Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The recent days of the Copenhagen summit have shown up the vast mistrust and deviant behavior of it's participants. Socio-economic differences between, let's say, North America and, say, Africa will always exist, and there should be no deception about that changing any time soon. The powers that be in tribal, rural Africa have no desire to see a strong, independent citizenry, perhaps freely armed as we are in the US, (and thus always ready to suppress a tyrannical government), and will therefore never allow proper, managed educational, environmental and workforce changes.
Meantime, the vast global corporate power centered traditionally in America, but now spreading to China and Japan, will not allow changes to their ultra-productive bottom lines, because that would alter the compensation to the select few (and it really is only a few, BTW) at the top of that fiscal pyramid.
Those massive salaries and bonuses? Only the tip of the iceberg. Corporate-supplied luxury townhomes, apartments in vacation locations, vehicles, travel on private aircraft, wine, women & song: all part of the package that these types benefit from.
The working folks, who must toil in the mines, or tear their fingers apart filching for raw diamonds in the mud? To heck with them.
So, there will be, effectively, no changes wrought in Copenhagen. Just worthless rhetoric fed by such notable illusionaries as Al Gore, and more accolades for Obama, who has yet to actually accomplish anything, anywhere. But who people desperately (and wrongly..) assume is a "reset button" to compensate for imagined and real environmental infractions during the Bush years. The pipe dreams of the socialistic youth hordes, for enforced global conviction to environmental change?
No way, sorry.
And the Rush Limbaugh led anti-environmentalists who deny that 6.5 billion people, in crowded, environmental hell-hole hovels like Mexico City or Bejing, can possibly have any effect on the limited resources or environment of this size- and resource-limited planet? What are they smoking?
That turns out to be simple greed: a Republican Party member truck driver who tunes in Rush for his daily dose of stupidity does not want to see his fast food, cheap cars and fuel, consumerist lifestyle altered in any way, especially by young, egghead socialists who might just care about the planet and it's non-human inhabitants.
Truly hopeless. However, in the end, it will reach a critical mass sort of situation, and perhaps then, things might be set straight. But it will not be pleasant, I assure you.
I agree. in my population dynamics graduate class yeah those many years ago, it was obvious, mathematically, that of course there are limitations. That some people will deny this obvious fact, right up to when they cough to death on the smog, or die from some uber-virulent global pandemic, or from massive crop failures, is a sad commentary on man's inability to think altruistically.
Partly that's because most humans don't even know what that word means....
Even now, our leaders talk hopefully, and frantically, about "an economic recovery" in the US. Back to what again? What we had before? That's like asking for a return to having the Swine flu, permanently!
Holy Stupid Cow, Batman!
(Now, why haven't they made The Club of Rome's "Limits To Growth" a mandatory read in our kids' junior year? [because in their senior year, they are too interested in getting laid, or drink, or both...]).
Let's just have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, cold weather, snow and all.
The next crisis they dream up, like the Millenium Bug, Cap and Trade, Avian Flu, Swine Flu, Global Warming, etc., just ignore 'em.
Al Gore and Obama, send them both lumps of coal for Christmas.
Truly hopeless. However, in the end, it will reach a critical mass sort of situation, and perhaps then, things might be set straight. But it will not be pleasant, I assure you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rifleman
Even now, our leaders talk hopefully, and frantically, about "an economic recovery" in the US. Back to what again? What we had before? That's like asking for a return to having the Swine flu, permanently!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Icy Tea
The next crisis they dream up, like the Millenium Bug, Cap and Trade, Avian Flu, Swine Flu, Global Warming, etc., just ignore 'em.
Al Gore and Obama, send them both lumps of coal for Christmas.
I think what happens next is that all these environmental experts get in their limos and ride to the airport, where they'll board their private jets, and leave Copenhagen. And they'll be happy to leave Copenhagen because there have been record low temperatures there during this Summit on Global Warming. No car-pooling and no commercial flights here.
Didn't anyone see The Day After Tomorrow? But seriously folks...
How did you like how Chavez is saying that he is with the demonstrators and thinks the "rich" countries should compensate the poor countries for any climate change initiatives (China is saying this too)?
Didn't anyone see The Day After Tomorrow? But seriously folks...
How did you like how Chevaz is saying that he is with the demonstrators and thinks the "rich" countries should compensate the poor countries for any climate change initiatives (China is saying this too)?
As a practical, mature (boy am I mature!) and ecologically educated individual, I wish we could revise all of our planet to a far more agrarian, but acreage-limited, society. You know, permanently self-sustaining? With limits on population (Offhand, I'd set it at about 2 billion worldwide), and with the foresight to place people in places with a minimum impact on the spectacularly valuable places.
In my hometown of Vancouver, Canada, they have pretty much annihilated the surrounding river bottom lands with tract houses, but then hey, who cares? Certainly not Vancouverites, by and large. They love January tomatoes, cheap! The produce from those vast fields has been easily supplanted with flown-in goods from South America where environmental controls are non-existant.
Of course, such ideas are anathema to the global corporations, whose top-enders continue to enjoy taking a little bit off the top of each of our 6.5 B residents. Sorta like McDonald's profit policy, but absent even McDonald's supposed corporate conscience. (You notice how McDonald's gets itself into any and every society it can? China, S. America? Everywhere there's a dollar spent on fast food?)
Last edited by rifleman; 12-17-2009 at 09:42 AM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Altruism, schmaltruism, eh? Let's war instead!
But seriously folks...
