Quote:
Originally Posted by Karls48
To preach to the people in Africa, Asia or South America who live on $1 a day that they should not develop their resources and leave they countries pristine is a big hypocrisy.
Any measure that will lower our standard of living will produce outcry of protests and will lead to the fall of government of that time. And you cannot change our impact on environment without lowering living standards.
But no one held the gun to our head to accept it. We did it because those making big profits let some crumbs of their wealth fall our way. That is the cleverness of democratic societies.
|
I agree that it would be difficult to change the mind set of third world leaders, especially when you consider their hardships as they look at us consuming so much of the planets resources. However as an eternal optimist I must ask myself why you would make the same mistake again? Surely the undeveloped world is an ideal opportunity to do things differently and developed nations have a vested interest in making sure this happens. Why build smog polluting power stations when you could use alternate methods. I mean access to the sun is hardly a problem in Africa. Research into eco friendly chemistry (green chemistry) is moving forward in leaps and bounds and could actually end up cheaper for a large number of processes as the solvents can be reused where they are often lost in traditional methods. Sure we will keep pulling resources out of the ground but we could use these more efficiently then we do now considering the waste we generate. Working smarter has got to benefit all of us, we really have just been too lazy to change.
I saw a program on TV a couple of months ago that compared resource use between the USA and Europe. The europenes used less than half of what Americans use when population Vs consumption is compared yet the standard of living is not drastically different, in the west anyway which is where the comparison was made. I really admire what is happening in Germany with individual townships providing their own power through renewable sources and being able to sell the excess back into the grid. Yes the govt has rigged it but so it should as the less dependence we have on oil and coal the better and it may even force the republican party to find something else to do besides start wars everytime it gets into office. The people producing the electricity have not only gained a cheaper energy source but also a sense of independence that they did not have before.
As for democratic society "viva la revolution"