Kyoto Treaty

[chainkill]

A lot of people complain that the republican congress under Bill Clinton did not ratify the Kyoto treaty, and George Bush just ignored it completely. Most of these people are idiots just parroting things that they have heard from their propaganda outlet of choice, but some of these people are intelligent human beings for whom I have a lot of

Comments

Thoughts

[damarie]

As far as I understand it, things like the Kyoto treaty (opened for signing 1998) set goals to be met at a specific point in the future (2005). It's not like we would have signed it and the next day the power was shut off. So, if we had ratified it in the Clinton era, ideally the deadline would have driven lots of research into energy-efficiency, lots of PR into lifestyle modification, and such. That's why I'm annoyed - for rather the same reason you're annoyed about stem cells.

Re: Thoughts

[chainkill]

Yes, but stem cells don't require any sacrifice. I don't have to give up eating fruits during the winter, for instance, in order to ask that they fix the broken nerve tissue in my leg.

I understand why people want the Kyoto treaty, or one like it, to be in place. I just don't want to hear it from someone who isn't willing to give up their 20 mile round trip commute to work or the ability to use a car to pick up groceries or the right to live independently.