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The carbon dioxide 'footprint'

Personal Independence Day has added some worthwhile comments to my 'ecological footprint' post of 23rd. He expands on a point that I made at the very end of my post -- that the Greenies look only at the amount of carbon dioxide PRODUCED and then act as if that were the end of the matter. So they say that because the USA produces a lot of carbon dioxide therefore it must be a big "polluter" (though calling "pollution" a gas that we all produce in our bodies and breathe out of our mouths every minute of our lives has always been distinctly weird). As I pointed out, what the Greenies tightly close their eyes to is that carbon dioxide is also ABSORBED by plants, so what is produced is not at all the end of the story.

Personal Independence Day goes on to note that because of the huge expanses of America's farms, grasslands and forests, America is not only a big PRODUCER of carbon dioxide but also a big ABSORBER of it -- so much so that America appears to soak up more than it produces. On balance, the USA is not a polluter at all!

So Europe, which is more densely populated and absorbs less carbon dioxide, is actually a much BIGGER polluter (on balance) than the USA is! What fun!




Supersonic "transports"

Personal Independence Day also notes, quite rightly, that Europeans and others do on some occasions make cynical use of Greenie scares. If you can use a Greenie scare to turn customers away from one of your commercial rivals, it is tempting to do so.

I don't think the example given in Personal Independence Day is a good one, though. Personal Independence Day suggests that the U.S. aircraft industry may have exploited Greenie paranoia about the ozone layer to put people off using the "Concorde" supersonic aircraft produced by their Anglo/French rivals. In fact, however, the Greenie opposition to supersonic passenger planes started whilst both the Europeans and Boeing had such aircraft on the drawing boards and Boeing quite wisely decided that their project was not likely to be commercially viable in the face of such opposition. The Europeans, on the other hand, had the bottomless pockets of taxpayers to draw upon so were not much concerned about commercial viability. So the Europeans went ahead, built the aircraft and lost billions, in the customary socialist way.

What is true, however, is that the Greenie opposition to supersonic passenger planes was a lot of codswallop -- as you can read here (alternative site here).




Water shortages in Australian capitals

Louis Hissink takes up the issue of water shortages in Australian capital cities that I addressed in my post immediately below. He notes that rainfall has not changed significantly over the years so the problem is one of governments not building any new dams to provide for the expanding population. And we know why the politicians have not built any new dams, don't we? Greenies HATE dams and go quite hysterical over them. So Greenie-sympathizing politicans like New South Wales Premier Bob Carr are reduced to little more than hand-wringing.

If Sydney people get harassed enough by water-shortages, however, Bob Carr might find himself on the losing side of a future election. At the Federal level, Australian conservative politicians thumbed a nose at the Greenies with great success recently so one would hope that that lesson would not be lost on the rather spineless conservative State politicians who at present sit in opposition to Bob Carr.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

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