It means that I'm too busy to keep doing everybody else's homework for them right now. It was fun while it lasted. I might go though the latest post carefully if I have time later. It's cool to hear I'm like Segal though, I hear his Japanese is good and that he punches pretty good too.
One thing does jump out at me as being easy to respond to quickly:
Also, should I explain you that most of western industries, are exporting most of our scraps to third world countries so that they can evade (legally) polluting regulations?
Ultimately I think this requires wrapping one's head around the scales of the industries involved, and also progress being made as consumers like ourselves become more educated on the issue.
There was a
huge scandal around 1994-1995 about "recycled" Pepsi bottles from the US ending up in a landfill in India. Obviously that's unacceptable, but the flip side is that it takes a corrupt or completely incompetent local government to let that happen. It's important to mention that Pepsi was getting the bottles back from the California redemption program and shipping them to a factory that claimed to recycle all the plastic. That was the result of consumer ignorance (thinking that used soda bottles can be recycled back into soda bottles, which they couldn't at the time), Pepsi not looking carefully enough into the issues (it wouldn't be the last time Pepsi had a run-in with India), and the local population in India.
Let's not kid ourselves that this is all solely the doing of a multinational like Pepsi. There is no value in polluting as it eventually causes other problems, and local governments everywhere should force their local industries not to conspire with international polluters. Convenient dumps could be viewed as an "efficency" by a corrupt company like Pepsi in this example, but the company's influence isn't so pervasive that it can just steamroll over popular protest...unless it gets help from the inside (and people not caring helps too).
But 1995 was fifteen years ago, as well. As far as I can tell, the situation with recycling by multinationals within India
has improved. At present, perhaps the biggest problem with the traditional multinational company-style approach is that the efforts of
smaller players in recycling is ignored or even declared illegal as cities try to raise their standard to that of the West, if that is indeed attainable or desirable.
The EU also is making very strong statements about waste - I've heard (secondhand alert) that at one time (sometime in the 2000s) they were talking about taking the plastic or waxed bags out of boxes of dry foods to reduce waste. That would have been unthinkable years ago after the Tylenol scare of 1982.
Back to China for a moment. China declares that it is entitled to more emissions (and I wouldn't even want to consider their domestic pollution problems) because the West emits at a certain rate. Per capita, Chinese emissions are much lower. There are two problems though:
1.) Most obviously, China's argument suggests that raising their per capita emissions (and by extension the sort of waste climate skeptics agree is bad, i.e. mountains of plastic bags) to that of a Western nation is acceptable. In the United States, about 15-20% of the total land mass is affected by the road system, and most of that is negative.
2.) China also favors the wrong measurement of progress on emissions vs. the economy in order to combat the likely trend I just outlined. They tout their very low per capita emissions and use it as an argument for deserving more room, but they also talk about how they are still a "developing nation" that isn't as developed (read efficient) as the West. The better method would be to focus on efficiency, as most economists do, by calculating how much pollution is created per unit of GDP. The challenge is that such an arbitrary measure puts a focus on on expensive pollution controls and efficiency requirements, like those companies here in the US like to complain about all the time. But it improves the argument of opponents of wasteful companies seeking to offload their external costs (like the Pepsi example above).
That's a very important point in this whole debate - China sometimes acts like the companies they like to complain about, but still highlights foreign waste (and sometimes ignores their domestic contribution). That lends the appearance of hypocrisy.
Yet this isn't contrary to China developing infrastructure on par with the West, or manufacturing capability, or exports, raising their quality of life, etc. It's solely about them trying to have both feet simultaneously in the past and the present. We'll have to see how they deal with this issue; obviously, it's not easy.
But people also aren't aware that the US alone pledged $100BN towards developing nations at the infamous Copenhagen talks.
All I can hope is maybe inspiring some people to rethink their own beliefs, while getting an idea what sort of ideas are out there myself (and often I learn new things in such debates).
cul wrote:With a bit of reflection on the how and why, no one can take Google seriously. You don't take a politician seriously when he says he has no ties with private companies. You don't take Obama seriously when he receives the Nobel Prize the same week he's planning to send more troop in Afghanistan in the name of peace. You don't take the Nobel Prize of peace seriously at all when for the last 5 decades it has only been given to NATO friendly people. You didn't take Bush seriously when he said he was going to invade Irak, only to free Irakis and find weapons of mass destruction. You don't take international summits seriously because you perfectly know that's not where decisions are made. You don't take seriously a journalist blabbering about freedom of speech and unbiased views when he's working for a newspaper that belongs to News Corporation (with people like Rupert Murdoch or Viet D. Dinh on the board of directors).
My friend, please take a seat over there. Don't assume I defend abhorrent points of view without thinking twice because it defends an ideological bloc. If this was 1999 again, I'd be pushing Paul Begala's
Is Our Children Learning? - the first glimpse many of us had of the real President Bush. I don't watch Faux (did anybody think I was linking The Guardian just to score brownie points - okay, I admit I always forget which of the papers is like the British version of the New York Daily News, but I didn't link it here). If this was 2004 again I'd be linking Outfoxed and talking about what a great guy John Kerry is. Obviously, we can't have perfect choices, but it doesn't do anything to drown in cynicism and feel helpless. Don't blame me for Iraq; I voted for the best candidate in every election (I was just barely too young to vote for Gore).
You also can't really blame us for Keith Rupert (where's the D come from?) Murdoch; he's originally an Adelaidean Australian. Perhaps not as bad as how Germany got somebody from a place that also started with an A before that big war a while back.
And in any case, we know that Copenhagen was not the place where the Chinese decided to sink the treaty. They made that decision before they sent their envoy (not the head of state).
Finally,
back on topic
for a moment:
I don't *always* agree with the guy, but
CNN's Fareed Zakaria has a good analysis of the Google / China issue.
So far, still waiting for the anti-Google side to come up with a
single source backing up what are basically uninformed prejudices.
As you quoted, it's better than the alternative of no source. Turning inward is one thing, and 'net war is one of the others. It's naive to think that the Internet could be completely demilitarized like outer space is (by treaty) but we clearly don't need another arms race, so it's worth fighting.