Clean breathable air, clean drinkable water, a ground without trash, energy not reliant on foreign oil. Yeah, you are right. Count me out.
Like I said before, pollution does not abide by national boundaries.
A regional example: I live about 30 miles north of the Mexican maquiladora sector, if you're unfamiliar with the term, look it up. FTZs are notorious for pollution and can contribute heavily to other environmental problems as imports and exports are encouraged, and environmental concerns are not a priority, to say the least. Even if every person in my state, and all states contiguous, drove a hybrid car, used solar panels, recycled, etc... my region would still not have clean breathable air or clean drinkable water, not to mention an ocean without pollutants and constant beach closures. There would still be noticeable pollution, hazy air filled with manufacturing particulates and the air quality would still be terrible.
Let me ask you... Have you ever drank Coca-Cola? Have you ever consumed any products made by Nabisco? Have you ever owned any BRAVIA, Hyundai, Sony, Vizio, Dell, Samsung, Kodak, Panasonic, GE, Microsoft, Cemex, Philips, Pioneer, Siemens or Sanyo products? Ever ridden in a BMW, Jaguar, Toyota, Ford or Volkswagen? All of these companies have manufacturing and distribution plants no more than 45 minutes from where I live. If you're neither refusing to use, nor outright protesting all of these companies and all of their products on a daily basis, you've been partially responsible for the poisoning of MY air and MY drinking water and MY oceans.
Ah, an analogy. How nice... I do love baseball. A sport that can be played only as a team, right? No...because I loved baseball as a kid. Give me a tennis ball, a glove and a wall, and I could have hours of fun playing with myself... Of course, after a while, the kids across the creek saw me having so much fun, and decided to join. So it DID become a team sport. That is one of the the things about other people - if we are enjoying ourselves with a better life, others tend to join in.
Well, it looks like we, as a country, on this issue, are going to be throwing that ball against the wall all by ourselves for the foreseeable future.
I know you like guns...but I have no use for them. If you need a gun to further your cause, you are a nothing, a failure. However, if you can get others to join your cause after proving that it improves your way of life, then that cause will advance naturally. No little bang bangs needed.
Oh, I like guns, now? I've never even
held a gun in my entire life, let alone owned one or threatened use of one to "further my cause." My point was that shaming, or forcing people into a state of compliance creates dissidence and weakens your position and legitimacy. But, I guess that's a typical tactic on your part, to skirt the point of the comment, and snidely remark on something irrelevant.
What if people just don't care? What if they would have rather lived their lives doing what they so chose instead of worrying about the environment? Let's say that all this man-made Co2 is depleting the ozone, melting the icecaps, and all life on this planet will be gone in a few hundred years... so what? Why should I care? Don't answer that. Its rhetorical. I don't care... at all.
I am very glad to see you took a throw-away comment of mine so seriously. Please, continue to do so. You will further my cause, and I thank you for that.
Why make a "throw-away comment" when the rest of your post is so serious in tone? And why make such an overreaching comment that is a clear attempt to emotionally, and sensationally detract from the point of the discussion?
And speaking of "your cause," what exactly is it? I mean, you have John Lennon tossing up a peace sign in your avatar, and you spout all this hippy-dippy peace and love stuff all over the place, but aside from standing on a soapbox in an internet forum, and ridiculing those who think differently than you do, what do you actually do to combat these issues that you claim to care so fervently about? Do you drive an electric car? Do you always take public transportation? Do you have solar panels installed on your home? Do you refuse to buy products from companies that are known gross polluters?
I understand that you think you're better than most people because you
act like you care, and you
act like you're fighting this grand crusade of awareness and enlightenment, but in reality, what is it that you
actually do that
actually has made a difference?