Last year President Bush urged countries to agree on long-term goals for greenhouse gas emissions. Also in 2007 China unveiled its first national plan for climate change and just like the US, China says tackling the problem should not come at the expense of economic development.
Is the United States doing enough about climate change?
Should there be more international co-operation on this issue? How important a factor is economic growth when it comes to environmental issues?
No. The current administration is stalling and draging it's feet. The USA needs to fully cooperate with the United Nations process. Our administration wants to dictate to others. We need to cooperate with others.
No - The U.S. government isn't doing anything at all. There are a few citizens trying to do what they can on a personal level, but as long as the government and many citizens continue to say we have to honor Economy first and Earth last, we're not going to see any real solutions come from this country. This is worse than the rationale by some insurance companies for why they don't cover preventative medicine. We need to have a healthy planet in order to have a healthy economy. Is it really that difficult to understand?
I don't think the U.S. is doing enough, and I think the market will adjust to accommodate climate change policy affects.
The first issue I feel strongly about is to increase the fuel economy requirements of all vehicles to a chanllenging level, and to revise the outdated mode of calculating mpg for vehiles which is grossly overestimated.
I would also like to see the phasing out of subsidies for fossil fuels to encourage the market to move more quickly toward alternative engergies models. I believe biofuels are a smoke screen for real alternative, as it takes more energy to make them than they provide. Biodiesel may free us from foreign oil, but could raise the cost of food crops as well as still cause particulant pollution the same as regular diesel.
The U.S. is not doing nearly enough. We must make national committment to combatting climate change as the highest national priority. The public is ready for this but the political class is behind the curve. Lester Brown's Plan B (soon to be published as version 3.0) provides a good model for policies. The true cost of gasoline, for example, when the external damages and other costs are taken into account, has been estimated to be approximately $11/gallon. The U.S. should raise auto and light truck mileage (CAFE) standards significantly, institute a significant carbon cap and trade system, raise gasoline taxes, provide significant economic incentives for geothermal, wind, solar energy generation and energy conservation measures (including energy use in homes and commercial building). We must also increase research funding for carbon sequestration at sites, such as coal burning plants, where it is produced. We should greatly increase incentives for the purchase of hybrid vehicles. Given our disproportionate contribution to the excess of atmospheric carbon dioxide, this is overdue. The flip side is that we should develop the new technologies and 21st century industries that will make these changes possible.
Absolutley not! The US needs to stop stalling and lead by example. Sustainability, energy independence, lowering pollution, and slowing climate change are all issues that are intertwined. We need to start investing in high efficiency photovoltaics (solar energy) and other non-polluting renewable energy sources immediately.
i think that unless and until the human planetary population is decreased to an amount comparable with the necessary increase in consciousness by those remaining, all political posturing, corporate strategies and independant action are glib manouvres of self deception and sabotage.
No. Neither is any other country. As the citizens of China, India, and Africa acquire and drive more cars, the problem will worsen no matter what the U.S. or any other single country does. That is not to say the U.S. should use that as an excuse to do nothing. Quite the contrary, the U.S. should be a leader in environmental protection. All our efforts will be in vain, however, unless the world can control population growth. The relentless pressure of more people with more homes to heat and more cars to drive and more mouths to feed will render all conservation and technological measures impotent unless systematic measures are put into place to not only stop population growth, but reduce the number of people in the world.
Yes, there should be more international co-operation. We are just One world and share the same air, water and earth. Our present situation is a problem that we, as the most progressive country, have done the most damage and therefore need to render the most solutions.
Our economic future is based on our abilty to abandon our present path of dangerous(nuclear) and polluting form of energy production and invest in renewable energy. We need to clean up our present and past mess, and use our most precious gift, our resourcfulness to generate non-contaminating, non-hazardous renewable energy based on the laws of what we have been blessed with: sun, air, water and the synergy of our wonderful Earth.
No is the answer. Bush II calling for a panel from countries to address Climate Change outside of the UN's efforts is a delaying tactic to run out the clock for this Administration's term and greenwash Bush's legacy. Transparent stuff.
Climate Change is the greatest moral challenge for our generation(s) that lies before us. AEI's "Plan for a New American Century" was cooked up to control Iraqi oil reserves. To attack Iraq for that reason along with the Patriot Act has been on the shelf for a decade. Wolfiwicz, Pearle, Feith, Rumsfeldt, ect. of the so-called Neocons used 9-11 as an excuse to wish this upon us and as the gods first drive mad those they wish to destroy we are here now. But we have a choice; we could have had an electric car option ten years ago but GM attorneys killed the initiative in California's courts despite the customers loving it so now they have nothing to sell; even to the Chinese as American cars do not meet their mileage economy standards. We need an Apollo scale program to rebuild America's infrastructure to repair decades of neglect and this current Administration's sabotage in staying the course and then share that technology with emerging economies to stop burning fossil fuels the way we are now. Imagine the new employment, a regeneration of the US manufacturing sector and the profits! Otherwise the future of the World is grim. To paraphrase Dr. Buckminster Fuller from 40 or so years ago: we have an opportunity now to choose, paradise or oblivion.
Last NPR's Science Friday featured two scientists, the first developed a carbon capture device that was 1000 times more efficient than trees, and the second, a scientist from Purdue devised a way to separate hydrogen from oxygen in a simple chemical reaction using aluminum and ordinary water that could fuel a vehicle on carbon neutral hydrogen without filling the vehicle with explosive hydrogen. You fill the tank with water, even seawater, instead. That made my day, so there is hope. This current national climate of fear are the fetters that will hold us back from America leading the world out of this crisis and reaserting the moral acendancy the US had out of WWII that Bush squandered in just a few bloody years.
Because no one says anything about population size. China is having problems with it's one child policy but the United States doesn't have a population policy.
College for one child families would be a good start, but NO ONE talks about that. It would reduce pollution and probably crime, the book Freakonomics explains this, unclog our busy highways, make houses more affordable, and the list goes on and on.
But it's hard for all the people who make money off population size to say anything about that, even radio stations.
Of course they are not doing anything. Big business rules in America. Everything belongs to the corporations. If they pollute, the government looks the other way. These businesses need to be fined to a very large extent for pollution they create. Also; people need to learn how to conserve rather than consume. We are all consumers and we have NO clue how to think of others, or the environment; we go about our daily lives not thinking of how it impacts everything and everyone around us. The answers are out there, people just have to care enough to start taking action. Meanning EVERYONE..not only some!!
I would like to see carbon taxes in the U.S. We American energy consumers do not realize the true environmental costs of burning fossil fuels. Our subsidies to fossil fuel producers distort market forces and send consumers the wrong message about their consumption habits. Higher energy prices will force us to conserve energy and find innovative ways to use less. The earlier we change our ways, the less pain we will endure in the transition to a sustainable culture.
John Touchet
touchetjw@earthlink.net Austin, TX
No. Instead of contributing to the massive profits of the oil companies via huge tax breaks, we should be investing in cleaner and renewable energy technologies, such as solar, wind, electric cars and the hydrogen economy. The US has led the world economy through research and investment in leading edge technology. The energy/transport industry should be no different.
I agree. Not just the US but all nations and particularly those of the West. The West is so fearful of China & India but those are the pefect places to try out alternative technologies. Solar, wind, innovative irrigation. They need it. These are nations that between them hold almost a third of the total world population alone so why shouldn't they be entitled to the same things as the rest?
We should be smart and get them using electrical cars, get them to test out super- advanced refrigeration systems, really tap into the solar energy they receive. But no we enslave them and ourselves with the oil dependancy and the fast buck the banks and oil-people are so used to having.
Indeed we allow all of our govts to squander our nations wealth and rights on criminal projects instead. Iraq is just one example. But let's take the snow-dome in Dubai! What crazy thinking is that? Why not use all of those resources that mainatin ski slopes in the hot desert sun to set up state of the art irrigation and amazing agricultural land? Or how about taking beautiful fertile land in nations that could previously feed themselves and pay them to grow cash crops - tobacco- instead. That is criminal. How hypocritical when we are trying to erradicate smoking in the west anyway. But I guess the tobacco corporates figure they have all of the chinese, indians and south americans to target instead so what's a little western concession?
Collectively we the poeple have to lobby our international govts to wake up and do something. Or we have to start it ourselves. we are decimating fish stocks, we are destroying forests, we are polluting rivers and seas and we are using the energy irresponsibly all for a quick buck. The earth may indeed have warm cycles but it doesn't willfully and knowingly poison rivers and seas, or place landmines in fertile farmland or carry out nuclear discharges. The earth doesn't recognise a profit! Come on it is man!
And now in the time of a global food shortage it is criminal that the banks yet again are reaping the benefit and ultimately deciding the fate of the world.
Thirty years ago the same crowd, that is now concerned with global warming, was fretting about global cooling. Before we take drastic steps that will harm economies all over the world thus harming people, we need an open debate in this country on the subject of human caused global warming. There is plenty of evidence that we are in a natural warming cycle and that the human contribution to overall warming is negligible(such cycles having occurred over the past 40 thousand years at least). For now we should be concentrating on poor countries, for example some in coastal Africa that can be devastated by storms.
In this country let's stop subsidizing insurance for those who choose to live on coasts. It's a form of insanity to rebuild New Orleans in a place that's six feet below sea level.
Re: "Thirty years ago the same crowd, that is now concerned with global warming, was fretting about global cooling."
The earth warming and cooling cycles are caused by the subtle differences in the shape of the planet's obit. Earth's orbit is not a perfect circle, as we all know, it is slightly eliptical, and that elipsys is acted upon by forces of gravity in this solar system and others. When gravitational forces line up in a certain way every hundered thousand years or so the elipsys is exaggerated, causing a cooling cycle, after another hundered thousand years or so, the gravitational forces reverse themselves and the elipsys is pushed into a more circular shape, causing greater amounts of sunlight to be absorbed and hence start a warming cycle.
Scientists know that these principles dictate that the earth is now (and still was 30 years ago, and should be still tens of thousands of years from now) in a cooling cycle according to the shape of our orbit and the relative amount of sunlight we receive. However despite this fact, the earth is warming. Which means that the greenhouse effect is so strong on earth currently that it has completely reversed the effects of the cooling cycle- a sobering notion indeed.
There is, in fact, no evidence to suggest the earth is in a natural warming cycle.
It's not just the orbit. If you google global warming and Mars, there's global warming on Mars. Google global warming and Saturn. Some say this is just a co-incidence, but is it?
The planet is being polluted with mercury from coal fired power plants, but does the US or the UN have the moral compass to police other countries over cleaning up this issue? How do we know the oil companies who sponsor them aren't the real winers in this issue.
It is true people were once freaking out about global cooling. In the 80s I remember everyone freaking out about preservatives, and now some of those same preservatives are taken as high powered anti oxidants.
Finally, one person in this site has some common sense. Global climate changes are a normal function. Cycles in the sun's output also figure into the equation. Doesn't anyone understand that the earth had ice ages and subsequent warming cycles, and there were no people around!
Gordon
06/04/2007 4:32:54 PM
