Quote:
Originally posted by shamrock_uk:
Isn't it something like 5% of the worlds population but a third of the worlds pollution - there has to be some sort of responsibility here! China is still a developing nation - the US has the technology to have a real stab at alternative technology now. We focus on the US because it's the worst offender. By far. Not because of anti-Americanism or anything like that, simply because America is the biggest 'problem'.
What's really bad is that Kyoto is only a small amount of what actually needs to be done, yet even that is considered unaceptable by the US. It does not bode well for the future. 
You'd think that with such a faith-based agenda, the Bush government would have taken stewardship views of the environment a bit more seriously
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Sham, about 3 years ago we had this discussion on the CE thread when it first started. (It may have been before your time on IW
) I possed the question about how efficeint(sp?) the US was compared to the rest of the world ie: for each ton of coal/barrel of oil/cubic foot of natural gas how much polution was produced? One member of IW took up the challange (IIRC it was one of the "M" members not Morg, maybe it was "Milabar".) He was a graduate student, he did the work, had one of his professors double check the work before posting. (It was a beautiful peace of work, footnotes, sources and the like IIRC.) He discovered the US is more efficeint and effective for the most part ie: less polution out per energy in. The world would be better off to raise the 75% of the poluters(sp?) to the level of the USA, then to raise only a 25% poluter's efficeincy. If the USA lowered it's output by 10% that would be a 2.5% less polution amount(world wide). But if the rest of the world lowered their output by 10% it would be 7.5% less polution amount(world wide). *Those amounts are for illustration purposses only I don't recall the exact levels, it seems Europe was about 5-10% less clean then the USA, on 2 of the items and equal on the third. It fell off dramaticly when 3rd world nations where taken into account. While the USA maybe the largest single producer of polution, the USA is the Cleanest and most effective in limitting it's waste/polution.
The technology is already there, the USA is using it, the rest of the world is not. For many reasons some good some bad.