Right, installment number three. And Ericman, think over the global sink analogy again, there is only so much that our atmosphere and ecology can absorb in the short time since we became industrialised. So what if 1 billion cows in India release methane, does that mean we shouldn't attempt to reduce our own emissions? Of course it doesn't. What each country emits is going to effect other people around the world, as emissions have scarce respect for sovereign borders. In January 2002, Norway started a push for a 'polluter pays' which was to be a binding international scheme. This was because there was evidence that Britain's Selafield nuclear plant is emitting radioactive wastes that are reaching the Norwegian coastline. Lobsters and other shellfish in the North Sea and the Irish Sea have high levels of radioactive technetium-99.
So, now I'll attempt to elucidate why America decided not to sign the protocols. I'll be looking at the emissions trading scheme first. Again I'll be using the Peter Singer book and possible greenpeace for any further figures. All direct quotes will be denoted by ***-***.
So we have our global sink. Seepage is occuring slowly, waterholes are being poisoned as we continue to dump matter into it, knowin now that it is no longer an infinite resource. Obviously such reckless abandon can no longer be countenanced, and if we look again at George Bush's speech..
I'll tell you one thing I'm not going to do is I'm not going to let the US carry the burden for clearing up the world's air, like the Kyoto treaty would have done. China and India are exempt from that treaty, I think we need to be more even-handed.
he obviously has a point, even though he was saying it to dodge his obligations, the ethics of equal distribution must be taken into account.
We need to find some way to measure the output of countries and allot them a fair share of the atmosphere. How do we justify taking somehting that has, for our entire human history belonged to humanit, and making it into private property so it can be allotted? ***Locke has an argument which will defend the unequal distribution of property even when ther is no longer 'enough and as good' for others. Comparing the situation of American Indian, wheree there is no private ownership of land, and hence the land is not cultivated, with that of England, where some landowners hold vast estates and many laboureres have no land ata ll, Locke claims that 'a king of a large and fruitful territory there (i.e., in America) feeds, lodges, and is clad worse than a day labourer in England'. Therefore, he suggest, even the landless labourer is better off because of the private, though unequal, appropriation of the common asset, and hence should consent to it. The factual basis of Lockes comparison between English labourers and American Indians is evidently dubious, as is its failure to consider other, more equitable ways of ensuring that the land is used productively. But even if the argument worked for the landless English labourer, we cannot defend the private appropriation of the global sink in the same way***. It seems the landless labourer who can no longer share what was once common has no right to complain because he is better off than he would have been if "inegalitarian private property in land... had not been recognised". Now, the same argument if applied to the global sink analogy would say that the worlds poorest people have benefited from the increased productivity that has come from the use of the global sink by the industrialised nations. But this argument doesn't work, because many of the worlds poorest people, whose share of the atmosphere's capacity have been appropriated by the industrialised nations, are not able to partake of this increased productivity in the industrialised nations - they cannot afford to buy their products - and if rising sea levels inundate their farmlands, or cyclones destroy their homes, they will be far worse off than they otherwise would have been.
One advantage of living with someone you know well, is that if hair clots the shower plughole, it's fairly easy to identify who it belongs to. It is then reasonable to have that person clear away their mess. Can we, in the case of the atmosphere, trace back what share of responsibility each country has for its emissions? It isn't as easy as looking at hair colour ***(but) a few years ago researchers measured world carbon emissions from 1950 to 1986 and found that the United States, with about 5 percent of the world's population at the time, was responsible for 30 percent of the cumulative emissions, whereas India, with 17 percent of the world's population, was responsible for less than 2 percent of the emissions.*** It's as if, in a massive commune sharehouse of 20 people, and all using the same shower, one person had shed 30 pecent of the hair blocking the drain, and 3 people had shed virtually no hair at all. One way of deciding how the bill for the plumber gets split up is to allot a percentage based on how much hair you had shed. See where this is all heading now?
There is a counter-claim to the US being the heaviest polluter, per head of population, than any other country. The argument goes that America has planted so many trees in recent decadesm that it has actually soaked up more carbon dioxide than it has emitted. This view is problematic. On eis that the US has only been able to reforest such vast tracts of land because they ripped up the trees there in the first place which released masssive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. ***So this therefore , depends on the period over which the calculations are made. If the period includes the entire era of the cutting down of forests, then the US comes out much worse than if it starts from the time in which the forest had been cut but no reforestation had taken place.*** The second problem is that forest growth, while desirable (certainly in my home state) is a one hit wonder. Once the forest is mature it no longer sucks up appreciable amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
At present rates of emissions, contributions from the developing nations will not equal the built up contribution of the developed nations until about 2038. If you adjust the figures for population ***in other words, if we ask when the contribution of the developing nations per person will equal the per person contributions of the developed nations to the atmospheric stock of greenhouse gases*** the answer is: not for another century.
So again, in child like terms. The atmosphere is broken, and the developed nations broke it. It is only fair that they bear the majority if the costs of repair.
So this historical outline of fairness seems to put a gross weight of responsibility on the developed nations. In theri defence, it could gbe argued that they weren't aware at the time of the effects of their cumulative greenhouse gases or of the limit of the atmosphere in absorbing our emissions. So it might be fairer to set a standard now and wipe the slate clean for the past. Perhaps winding the clock back to the first report from the IPCC would be better, when at that time we were made aware officialy of the dangers. This seems grossly unfair to the developing nations to reign their activities because of other peoples action, but lets assume they are in a good mood and allow us this, so we can look at another principle that would decide how much each nation would be able to admit. This is the equal share for everyone principle.
Here is where I leave you. Imagine me as Peter Sellers dying halfway through a movie and all of a sudden the credits roll in the wrong place. I have 9000 words due by August the 14th which I really should be attending too. I have readings to a total of 600 pages to do over the next fortnight. The issues that I've been writing about is something of great interest to me, and anyone who remembers my rants about my home state would well know why. I wanted to go on to the main thrust of my argument, that Bush believes'economic growth is the solution, not the problem', and how this is used to mask the looting of our future all to make some more shiny consumer goods. My scanner is broken so you will never see the graph that plots countries according to their per capita metric ton of carbon emissions versus their per capita GDP. One which shows India, Chile, Spain, China and others doing remarkable jobs of making money yet not polluting our atmosphere and then countries like Canada, Norway, Australia and the United States being GDP rich and pollution heavy. The US is second only to Singapore in the scale of its emissions, and leads the world in GDP per capita.
So, why the fuck is it that only Australia and the USA refuse to sign off on Kyoto? Why is it that immediate matters like a few terrorist are the focal point in the race to elect the most powerful white man on Earth? Terrorists will never EVER come close to causing the damage that the ecological disaster we're facing will. I spent so much time in this thread because I become so frustrated by this small-minded politicking view, not just of electors but of debaters in this thread. Am I the only one who cares? Once again, am I the only one who sees that their is even a problem?
So vote Bush/Cheney in '04, after all, why change horseman mid-apocalypse?
Last edited by XstrangerdangerX (2006-04-23 15:07:37)