Monday, March 18, 2013

GREEN POLITICS: Blog Assignment for Environmental Policy


I do not think that the U.S. should have signed the Kyoto Protocol because it had fundamental flaws in its design. The first being that it did not act fairly towards both developed and undeveloped countries. One main problem that I found with it was that undeveloped countries could sell their unused emissions to other countries that were more developed and over their limits. Countries such as Russia who emits a large volume of emissions would be under it's limit and could sell to thier countries. This was the case because Russia has so much land mass.
I believe that getting environmental policies signed at all levels is hard because everyone wants to protect whats in their groups best interest. This however is hard to do because not everyone has the same ideas and many times the ideas are very different from each other and only compounds with the larger the scale. I think that communities should try and fix this problem by looking at the bigger picture and what is best for everyone as a whole. I would like to see more policies supporting sustainable communities and issues such as reducing reliance on fossil fuels, supporting local farmers and merchants, encouraging green practices and building, consideration of native wildlife, and adoption of mass transportation and cleaner methods of commuting.

1 comment:

  1. I agree with you that the Kyoto protocol is unfair. The larger, developed countries should be under the same standards and protocols that the undeveloped countries would be under. Everyone who this protocol would affect should sit down around a table and hash out a fair standard that is universally followed, as well as set up a time frame for this to be reviewed and edited in the near future.

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