A recent newspaper story from the Los Angeles Times talked about how the Bush administration is planning on revamping environmental laws so as to help the industries affected by them -- focusing on preserving jobs and bottom lines. This means, among other things, making a number of pollution rules more lax, refusing to regulate carbon dioxide emissions (to help prevent global warming), opening up areas of the Rockies and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling, and relaxing laws that help animals and plants from going extinct. While I'm not against considering economic and industry concerns when crafting environmental law, this is the same administration that let the energy industry craft the nation's energy policy -- sometimes word for word. So I can't imagine that this bodes well.
On the subject of global warming and such, this article is an interesting look at how science articles (including those on global warming) are reported by the mainstream media. The argument, and I believe it's a fair one, is that in many reporters' efforts to present a "balanced" story, they oftentimes give fringe science a greater importance than it deserves. This leaves readers with, at best, confusion about what is true and, at worst, a misinformed belief that the fringe beliefs are mainstream.
http://www.cjr.org/issues/2004/6/mooney-science.asp
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This is so disturbing--especially from this side of the ocean, where people are basically still shaking their heads in astonishment about the election results. How can anyone think it is a good idea to trade our common future (i.e. the earth's resources) for a little cash in the now? Don't even hard-core business people have to project at least a little into the future?
You might think so, but if most corporations' tendencies to prefer short-term profits over reinvesting money for long-term gain is any indication, then no -- most corporations don't think much past the fiscal year.
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