Resolved: A government's obligation to protect the enviroment ought to take precedence over it's obligation to promote economic development

Within the last 50 years over 75,000 chemicals have been developed and introduced into the enviroment without any regulation. Within the last century several hundred billion pounds of pesticides and 5 billion pounds of DDT alone have been introduced into the enviroment. Every year about 5 to 6 billion pounds of pesticides are used each year. 20,000 people die each year, mostly in Third World countries, as a direct result from pesticides, and 60 million birds are killed each year in the United State alone. All of this occurs without any government regulation.

Humans live less than 100 years. As individuals we look towards the short term for ourselves only. As individuals we would rather put a hundred dollars into furthering our now wants, instead of putting it towards looking into the future. The people themselves look after economic development quite well, as it has been theorized and observed, the economy can do just fine without any assistance from the government. Since people as individuals don't look towards the long term, it is up to the government to take up the slack, it is the job of the government to protect our enviroment so our descendents have a place to live.

In England in the 18th century there lived a man named Sir Thomas Smith. He was a part of the parliment and proposed an idea. To reserve one third of college rents in corn. You see, corn decreases in value over a century far less than money does. He was looking toward the long term. Other countries, such as France, who left such things alone suffered great losses in value compared to England. In the long term it was a very wise idea, even though from year to year the value rose and dropped with the crops. Same thing with the enviroment. However, instead of losing money and value, we lose lives.

At the Institute for Southern Studies there was a research project, called Gold and Green 2000. The researched the economic and enviromental progress of states. They found that by being careful with the enviroment doesn't impede economic growth. However, as Keith Ernst, Research Director and Co-Author is quoted in sayng, "...States that sacrifice their natural resources for quick fix development aren't improving their long-term economic prospects". Obviously by placing the economy over the enviroment the long term results weren't pretty, but those that were careful with the enviroment were at the top of the list.

The enviroment's heath is decreasing at an alarming rate, WorldWatch was founded 25 years ago, and according to their observations and extrapolations, they said that if we continue at the same rate of destroying the enviroment, the picture of the future is, to say nothing more, alarming. They have predicted that if we don't change anything the global temperature could rise 1 to 3.5 degrees by 2050. That may not seem like very much, but not much could cause the ice caps to melt. We must look toward the long term. As Joshua Karliner, ex director of Transnational Resource and Action Centre, says "The Challenge in the 21st century is to replace the corporate-dominated paradigm that worships the bottom-line with a framework that puts the enviroment, human rights, and labour rights first."


Alright, now that was mine, for Lincoln-Douglass debate, which is supposidly more philosophical. That would be the affirmative... and I uh, don't have a negative yet.

Do you have sources for all of those statistics you were throwing around?

Anyway, here's why, although nice in theory, it wouldn't work. Whether it be environmental regulations, or stricter labor laws, or whatever, any law that increases the cost of doing business in this country only serves to accellerate the loss of jobs to other countries, where it's cheaper and far less annoying to do business.

I am sure if the earth could think she would look at man-kind as a parasite.
Many people worry about the harm to nature that man does.
I believe that if the air became so bad, the water became so polluted, that man could not survive and died out as a race.
Over thousands or millions of years the earth would clean itself up
and nature would once again thrive.
So a greedy, selfserving,war prone race is gone. So what?No one would be around to miss us.
We have a choice. What do you think the answer will be?
Probably self-destruction.

The ones at the top are from http://www.worldwildlife.org/toxics/

Lionel, first, the resolution says government, it doesn't specify one, or which. I am sure that if there were universal protection laws for the enviroment, buisinesses would have anywhere to go, or anything to do. Another statistic, from the Gold and Green 2000, the things put in place to protect the enviroment, in the most watched of all industries, only take up around 3% of operating costs.

Fussell, so, we just kill ourselves off. Say fuck you to the rest of the species living on the planet?

Is killing ourselves off such a bad thing? Everything must run its course, why should we be any different? Or maybe we'll just evolve into carbon dioxide breathers.

I don't dissagree that killing ourselves off might not be a bad thing. But what about the planet that we are leasing. Take it with us? Kill every other species off with us? And at the rate we are going, I highly doubt we would evolve fast enough. Although we would probably just make gas masks and then the rich would survive. Uh, really if we do kill ourselves off, it wont be from carbon dioxide overdose, it would be from the melting of the ice caps, the temperature of the planet rising to an unlivable level.

Blibblob, Say we killed off all other living things. If they evolved once they would evolve again.:)

So, just because they would evolve again gives us the right to massacre the entire planet?

Bliblbob, once again the eternal optimist. Fist he says the war is unwinable, now the planet is Fu*&ed, why dont you just go shoot yourself now Blib? wait, that might put out a tiny puff of pollution, maybe jumping off a building would be better. save yourself the agaony of every waking moment knowing that just by living your life are slaughtering millions of lifeforms and utterly destroying milions of acres of land.

I am completely bewildered at your stupidity.

With all their screwups, the EPA and associated agencies at varying local levels have done a great deal to clean things up. As we continue to clean the US, we need to educate others in developing nations. It will take 50 years or more to 'wean' the West from its' dependence upon oil. Alternative fuel stations (clean diesel, hydrogen, etc) could be introduced into developing nations more easily at this stage than by trying to replace oil & gas pipelines later on. Building factories that are environmentally clean is cost effective when done from the drawing board rather than an add-on at a later date.

Originally posted by Blibblob
I am completely bewildered at your stupidity.

maybe a course in humor and satire might be useful next semester blob. I am sure you could squeeze it in between Doom And Gloom and How the Rich Fuck You Over 101

Originally posted by es347fan
As we continue to clean the US, we need to educate others in developing nations.

Interesting point. Because developing countries like China, India, etc. spew out more crap into the air than you can imagine. The G7 (or is it G8 now?) countries would actually be better off, environmentally speaking, spending the money on upgrading emissions equipment in other countries than regulating their own to the nth degree.

Acutally, here are some statistics:

Percent of all greenhouse gases emitted annually: (1)
United States 21%
Former USSR 14
European Community 14
China 7
Brazil 4
India 4
Rest of the world 36

Third world countries rank in the top, except with the US all the way at the top.

It would be a better idea to regulate the corporations to keep them from spewing crap in the air, then to let them do that, and when they get enough money(bullshit) clean it up. It would probably cost less. If the United States regulated companies back in the Industrial Age, it might have taken a few more years to get where we are, but it would probably have cost less than we are now cleaning up the messes we made through carelessness.

Good point, Blib !
Of course the growing industry of countries like China or India is a potential threat to environment. Anyway, how can the rich countries impose them strict environmental laws if they do not apply these laws to themselves first ?

Originally posted by Blibblob
Acutally, here are some statistics:

Percent of all greenhouse gases emitted annually: (1)
United States 21%
Former USSR 14
European Community 14
China 7
Brazil 4
India 4
Rest of the world 36


Yeah, but that's ignoring the fact that the industrialized countries have much more industry. A 1000 Honda Civics may polute more than 5 Ford Pintos (although not much), but you could spend massive amounts of money and only be able to make small progress towards making the Civics cleaner. For far less money you could buy new cars to replace the Pintos and make a huge impact.

In other words, if you spent billions of dollars, you might get the USA down to 20 percent and the EU to 13. For the same amount of money you could halve the rest of the world's greenhouse gases. I'm not saying the the pollution from the G7 countries should be ignored, rather I'm saying if you want to spend your money rationally, it would lead you to clean up the gross polluters.

ya. lets restrict the United States so all the others can surpass us. thats what thsi Kyoto is all about, not the environment, its about catching up. if you think we are going to willingly screw ourselves you can think again.

I was just reading an article in today's paper about a struggling local steel company. They apparently, after much debate, decided to go ahead and spend the $65 million to upgrade the local plant in order to meet 2006 environmental regulations. Good news for the 1000 local workers. But my point is that the minimal impact on the economy wouldn't have seemed so minimal to those 1000 people had the company decided that it was better to just close the plant.

You can't wipe your but without using a dead tree. Paper mills down here in Florida have spent millions to clean up. They still polute.
There will always be some form of polution as long as life exists on earth. Sorry, its just a fact of (life).

Lets see.....Profit vs. clean environment...Wonder what the choice will be?

There is actually a certain amount of pollution that the world can take without doing any damage. The key is to place restrictions on profiteers to keep them from oversteping that cap and causing irreversable damage.

Originally posted by LionelHutz
I was just reading an article in today's paper about a struggling local steel company. They apparently, after much debate, decided to go ahead and spend the $65 million to upgrade the local plant in order to meet 2006 environmental regulations. Good news for the 1000 local workers. But my point is that the minimal impact on the economy wouldn't have seemed so minimal to those 1000 people had the company decided that it was better to just close the plant.

The Clean Air Act (Which is probably making the Steel Plant upgrade its facility) does take economic harm into consideration. However, the economic harm is lower than the economic benefit in the form of reduced health care costs. Of course, the Clean Air Act, as it stands now, only regulates gases that cause harm to public health, without considering harm to the environment (Thus, it doesn't regulate for the purpose of reducing the Greenhouse Effect).

has anyone ever wondered about antarctica. Its place that is near Alaska. Anayway, theres oil in Alaska, somewhere. It makes sense theres probably oil in Antarctica. If you are challenged by the problem of Antarctican enviromentalists or something then stare at the word Antartica carefully. The other night I mistook it for Arabia. Infact many Musl;im fundamentalists and WMD have been found in Antarctica.

Why not nuke Antarctica, give it some excuse. George Bush was originally going to call it a 'cocaine mission' but then I told him that he should keep his habit secret. I have also advised him to keep the relationship with his doughters secret. Anayway give it some excuse like finding Osama (peace be upon his flexability of a cause) and attack.

WTF was that all about? since when is Alaska near antarctica?

Originally posted by Leper
The Clean Air Act (Which is probably making the Steel Plant upgrade its facility) does take economic harm into consideration. However, the economic harm is lower than the economic benefit in the form of reduced health care costs. Of course, the Clean Air Act, as it stands now, only regulates gases that cause harm to public health, without considering harm to the environment (Thus, it doesn't regulate for the purpose of reducing the Greenhouse Effect).

So you're saying that this plant puts out enough harmful gases to cause $65 million worth of medical problems? Seems like a difficult thing to prove.

The problem wouldn't be medical costs, but the costs of cleaning up the planet later. The cost now may be a bit, but the cost later after the whole planet is like Mexico City?

Tim, WHAT?! I agree with trav on his wonderful point :D.