Ahhh...so, now we meander from the One-Tonne Challenge to Kyoto Accord to the patronage scandal to Chretien and thence to what? The Italian Mafia? I wouldn't be surprised by the latter since MacNutt does believe that the colour of your skin dictates your religion.
Quote:
ZERO effect on the environment.
That's a laugh. Did you miss the part where Canadians have the third largest ecological footprint on the planet?
Quote:
A REAL plan would be to put together a set of regs that ALL countries would adhere to.
Here's an interesting idea. What happens if the Chinese come to the table and says, "well, we want everyone to use the same ecological footprint that the AVERAGE Chinese does". Wow! If you want to complain about sacrificing our lifestyle and taking pain, you'd better be prepared to bend over and take the reaming of your life! [img]tongue.gif[/img]
If being a "nitpicker" is pointing out everything you leave out of your opinions that doesn't support your argument, then I guess I am.
Since I wasn't making any points about Kyoto other than that whether it works or not is debatable and that it is a subject only barely related to this one, I fail to see how you could possibly "destroy all my points" about it.
Since Kyoto is only barely related to this thread, why not leave it be and post on topic for a change?
Since your arguments are so bloody narrow, where exactly do you come off accusing me of losing sight of the big picture?
And yes, I noticed that the One Tonne Challenge is paid for by the Government of Canada (which currently happens to be Liberal). I also noticed that the Government of Canada recently announced that all the vehicles in their fleet have been converted to run on Cellulose Ethanol instead of gasoline, and that they are implementing a national sex offender registry. Why would it be odd that the government would pay for a government program?
Do you hate the Liberals so much that you're going to hijack any thread that is even remotely related to them to complain about their alleged (by you) criminal dealings and how you think nothing they do works? Just checking, for future reference.
And that's PosterBoy. How quickly we forget, eh?
__________________ Awesome Friday! movies, games, and other nerdy things.
I did some more reseach. According to the intarweb, there is approximately 1.8 global hectares per person to supply the natural resources necessary for living.
The world uses an average of 2.2 hectares per person.
Canada exceeds this with an average of 6.4 hectares required per person.
The USA exceeds this with an average of 9.5 hectares required per person.
Germany exceeds this with an average of 4.8 hectares required per person.
China is exceeded by this with an average of 1.5 hectares required per person.
India is exceeded by this with an average of 0.8 hectares required per person.
There are a lot of countries covered by the 2004 Living Planet Report, but the general trend is that the more developed the nation, the more likely they will exceed the global average. Even countries like Germany, which have fairly good ecological and environmental policies, exceed the average.
MacNutt posits that the Kyoto Accord should be disavowed by Canada (and other signatories) and that a new set of regs should be developed that everyone agrees upon.
He says that those countries that do not sign up for this new accord should be placed under a trade embargo. While reading an article on China's supposed green focus there was an interesting sidebar. The U.S. has carbon dioxide emissions of 5.75 billion metric tons in 2002 while China had 3.32 billion metric tons. So, if the U.S. and China do not agree to a new accord they would be placed under a trade embargo. Yeah, right, two of the biggest and fastest growing economies of the world (both of whom did not sign the Kyoto Accord) and you will not trade with them. [img]graemlins/lmao.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/lmao.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/lmao.gif[/img]
China is expanding at such a furious rate that NONE of the figures you guys bandy about have any sort of relevance to current reality. ZERO.
They are from last year. Or the year before. Or are Chinese government figures, most probably. Which are worthless. (Just as are the figures and statistics from any totalitarian state.)
Also...I should like to point out to the nitpickers around here that if each person in country X has a much larger "ecological footprint" than each person in country Y...it certainly sounds pretty bad indeed.
UNTIL you stop and realise that there are only thirty million people in country X and ONE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED MILLION people in country Y.
Do the math. Then re-adjust your brains. Then get back to me.
The interesting thing is that people continuously bring up facts, statistics and citations with which to back up the points that they make. Unlike certain others here...
For your info, MacNutt, the numbers come from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
On another point, the Chinese population is approximately 1.3 billion...not 1.5.
The footprint of an average Canadian is over FOUR times that of the average Chinese. So, we're equal to about 134 million Chinese or ten percent of their population. How would you like to do with only 25 percent of what you have now? [img]graemlins/lmao.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/lmao.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/lmao.gif[/img]
We Canadians are equal to approximately 135 million Chinese. According to your figures.
Got a news bulletin for ya...
We Canadians are not even in the early stages of adopting the Liberal Government's "one tonne challenge". In all likelihood, only about a third of us would EVER spend the time and money to actually adhere to the Liberal Government's "one tonne challenge".
At BEST!
So...what is THAT worth, in Chinese population numbers? Forty or fifty million?
Great...that leaves about one THOUSAND TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY million Chinese who are busily doing every single thing they CAN do to crap up the air and the land and the water of this planet.
And who have NO polloution regulations to govern them at all!!
Thanks to the failed Kyoto Accord.
Sort of wipes out our tiny efforts...doesn't it. Times ten.
And Kyoto would become the template for "what NOT to do" for the rest of the world.
Or...are you still laboring under the misconception that a sudden massive downturn in the Canadian economy after adopting Kyoto (factory closures all across the country, and whole industries moving south into non-Kyoto countries, coupled with fuel costs that are ten times what they are right now...) will actually provide a GOOD EXAMPLE for an emerging economic giant like China (or India) to follow??
Sounds to me like something that they would try to avoid at all costs.
Which is all the more reason why we need to dump this silly excuse for a "solution" and proceed on to something REAL. Something that is both worldwide...and something that really WORKS!
As soon as humanly posible.
Or...we could just keep on flogging this dead horse. Just to give the former King Jean and his weak successors some tiny scraps of credibility. For another year or two.
* The data for the WWF LPR was collected in 2003-2004, and released in October 2004. The data for the 2003 report was collected in 2002-2003, and released in late 2003. The data for the 2002 report was collected in 2001-2002 and released in 2002. Etc, etc, etc.
* China's growth has been steady since 1961. Economically, they've been doing quite well recently, but that doesn't necessarily mean there has been any ginormous spike since their population centres are clustered in one end of the country, and they have a huge amount of more rural citizens to even out their average.
* Canada's ecological footprint is ~6.4 Ha per person, China's is ~1.5 Ha. The average Canadian uses as much of the global reserve as ~4.33 Chinese. True, that means that Canada is only equivalent to ~125 million Chinese people (or close to 10% of their population), but it still makes us one hell of a lot more wasteful than China.
* The Kyoto Protocol cannot yet have failed, as it does not come into full effect until February 2005. Until such time, everything is speculative. Whether it works or not is yet to be seen.
* Since Kyoto is designed to encourage signatory nations to reduce emissions, simple logic dictates that the demand in industrialized nations for fossil fuels should drop. Since a drop in demand is equated with a following drop in price (law of supply and demand), fuel costs in this country and others will not end up being "ten times what they are right now." Unless, overnight, we've ended up in crazy backwards land, and everything we've learned about economics is wrong.
* Whether you like it or not, Kyoto is coming. Canada ratified it in 2002, and it comes into effect in February.
* Whether it ends up working as intended or not, Kyoto does provide a precedent for something bigger and better. Either to improve upon success, or restructure after failure.
* Neither the Kyoto Protocol, a major international treaty designed to encourage the signatory to reduce emissions, nor the possible economic ramifications thereof, have very much to do with everyday people taking personal responsibility for the things they do every day that are wasteful. And yet, the hijacking of this thread continues.
* If we're flogging a dead horse, it's because a certain someone keeps putting it in our path, when we were trying to talk about something else.
* "Because they aren't doing their share" is not now, nor has it ever been, a good excuse to not do your own part.
__________________ Awesome Friday! movies, games, and other nerdy things.
China's population growth may be "steady since 1961" but only a blind and deaf and mentally impaired person could possibly think that there hasn't been a GIANT spike in Chinese economic growth. Just in the past few years.
It's being spoken about as if it were the single biggest event since the Industrial Revolution! And that's by the moderate economists!
China is currently accounting for about one third of the steel in the world and will soon consume more than HALF of all the fossil fuels! And there seems to be no end to this growth! They are currently growing faster than Japan ever did in it's sudden rise to world prominence. And there are more than TEN TIMES As many Chinese as there were Japanese.
So...it's massive Asian-style growth on a scale we have never even seen before. By the single largest population group on the whole planet!
Do you...for one single minute...think that this massive unprecedented growth is NOT accompanied by a massive amount of newly generated polloution??
If not...then WHY not? [img]tongue.gif[/img]
China...need I remind you...is NOT goverened by any sort of rules like the Kyoto Accord. They can continue to grow and polloute at will.
And they WILL!
So will India in the coming years. In fact...it's already started. THEY aren't covered by any sort of anti-polloution laws at all. And they, like China, want to grow up FAST! Damn the torpedoes..full steam ahead!!
You seem like a rather bright guy, PB. Ask yourself what might happen if industries in one country are stifled and fined for any sort of normal activity...while right next door (the USA) or just across the pond (China, India) another country has NO such rules or profit-killing regulations.
What would YOU do...if you were the guy in charge of that factory? Stay and bite the bullet while your competitor happily churned out gear at a fifth of the price while crapping up the air and water? Then hope that people bought your much more expensive widgets...just becuase they were produced in a "Kyoto Accord country"??
Good luck on that.
And before you pop the champagne corks on Canada's adoption of the Kyoto Accord this febuary...you might just want to review what Paul Martin has already said about it in public. Before he figured out that he was on the brink of losing power, BTW.
Guess what? It's a dead duck. Time to move on to something REAL, instead.
Something that has a shot at making an actual difference in real pollution levels. Worldwide polloution levels. Not just the smog around TO.
Kyoto aint it. Neither is the silly Canadian"One Tonne Challenge". Not by a long shot.
These are just silly feelgood distractions that make people THINK they are actually doing something...while actual pollution levels will be increasing exponentially all around them.
A diversion. A wasteful one, at that. One that masks the real problem...and that prevents us from dealing with the real problem in a real way.
There is very little hard evidence supporting the pollution haven hypothesis. The dirtiest firms simply cannot relocate as they are dependant on the local resources. Pollution control costs are a very small part of a firm's decision as to where it will set up its business. Infrastructure, quality of labour, and access to market are far more important.
Moral or feel-good policies are not usually the best approach for environmental issues. Incentives-based approaches such as taxes and permits tend to be a lot more successful.
Further, economic growth can benefit the environment after time. Once a population is able to take for granted the necessities of life (food, water, clothing, and shelter), it is then able to focus on other important social aspects including labour practices, equality, and the environment.
[img]graemlins/lmao.gif[/img] 
Linear Mode
