Welcome to Our Wasteland

Admitting their is a problem is the first step to finding a solution, I am happy that GW has admitted that we need to address the problem.

However, as the US is in the process of changing from an industrial manufacturing economy to one of information exchange it will be very important that some global rules are adhered to....in other words as our manufacturing plants shift to Mexico and elsewhere we need to make sure that we are not just shifting the pollution elsewhere.

As for Mars Terraforming, I have seen the specials and think it would be a great idea.

The biggest problem is that you need Nuclear reactors to be put onto the planet in order to accelerate the Greenhouse gases, and how many of us would like to see nuclear material launched into space? Imagine the problems if something went wrong with the launch?

DaDakota

 

Have they looked for radioactive material on Mars yet? Why haul it there if we can just use what is on Mars?

 

Additionally, I searched the EPA's entire Global Warming website for an occurance of the words "Wall Street." The search engine returned 7 results. I then searched each of the articles, and not once was the words "Wall Street" used in the context of what the Reuters author's suggested. Quite the contrary.

The EPA report may not have mentioned Wall Street -- the Wall Street comment was a quote from an Environmental Group and may have been developed by them. For example, if Sea Level is predicted to rise x inches, and Wall Street is x inches above Sea Level, it's not hard to see the link.

 

Contrast the media furor over Bush's arsenic decision with the near silence regarding his action on diesel-fuel reformulation. One of the president's first actions was to uphold a sweeping, expensive regulation that requires petroleum companies to remove most pollutants from diesel fuel. Unlike the arsenic standards, which would have benefited a tiny percentage of the population, the diesel-fuel rule has broad environmental and public-health consequences. Recent research has shown that the "particulates" in diesel exhaust lead to 20,000 or more premature deaths per year and contribute to the rise of asthma in cities. Bush's strict new diesel rules will spare many lives and reduce urban haze; in fact, they represent the most important anti-air-pollution advance in a decade. The reform will also cost billions of dollars, and it came over the howls of the petroleum industry, whose pocket Bush supposedly is in. Yet W.'s move has received virtually no recognition--after all, the diesel-fuel decision interrupts the doomsday script.

Does this author really think Bush should be praised for simply not rolling back some environmental regulations? If there are a 100 regulations, and he rolls back 50, should we really be saying "hey, Bush is pro-environment -- he kept 50 of the regulations!"? Not anywhere in there did the author mention a single step forward. Just that there are some areas where Bush didn't take any steps backward.

Of course him not taking action is not going to be newsworthy. That seems like common sense, more than anything else. Should we get news everyday like "We didn't attack Russia today"?

 

The thing with the Mars plan is that it wouldn't happen overnight. It would take many generations to accomplish and right now there is no concern in the government with space exploration. So for the time being the only option is to start hugging trees and clean up the planet.

 

I am helping the environment through the purchase of hunting license every year and such...I am directly funding wildlife preservation through the arranged Texas Parks and Wildlife conservation program...such funding which is nearly 100% funded by responsible hunters has enabled the management and preservation of sanctified wetlands...without the proceeds, the inevitable destruction of these types of precious resources would occur...

 

You are correct, Major....I see now that the Wall Street quote was not attributed to the actual report.

I also searched for "meadows" and "Fahrenheit" and "degrees"...all key words that WERE attributed to the actual report. No instances of any of them.

Still, I....like the Reuters reporters.....should have been more thorough.

 

BTW....ROXRAN is correct. I haven't hunted in probably over ten years, but whenever I buy my fishing license, I always spend the extra money to get the combo hunting/fishing.


I'm happy to spend the extra money....it's tax dollars that actually work.

 

I had to pay so Im really not happy.......

 

I dont recall an ecological disaster being "right around the corner". What's your source on this misinformation?

The bottom line is plain and simple: If we ignore the environmental problems we have today, we are dooming the lives of genrations tomorrow.

Republicans have historically been unconcerned with environmental issuses.

 

Who here gets their energy from Green Mountain? Does anyone here get their electricity from solar panels or drive a solar-powered car? Just curious. I would love to live with clean, sustainable energy. I'm just trying to figure out the best way to go about doing that personally. Pollution and contamination is coming from so many different fronts, it's a hard battle. You just have to know how all of your food, material items and energy are produced and support the most environmentally conscious producers with your consumer $.

I went to the beach south of Houston (Matagorda) a few weeks back and, for some reason, felt compelled to pick up some of that black sand I saw and give it a sniff. Very crude, if you know what I mean.

 

Well said Jeff! Here's my 2 cents.

I don't know if you had this TV ad there, but we had one here for Fram oil filters. At the end of the ad a mechanic says, "You can pay me now, or you can pay me later." He's referring to taking the preventative measure of changing your oil filter regularly, and contrasting it to the cost of major engine work. The same principle works here. To trot out another overworked business saying, "there's no free lunch." Pollution costs, and we can either change what we're doing now, at some cost, or we can pay later once the damage is done. And consider who will pay in each instance. Increased regulation will force companies to adapt and be creative and innovative in therefore compete with each other to come up with better solutions. In the end the costs will be passed down to the consumer, but it will be a user pay situation. In other words, you can expect to pay more for new cars with low emission technology, if you use public transit, you won't. The best of the free market system will be put to work by letting business be innovative and creative in finding solutions. OTOH, to begin with, if we wait to address the problem the costs will almost certainly much much higher. It's almost always cheaper to stop or minimise the damage before it happens than it is to deal with the consequences after it's done. And who will pay these costs? Lawsuits are likely. If companies know now that their polluting actions will likely do damage to somebody, and they do nothing to address or mitigate that damage, then we have the makings of a liability suit. (See tobacco lawsuits) Companies know this, and they also know you can't get blood from a stone. For those of you in Enron's home town, I'm sure I don't need to fill in the blanks. So the government will very likely, as usual, be left holding the bag. And then everybody pays, but mostly the people who haven't caused the problem, the majority of the taxpayers.

It makes the best business sense (in general) to phase in regulations now and let business come up with innovations and solutions, and to have the end users of the products pay for those solutions, IMO. The alternative is to have the government deal with the inevitably much greater problem down the road, and have all taxpayers pay, regardless of how much or whether they even used the given product (electricity from coal generation, gas for cars, etc.) So why don't governments take this approach more often? The tend to be short sighted, looking to the next election and not much farther, and they get lots of jack from lazy, stale business execs who would rather preserve the status quo than work to build a better future for the country and their company. But in a democracy, the people should choose, not the elite few … but this topic is probably best left for another thread.

 

Jeff, you forgot to include purchasing a hunting license!