Who Is the Real Big Bad Pollution Wolf?
By David L. Brown No doubt you have seen the old bumper sticker, usually appearing on a Volvo station wagon or battered VW van, that exhorts us to “Think Globally; Act Locally.” And there is a lot of truth to that idea. But what if you do all the right things in your vicinity and others around the world continue to do all the wrong things? No matter how hard you try, your efforts will be negated by the bad actions of others. That’s the trouble with trying to deal with a problem that is truly global — it must be fixed through a unanimous global effort. And that point brings us to the Kyoto Accords, through which some countries agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 5 percent lower than 1990 levels by 2012. The United States, which decided to take a pass on Kyoto, has taken a terrible beating from smug residents of nations that did sign the Kyoto agreement. According to an editorial in Investor’s Business Daily yesterday, the typical rant might go something like this: “Isn’t the U.
