From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Mon Jul 01 2002 - 20:57:36 MDT
On Monday, July 1, 2002, at 04:12 pm, Brian D Williams wrote:
>> I think curtailing our damage to the environment is important.
>> That is why I oppose letting some nations off the hook.
>
> We agree on this. But in a nation where every other car is an SUV
> how many people are paying anything other than lip service to the
> idea?
You're referring to the U.S., right? We are (apparently) not planning
to comply with environmental treaties. You are exactly right. Private
citizens won't do anything until government passes a law or mandates a
treaty. (Or until somebody suddenly develops a radically cool, cheap
and easy non-polluting source of energy.)
>
>> I understand the argument that they are trying to catch up with
>> other countries.
>
> Understand, or agree with?
Understand. My next sentence was meant to explain what was wrong with
this approach:
>> Such a scheme implies that clean air is a luxury afforded to the
>> rich countries, but which cannot be afforded by the poor
>> countries.
>
> That's not the only scheme at work with the Kyoto protocol, it also
> hands off enforcement to the U.N. which is another attempt at
> expanding the U.N. towards world government.
I see the U.N. as weakening the ability of individual nations such as
the U.S. to take arbitrary actions. I don't believe that the U.S. or
any other large country will allow the U.N. to take them over. So, I
don't see this as increasing government control, but rather as
decreasing it or providing more oversight or more checks and balances.
I don't expect world-control to go so far that it becomes a bigger
threat than our immediate government.
>> Similarly, the current curtailing of individual rights in the U.S.
>> to fight terrorism implies that rights are merely luxuries
>> afforded when there are no dangers. But whenever a serious threat
>> to the country occurs, we abandon our previous political system as
>> unworkable and revert to more restrictive regimes.
>
> The phone system was opened to the FBI during the Clinton
> administration under the guise of the "digital telephony act", and
> these same liberals didn't say a peep.
You must have missed the squawking by the ACLU and EFF and other
internet advocates. I have been participating with the liberal
complaints since the telecommunications act. There has been no lack of
complaining about these issues since the 1990s. It is totally
inaccurate to say that liberals didn't complain. Maybe the democrats in
congress got outvoted by the republican-controlled congress, or maybe
they didn't put up a fight, but the more liberal and more
rights-oriented organizations definitely complained when individual
rights were reduced in favor of corporate access and government control
over the Internet.
>> There is something wrong with any plan that only seems to work
>> when times are easy. If the system breaks down or needs to be
>> abandoned when vital stakes depend on it, it is not a good system.
>> People who are willing to abandon such schemes really don't
>> believe in them in the first place.
>
> I agree.
>
> The simple fact is that there is not a consenus on global warming
> in this country, and until there is these plans are unworkable,
> especially one sided plans like the Kyoto protocol.
I suspect that most of the disagreement on global warming is politically
motivated rather than scientifically motivated. I don't think real
scientists disagree much, except as they are hired for specific projects
for specific corporations with specific agendas.
-- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP <www.HarveyNewstrom.com> Principal Security Consultant <www.Newstaff.com>
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