Kevin Fateley said: "Do as I do, not as you want me to do" A distortion of the old quote: "Do as I say, not as I do."
We have a Coal Fired Plant east of us here in Manhattan Ks. When I was a assistant at Manhattan Country Club in the late 80's I could see the brown haze emitting from the towers. From our hill top view I could see it stretch for miles! I attended a meeting at that same plant this past winter. Where crews worked for a couple of years, 2 shifts a day, to install 3 scrubbers at a cost of reportedly around $500,000,000. Now there is no brown haze and my electric bills reflect the costs which I am OK with the added expense. Before my country enters into this accord I would like to see all countries Coal Fired Plants do the same. We have the some of the strictest emission standards in the world. Let the other countries catch up and pay for it and then start a new accord.
I agree with your assessment, I'm old enough to remember the smog that used to engulf LA, rivers burning and other environmental atrocities, from the late 60's early 70's, where it was so bad that finally a Republican (Nixon) created the EPA.
I think that is where we need to take advantage of our technology and sell it to India and China (and others) to help scrub their coal plants. I wonder by dropping out of the agreement, does this hurts our chances to sell our technology to other countries in the agreement? Or for those poor countries, the money we put into the agreement could have been used by those poor countries to buy our technology, a round about way of government support for our companies?
More I guess to debate, but now the President is saying (I think because of the backlash from so many citizens) is so he can renegotiate the treaty? Renegotiate something that we set our own parameters to? So we negotiate with ourselves?
Mel