Warmer
EmailThere is a big, big environmental meeting starting in Montreal today. It’s a followup to the Kyoto treaty on climate change. 10,000 representatives from 140 countries, all together to get something going. They’ll argue at length in public sessions, they’ll meet in private afterwards, they’ll bargain late into the night, and in the end, probably, not get anything much done.
You’ll recall that the U.S. is one country that has not signed on to the Kyoto protocol, which would call on countries to reduce their output of industrial gases that trap heat in the atmosphere. The Clinton White House knew better than to try bringing it to a vote in the Senate; the Bush administration declared it a dead letter shortly after arriving in office. Even many backers of the treaty granted there was a big hole in it–less industrialized countries, such as China and India, could cheerfully burn more and more coal and oil, while the U.S., Europe, Japan, Australia, etc., would face the expensive proposition of altering their economies to slow the warming of the atmosphere.
Is there warming going on? Well–and you hardly heard it here first–yes. On Friday the journal SCIENCE published yet another paper, from a team of scientists who analyzed air bubbles trapped in the ice of Antarctica, and found there is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today than at any time in the last 650,000 years.
"The results confirm that the modern atmosphere is highly anomalous and reinforce the view that greenhouse gases and climate are intimately related," wrote Edward J. Brook of Oregon State University.
If you want to argue over whether to blame anyone, and what needs to be done, have at it. The one thing I’ll throw into the pot is that we’ve been here before, time and again. The Montreal meeting is the eleventh in an annual series by the "Conference of the Parties" to the Kyoto agreement, and there were a million meetings before that. The issue is almost designed for stalemate.
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"When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Go Shopping."
That’s from a bumper sticker I saw years ago. Today is billed as the beginning of the Christmas season for online shopping, and the theme du jour is that if you’re worried about using a credit card online, stop. You’re more likely to lose your wallet in a mall than you are to fall prey to identity theft.
This comes from a group called Javelin Strategy Research, which says that among people who have been victims of identity fraud–and think they know how it happened–12 percent say it happened online, while 68 percent say they physically lost a credit card, wallet or checkbook.
Gary Langer, who heads our polling unit, adds some context. He says to remember that almost half of those who say their identity was stolen have no idea what happened to them. What’s more, we’re still at a point where 54 percent of the American public, in the latest data he has, has never bought anything online.
"Good Morning America" has posted some useful info HERE.
-Ned
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Hi Ned,
I’ll add my two cents to this whole global warming/Kyoto treaty thang….
Personally, I’m a bit mixed about it. I know that as one of the leading “great industrialized nations” on the planet, America could do a lot more to shore up the environment, reduce pollution, and hopefully reverse global warming. And I know that a lot of Bush-bashers blame him for all the environmental ills we now have — just because he didn’t sign on to the Kyoto protocol.
BUT, I think Bush has some valid points — namely, what good is this protocol when it exempts “less industrialized” nations such as China and India? If they’re so “less industrializes,” how come they also have some of the most POLLUTED areas of the earth?
I had a conversation with a relative of mine this holiday weekend and we discussed how much our “homeland” (Yes, I’m Chinese.) has changed — that so MANY Chinese are leaving the native countryside and agricultural lifestyle for urban living and manufacturing industries… the growing “middle class”… etc.
My relative and I came to the conclusion that China, for better or worse, is more or less where America was in the early 1900s. Big business (i.e. “big money”) is growing like gangbusters, creating massive amounts of new jobs and new, cheaper products (and the consumer demand for them) — BUT, unlike the U.S., there apparently is NO governmental check to HOW the country goes about developing itself into an industrial powerhouse. No one there apparently CARES that the factories there are spewing out pollutants by the tons. And being a communist state, it wouldn’t surprise me if there WERE any Ralph Naders among China’s BILLION+ population that they were (permanently and quietly) silenced long ago in some Asian gulag (or unmarked cemetary) in some desolate corner of China.
Case point, another Asian friend of mine came back from China last year and was absolutely STUNNED with the wide selection of consumer electronic goods — and all at unheard of remarkably LOW prices — now available in China. He said that the TVs and DVD players that the country was cranking out back then FAR SURPASSED what he saw in Tokyo. And although the quality of the goods weren’t as refined as something you would expect from Sony or other Japanese company, my friend says there is a reason for it…
According to my friend, he says a local sales rep in China told him “We make these things cheaper (i.e. with reduced quality) so that when they break, it’s easier to just throw out and buy the new model rather than try to fix it. If we don’t do it that way, who will buy our NEW stuff?” (at least that’s the ROUGH translation from what he told me in Chinese!)
And it’s that kind of “throw-away” attitude that I think will be the death of us all. But unfortunately, to me, it seems the prevailing attitude everywhere.
How long ago was it that Apple came out with the iPod? Then all sorts of problems come popping up with the built-in, non-removable, non-replaceable rechargeable batteries? And then what? Oh wait, Apple comes out with the “gotta have” mini… so we’re good with that for a year, year and a half? Then comes the even SEXIER “nano”… and if we were on the verge of buying that then there’s the “video ipod” and ipod cell phones — just a MONTH later.
And let’s not even get started on cell phones.
Just where do all these “dead” products go? Reused? Recycled? Fat chance.
Posted by: redtech5 | November 28, 2005, 5:30 pm 5:30 pm