Szervusztok!
Ujabb kornyezetvedelmi vilagkonferencia elott allunk.
Mit kellene vallalnunk CO2 kibocsatasunk csokkenteseben,
mit kepviseljunk ami jo hazanknak es a kornyezetnek.
Mivel a levego a vilagon tobbe-kevesbe igaszsagosan lett elosztva:),
egyutt ovjuk azt.
Elso javaslat : a CO2 kibocsatasi kvotak szemelyekre
lakossagra szoljanak, es mindenutt egyenloek legyenek
(mondjuk 115 kg/fo/ev).
Gondoljatok meg, a nagy CO2 kibocsatoknak lesz penzuk
csokkentesre, a kicsiknek az eletszinvonalat nem korlatozzuk.
Nincsenek igaszsagtalansagok mint ma.
Nem vallalunk hiabavalo kotelezettsegeket mig masok dozsolnek,
es kibocsatasukkal minket is sulytanak.
Kovetkezo pont : a biomassza egetesekor keletkezo CO2 kibocsatast
ne vegyek figyelembe, amennyiben a biomasszat folyamatosan
("fenntarthatoan"- magyarul tartamosan) hasznalja egy orszag,
hisz az energia celu ultetvenyeivel (amennyivel az elozo evekhez
kepest tobb a biomassza foldjein) tobblet CO2-t kot le.
Vegul (es ezt ki kell mondani a konferencian), amennyiben az USA
az egyezmenyt nem irja ala Magyarorszag sem (meg gondolom
ezek utan Kina, Oroszorszag sem).
Gondolkozzatok el javaslataimon, barmilyen biralatot elfogadok.
Amennyiben kompetens szemely valaszolna javaslataimra,
(Baja ur vagy Szili urholgy) nagyon boldog lennek.
Ha a fenti felvetesek Kyotoban elhangzananak, talan
a vilag jelenlegi kornyezetpolitikaja, de meg gazdasagpolitikaja
is megvaltozhat.
Udv az erdobol Robi 
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TRADE ON THE FAST TRACK -- WHAT'S THE HURRY?
There were plenty of bad reasons why Congress turned down President Clinton's
"fast track" trade bill -- the normal "do anything to humiliate Clinton" stuff,
payoffs from protectionists and labor, isolationists who fear trade because
they fear the world.
But there were good reasons, too, strengthened by the fact that NAFTA, the free
trade agreement with Mexico, has failed to fulfill the grandiose promises made
for it on either side of the border. Since NAFTA Americans are beginning to
hear the pro-trade drumbeat -- globalization is inevitable, we'll be left in
the competitive dust, trade grows the economy, trade creates jobs -- as so much
bunkum.
To start with, trade just doesn't look like a problem to the average American.
We already get apples from Chile and cars from Japan. We send corn to Africa,
jets to the Middle East. Our computers and sneakers travel to Asia before they
reach us. Our music and movies play all over the globe. What more do we need?
If there's any trade problem we've heard about, it's the Nike story, the Asian
workers paid a pittance for long hours of stifling work putting together shoes
that inexplicably cost us $100 a pair. And we know about the maquiladoras, the
shiny new factories on the Mexican side of the border, built by Sony, Black &
Decker, GM, Ford, which pay not $5 an hour, but $5 a DAY, and which pour out
toxic brews that would never be permitted if the pipes and smokestacks were
just a few miles north.
Those factories are becoming the symbol of free trade. People whose minds are
not trapped in business logic take one look at them and sense something wrong.
Those who look more closely -- including the labor and environment advocates
who bombarded Congress to defeat "fast track" -- see them as evidence of a
systemic perversity, which they call "race to the bottom." Far from being an
economic boon, they argue, "free trade" as currently structured will bring
economic ruin, especially to the nations that currently enjoy high social and
environmental standards.
Economists, trained at an early age to chant "trade is always, always, always
good," can't seem to see this perversity, but anyone else can. If a company
finds a place where it is not taxed to support schools or sewage treatment,
where it can dump any kind of gunk without penalty, where desperate people will
work for peanuts, it will go there. If it doesn't, its competitors will.
That's the market's inevitable tendency to reward those who put costs off onto
someone else -- in this case onto workers, families, communities, and the
environment.
A nation can put those costs back where they belong by requiring business to
pay decent wages, keep workplaces safe, support local infrastructure, and clean
up its messes. That helps not only the society, but the market itself, by
forcing prices to include very real costs. But the nation can't then allow
imports of cheap products, undermining the companies that comply with the
rules. It has to ban those products or put tariffs on them. The "free trade"
the world is hurtling toward, the kind that Bill Clinton is promoting,
undercuts our ability to do exactly that.
Under the new trade regime, Venezuela and Brazil have challenged part of the
U.S. Clean Air Act that forbids the import of more-polluting gasoline mixtures
from their refineries. The U.S. is contesting Europe's ban on beef fed
artificial hormones. Numerous countries object to the U.S. requirement that
shrimp be caught in nets that do not destroy endangered sea turtles.
Meanwhile, in any kind of business that can move, American workers are losing
jobs and communities losing companies.
That's just the start of the race to the bottom.
So far Bill Clinton has addressed this major problem with minor gestures. To
get NAFTA passed he created a North American Development Bank to clean up the
border. At the moment it has $450 million, with a promise of maybe $3 billion
someday. That sounds like a lot unless you know that a sewage treatment plant
for just one Mexican town (Naco, Sonora, just across the border from Naco,
Arizona) will cost $830 million. The region needs at least $8 billion for
drinking water, sewage treatment, and garbage pickup for all its residents.
Providing it through the NADB or any other public handout means that U.S. and
Mexican taxpayers must cover what ought to come from property taxes on
maquiladoras.
It's no wonder that taxpayers, workers, and environmentalists are beginning to
equate fast track with pulling a fast one. The knee-jerk response of
economists, politicians and companies is to call such people protectionists.
They are, but not in the sense that they are trying to protect special
privileges (though that happens in the debate as well). The abiding critics of
fast track are trying to protect the society, the environment, and therefore
the economy, which cannot function without clean air, clean water, public
infrastructure, operational communities, secure families, and educated
children.
There are plenty of protectionist barriers that ought to be weeded out of the
global trade regime. But not at the cost of a race to the bottom. Trade is
not always, always, always good. There are ways of enhancing its good while
preserving the public welfare and the ability of market prices to tell the
whole truth. The mindless abolition of any regulation that any industry in any
country finds annoying is not one of them.
If Bill Clinton learns anything from his present humiliation, let's hope he
learns that.
(Donella H. Meadows is an adjunct professor of environmental studies at
Dartmouth College.)
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