Quote:
Originally posted by Snakeeye@May 11 2005, 06:38 PM
Hell, I have a suggestion for the Feds: If you are going to spend billions of dollars on reducing emissions, give that money to Canada's major cities for the express purpose of expanding their LRT and rapid transit systems. Get people on the busses and trains, and get cars off the road.
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That's a good idea. Spending billions to cut pollution is a lot better than spending billions for the right to keep on going.
I am vaguely for the Kyoto Protocol because at least it's a start but at the same time I'm against it because it doesn't seem to do anything to actually slow down consumption. There are some scenarios (granted, they are very simplistic) under which consumption might increase under this agreement.
Like say a widget factory in Canada is busily building widgets and following the local emissions rules to do so, but if the widget business becomes too expensive under Kyoto might they not move the widget factory to some other place not covered by the treaty at all and with lax enviro-rules (let's call it PollUtopia) and do even more harm? I suppose that can and does happen now, but maybe the agreement would hasten it? I really don't know and I might be easily swayed off this opinion but it seems reasonable that this kind of thing might happen.
Or to put a really harsh spin on it... Maybe the whole environment is going to crash no matter what we Canadians do so do we wanna be rich when it happens or poor when it happens? I'd prefer rich. There could be some amount of guilt associated with that approach though.
Book Report! Not so long ago I read a novel called "A Friend of the Earth" by TC Boyle. He is apparently a well respected author but I gotta say that this book sucked and I recommend not reading it. The premise is quite relevant to this discussion but the book stinks. Don't read it.