Sorry, guys, but I have to keep my reply short since I'm at work. In fact, I may not have much time home tonight either so please don't mistake my brevity for a snide response! Really, I'm just trying to understand the mind-set here
!
Didn't get the feeling you were snide. Just efficiently using your resources.
So, the problem you guys are having with this isn't so much that global warming may not in fact be occurring (it is, you can't argue with melting glaciers!) or whether or not it's man-made, the problem is the government stealing our rights? Correct?
Not exactly. The earth has cooled and warmed more than it is doing now, with-in recorded history. This is the first time the event is being audaciously blamed on man. There is also a Huge difference between the subject of pollution and global warming. Despite the similar activities involved, the differences in what we are talking about are huge. So huge that environmentalist screaming foul about some of the solutions to global warming.
Well, they are, no doubt BUT given that, would you have prefered that the EPA didn't step in & police-up the big businesses that were dumping toxic crapola in our streams decades ago? Your preference would have been that some ethically-minded executive at Company A would have mentioned to the "evil" CEO that perhaps said CEO needs to stop dumping chrome waste into River "A"? When dollars are involved that would never have happened.
Sometimes it's necessary for the big, bad government to step up to the plate & correct someone. The examples are near endless though I will grant that some of them go so overboard as to make me want to toss my cookies in the nearest wastebasket (helmet laws & seat belt laws are great examples! If I'm driving through my wee little town going all of 20 miles a hour behind Gramm's in her Buick do I need to be wearing a seat belt!? Ah, no!).
Big business, little business it doesn't matter. When the poop from your out house fouls my well, we(you and I) have an issue. If the government let you do it, I have an issue with the government. When they force me to abandon my well and pay for the clean up, that's a volation of the original covenant under which we both dug our wells and built our outhouses.
That the government, we elected, would provide for the general welfare. The government should protect my property from your activities.
Sorry, Popeye, Y2K is a bad example. Remember, I'm in the IT field & was quite active in assuring my customers (I was in the field back then) that nothing was going to happen. It's only through the sheer effort of countless thousands of engineers & programmers & technicians, etc. that there weren't any Y2K issues! Been there, did that! We worked our collective asses off to square everything away.
I'll give you this one without argument. My brother in Dallas worked for IBM and was 24/7 on the project for a year.
By the way Pop, I'm 54, hardly a kid & lived through all the same decades of oddities you & Franc have lived through. I do worry about my kids & what kind of world they'll inherit. But, I worry more about the economics of the future (& especially China) than I do about the enviroment. I don't worry about pumping oil out of the Alaskan wilderness, someplace you can only fly into to see (I say pump it dry!) & offshore drilling is necessary & needed. I do worry about billions of tons of plastic floating in the oceans & what happens to the food chain when minute particles are absorbed in the fish we eat.
There are concerns here, legitamate ones. I worry about China, who had no trouble with the Kyotto Accords because they were exempted and could build anything and ruin as much ecology as they wanted to compete with the US. They demanded we sign it knowing what disadvantage it would place on our industry. Not one US President since G. Bush the elder, has signed it because it is bad law for the US. Treaties , signed by our Presidents, are law of the land under our constitution. Not to be entered into lightly or to appease an extreme minority. None of whom are demostrating in front of the new coal fired power plants China powers up every third day of the year.
Burning fossil fuels may be altering the environment. But burning renewable sources is not a simple answer. Burning twigs and wood is illegal in most of southern CA because of of smog pollution. Even for heating and cooking. And burning corn in our cars instead of feeding the hungry is blatantly IMMORAL. For the government, which we trusted with authority to provide for the general welfare and protect our constitutional rights, legislating this immorality is contradictory to the implied trust. Doing so with half baked science to please the loudest whiners in the electorate is irresponsible.
There has to be a middle ground between those who fear EVERYTHING & those who don't care. Somewhere, over a beer or two (or 3 or 4) I'd be willing to bet, if you & I (or Franc, my man) were elected co-presidents we'd find a compromise!
We may very well be able to sensibly discuss and solve these issues, over a beer. But the Eco-terrorist will take no prisoners, or advice or comprimise.
I've got to end this here.....surprised I took this much time (waaaay past lunchtime
). Back to getting my butt-kicked by a virtualized server.