[DannyTN]

"Rich capitalist countries improve the environment while poor socialist countries destroy it."

I don't think it's so cut and dried. We were doing pretty good about destroying our environment until we passed regulations and formed the much hated EPA.

The problem is that the EPA doesn't have sufficient checks and balances and thus they frequently overreach and are subject to being used by rogue machurian Presidents. I'm an advocate of putting checks and balances on the EPA but not dismantleing it completely.

Conversely, China a communist country has embraced some catpitalist reforms and suffered a lot of polution as a result. If they had democracy, they might have reigned in some of those problems faster. But I don't know that for sure.

Russia supposedly has great environmental protections for it's vast forests. But at the same time, central planning produced some of the worst environmental disasters such as Chernobyl and that major lake that ceased to exist.

[vbmoneyspender]

The Fable of Federal Regulation • No, states didn't ignore environmental problems.

Contrary to common perceptions, many measures of environmental quality were already improving prior to the advent of federal environmental laws. The Environmental Protection Agency's first national water quality inventory, conducted in 1973, found that there had been substantial improvement in water quality in major waterways during the decade before adoption of the federal Clean Water Act, at least for the pollutants of greatest concern at the time, organic waste and bacteria (Freeman 1990, 114).

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, state and local governments began to recognize the importance of environmental quality and adopted first-generation environmental controls. Some states' efforts were more comprehensive and more successful than others, and different states had different priorities. Environmental protection did not always trump health care, education, or other local concerns. Nonetheless, by 1966, every state had adopted water pollution legislation of some sort.

[RBStealth]

The problem with the Pope going green is that it is an appropriate message for 2nd and 3rd world countries being industrialized. But the top tier Western Civilization industrialized nations have already have had their environmental moment or movement in the 60’s and 70’s that succeeded politically. Whats is now reigning in the West for the environmental movement is now radical and anti-humanist.

So while the Pope’s forthcoming approval of being a steward of the earth and its resources might be fine and dandy. What he is really doing is empowering the West,and its well funded anti-humanist green movements to now go evangelize in 2nd/3rd world countries politically. This has been going on already in the population control arena with the UN, World Bank, US and Europe saying to third world countries enact these measures and laws favorably toward contraception, abortion, sterilization or you wont get cooperation, loans, $$, etc from us.

[FreedomPoster]

>>Conversely, China a communist country has embraced some catpitalist reforms and suffered a lot of polution as a result.

They had plenty of pollution before capitalist reforms. Same for the former Soviet Union, they had plenty before their downfall.