Bones

Sorry, dude. I didn't mean "you" in the personal, individual sense. Please mentally change all the "you"'s in my diatribes to "one" as in "if one argues that, then"

No personal slight or attack intended.

I get a bit pissed when my country and primary industries like mining, forestry, oil production get blamed for all the environmental ills of the world. And I hate defending some of their practices because I think they should and could do a lot better. But I also think that they're a convenient bogeyman that lets us all avoid looking in the mirror. The real truth of the matter is that pollution is not driven by primary or secondary industries, it is driven by the consumer.

And now that the world's great population groups (India and China) are emerging as nations of consumers, the problem is rapidly compounding. We, as the original 1st world economies, would be hypocrites to suggest that they can't have what we have. And yet, we won't give anything up (like convenience or luxury)

The various environmental groups have targeted Alberta's Oil Sands in a media campaign for one reason: they might be able to win this battle. They won't go after King Coal, it's not sexy, it doesn't resonate with people, it's freakin' powerful and...gasp....it's American! All the coal industry would have to do is run a few ads showing hard working coal miners with the stars and stripes on their hard hats and maybe mention the "terrorists winning" and the media war would be over.

The contrived outrage over the oil sands is BS. Shut it down tomorrow and global carbon emissions won't change, OPEC will just pump more for the world to burn.

And yeah, I admit that I get my back up when Americans target Canada as an enemy of the environment while still operating coal plants that have a carbon footprint 600x the size of the entire oil sands combined.

Bones

Yeah, Snowolf...that's scary!

Frankly, the only way that I see 1st world people changing is if you hit them in the wallet.

It worked during the energy crisis of the 70's and I have no reason to believe that it won't work now.

And it will SUCK! (but it will work)