I used to think no .. now after going through my flat mates notes for his exam i am thinking yes.
His notes come from the law side of it , as far as i can gather climate change = law politics and economics and huge $$$$ involved.

does any one have any opinoins on this or is it a can of worms ?

Originally posted by thestreetsarehot2night

does any one have any opinoins on this or is it a can of worms ?

depends on how lazy netphoria is feeling today.

i don't think human society is at a point where it's smart to start letting the prevailing/majority global opinion on any particular issue pressure any one country into doing something.

i am all for reductions in pollution, emissions, all that. i'm also big on sovereignty. i do not think that top-down government imposition is the best way to get there. in fact, i think that lately government actions are starting to get in the way of progress when it comes to emissions / pollution/ fuel efficiency. that goes for the regional, national, and global scales. we can hardly handle regional-scale government. we are light years away from success in any sort of system of global law, etc. so if a country doesn't want to sign a treaty on something, well, that's their prerogative, and rightly so. if the rest of the world wants to bitch at / ridicule them for it, fine. doesn't mean the non-signer is morally bankrupt just because it doesn't want to give in to global peer pressure.

Originally posted by thestreetsarehot2night
as far as i can gather climate change = law politics and economics and huge $$$$ involved.


can you explain this more?

http://daphne.palomar.edu/hgerhardt/Jay%20wrong%20board%20with%20caption.jpg

Originally posted by Mariner
i don't think human society is at a point where it's smart to start letting the prevailing/majority global opinion on any particular issue pressure any one country into doing something.

i dont understand why or how youre seeing it in such a way. its unnerving how much you view it as a simple question of complying with peer pressure/global opinion or not. this is hardly the issue at all. while that element certainly does exist, the merits, or lack of, in the actual accord should be what is of of concern. if there is a prevailing global opinion that, say, "torturing kittens is wrong" and there is then a law proposed in the US saying as much, what is adopting the law or not a question of? i dont mean to equate something as complicated as the kyoto protocol with something as plainly wrong as hurting kittens, but it illustrates the fallacy i see in your argument. if what youre actually saying is that the global scientific consensus on the dangers of global warming is false, then i rescind my comment. sort of

so if a country doesn't want to sign a treaty on something, well, that's their prerogative, and rightly so. if the rest of the world wants to bitch at / ridicule them for it, fine. doesn't mean the non-signer is morally bankrupt just because it doesn't want to give in to global peer pressure.

and nobody is saying that it isnt their prerogative to adopt it or not, because it most certainly is, the question is that if it was the right choice not to do so.

Originally posted by Axis of Action


can you explain this more?

nope not right now. Ia m stil sort of reading his notes and learning more, thats why i asked here to try and get a diffrent perspective

wah wah wah i'm patrick stein
www.greenpeace.org
wah wah wah

I think doing something is better than doing nothing, where the planet is involved. And the fact that the US makes some massive percentage of the world's greenhouse gas and now is opting out of the kyoto accord.. I find that really shitty.

i guess the way i see it is just because the u.s. isn't going along with the way a number of other countries see fit to reduce emissions doesn't mean that they aren't going to end up reducing emissions too. there is more than one political architecture behind emissions reduction, and u.s. dismissal of one particular piece of policy hopefully isn't an across-the-board dismissal of the notion of emissions reduction in the first place.

to continue sleeper's analogy, just because all my friends want me to sign a piece of paper they spent decades quibbling over that pretty much says "i will not kill kittens, and i will go about not killing kittens in this very particular way", and i choose not to, doesn't mean i'm going out tomorrow and slaughtering a bunch of kittens. i realize this doesn't exactly fit the u.s. / kyoto situation, but it sufficiently illustrates the political dynamics of the issue.

i spent a few years immersed in studying climate change, past climate changes, and the dynamics of the world's physical systems, and i do think that human activity is having and will continue to have a large and unprecedented impact on the planet's climate. whether or not this can, in aggregate, be classified as a "bad" thing is still completely up in the air. we do not know enough about the incredibly complex way the earth's climate works to predict with any accuracy just what effects our actions are having and will have. i'd say in another decade we'll be a lot closer to being able to sufficiently explore those questions. in the meantime, i think indirect economic effects, not direct poilitical action, will end up having the most influece on emissions levels, and i think the millions of dollars and dozens of years spent on the kyoto protocol were largely a huge waste of time and resources. if all of that energy had instead been directed at each country (at least in the first world) putting forth a huge effort to encourage conservation and clean technology among their own people, we'd be a lot farther along with all this than we actually are.

Hasn't it been proved that greenhouse gas is eating up the ozone layer? That's a bad thing! And the hole is right above me I think.

ok, no, i see what youre getting at. to be clear, i wasnt implying that the protocol is the only way, or the only acceptable way, of reducing emissions, i just misintepreted the angle you were coming at the issue

Originally posted by patrick
wah wah wah i'm patrick stein
www.greenpeace.org
wah wah wah you're neat.

Originally posted by Mariner


to continue sleeper's analogy, just because all my friends want me to sign a piece of paper they spent decades quibbling over that pretty much says "i will not kill kittens, and i will go about not killing kittens in this very particular way", and i choose not to, doesn't mean i'm going out tomorrow and slaughtering a bunch of kittens. i realize this doesn't exactly fit the u.s. / kyoto situation, but it sufficiently illustrates the political dynamics of the issue.



but you're already torturing more kittens than anyone in the world

Do you guys think pale blue eyes will read this thread?

Originally posted by Mayfuck
Do you guys think pale blue eyes will read this thread?

what do you think ? surely that is more important

Originally posted by Mayfuck
Do you guys think pale blue eyes will read this thread?

why would she ?