Its so odd. People are so stupid. Its hard to even understand so much stupidity. The climate has been far hotter and far colder in the span of humanity, in the span of life on the planet, and any other significant span of earth. There was a jungle in northern Siberia. There was ice covering France. We had more hurricanes in the past and we had fewer as well.
But lets just say we want to slow down waste and pollution for the sheer benefit of making the earth easier for mankind. Thats OK. Then don’t worry about the US. We are pretty damned clean here. We could do better. But for the most part we are very efficient and clean comparatively. But we are 320 million out of 7 billion plus. What about Africa, India, China? When you go to the places where the worlds population is, there is lots of pollution. Its horrible. Its hard to breath. The water is undrinkable. And there is man made deforestation. If two countries, China and India, got their act together you could actually make a dent. But our trade policies let these two pollute far more than the western world could ever hope to pollute.
Climate changes. Its a nearly random system. That is to say that the earth as a system has so many variables that chaos theory applies. While there is actually a system working, its so complex that its best defined as random with in a range. And we are nowhere near the limits of the range.
Yes, but IF I drive my Prius to Starbucks to buy my $4.50 Latte with NO PLASTIC STRAW it makes me FEEL like I am doing something to protect the environment MR. Smarty Pants.
(sarc)
Seriously though. If anyone else watched 60 Minutes this past Sunday regarding the plastic in the worlds oceans it just about makes you sick. It was a popular topic yesterday in the office. Almost everything is now made from plastic. Look around you. Much of that discarded plastic ends up in land fills or the ocean.
Even the plastic recycled goes somewhere. A lot went to China. Now they stopped taking it.
The US, Canada, Australia and Europe are pretty good about taking care of their trash. The less developed countries of the world are not. This is where most of the trash ending up in the Pacific Ocean comes from. Rivers in Asia, Africa and the Philippines dump millions of tons of plastic into the Oceans.