to overcome such large problems, they are generally much more reasonable to everyone than radical solutions. We have been here for millions of years. The world has changed dramatically over the course of our stay. To think that any of Bush's policies are going to affect the survival of the species displays true ignorance. ------------------ "We messed with the Bull, and we got the horns." -- Larry Brown "quote" from AirBullard.com
