Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink
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Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink
#2Why is it so difficult for people to understand that regional borders are more often than not a human concept? You do not live in the United Bubble of America!
That having been said, wasn't there an article yesterday about how 30% of Californian pollution comes from China? Or a few weeks ago that radiation from Japan is hitting our shores? This is not what they meant with "Think locally, act globally."
Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink
#3Why is it so difficult for people to understand that regional borders are more often than not a human concept? You do not live in the United Bubble of America! That having been said, wasn't there an article yesterday about how 30% of Californian pollution comes from China? Or a few weeks ago that radiation from Japan is hitting our shores? This is not what they meant with "Think locally, act globally."
It's not difficult to understand, it's difficult to enforce. Mexico can set up laws about polluting their own water, but how are they going to enforce it in the USA? Same with CA--we can ask China to cut down on pollution, and they'll apparently promise it, but who's to enforce it? Ask more nicely?
Or is it on the factories / companies themselves? Is a factory in China going to sacrifice economic growth so that a Californian can breathe cleaner air? Or is a US drilling company going to buy more expensive formulas so that Mexico city can have clean water someday? These things won't happen on their own.
Ultimately that's the problem, in my opinion.
Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink
#4[deleted]
Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink
#5Why is it so difficult for people to understand that regional borders are more often than not a human concept? You do not live in the United Bubble of America! That having been said, wasn't there an article yesterday about how 30% of Californian pollution comes from China? Or a few weeks ago that radiation from Japan is hitting our shores? This is not what they meant with "Think locally, act globally."
It's not difficult to understand, it's difficult to enforce. Mexico can set up laws about polluting their own water, but how are they going to enforce it in the USA? Same with CA--we can ask China to cut down on pollution, and they'll apparently promise it, but who's to enforce it? Ask more nicely? Or is it on the factories / companies themselves? Is a factory in China going to sacrifice economic growth so that a Cal…
Well there are these things called Treaties that can cover this sort of stuff . A few years ago there was one signed in Kyoto and...Oh - I see your point.
Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink
#6Funny for this to come up now. I'm reading Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner now which is all about water policy in the western US.
The short answer is that we consume WAY more water than all of the precipitation on the entire region can support so we end up depleting the aquifers. Eventually (likely within my lifetime) those will dry up and they we will have to either start diverting water from Canada and Alaska, or decrease the population in the west.
Edit: Changed entire country to entire region. The Great Lakes area will do just fine for a very very long time.
Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink
#7Funny for this to come up now. I'm reading Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner now which is all about water policy in the western US. The short answer is that we consume WAY more water than all of the precipitation on the entire region can support so we end up depleting the aquifers. Eventually (likely within my lifetime) those will dry up and they we will have to either start diverting water from Canada and Alaska, or d…
Would conservations (like people giving up luscious grass lawns) be enough to sustain the population in the west? (In your opinion.)
Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink
#8Why is it so difficult for people to understand that regional borders are more often than not a human concept? You do not live in the United Bubble of America! That having been said, wasn't there an article yesterday about how 30% of Californian pollution comes from China? Or a few weeks ago that radiation from Japan is hitting our shores? This is not what they meant with "Think locally, act globally."
It's not difficult to understand, it's difficult to enforce. Mexico can set up laws about polluting their own water, but how are they going to enforce it in the USA? Same with CA--we can ask China to cut down on pollution, and they'll apparently promise it, but who's to enforce it? Ask more nicely? Or is it on the factories / companies themselves? Is a factory in China going to sacrifice economic growth so that a Cal…
Actually Mexico threatened to take the US to international court during Nixon's presidency because the water coming out of the Colorado River into Mexico was so salty it was killing crops and un-drinkable.
The US agreed to make one of the biggest De-salination plants in the world just before the border and now the US pays about $300/ton to clean up the Colorado River before it flows into Mexico.
Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink
#9Why is it so difficult for people to understand that regional borders are more often than not a human concept? You do not live in the United Bubble of America! That having been said, wasn't there an article yesterday about how 30% of Californian pollution comes from China? Or a few weeks ago that radiation from Japan is hitting our shores? This is not what they meant with "Think locally, act globally."
I don't think you read the article. You misinterpreted the headline.
Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink
#10Why is it so difficult for people to understand that regional borders are more often than not a human concept? You do not live in the United Bubble of America! That having been said, wasn't there an article yesterday about how 30% of Californian pollution comes from China? Or a few weeks ago that radiation from Japan is hitting our shores? This is not what they meant with "Think locally, act globally."
It's not difficult to understand, it's difficult to enforce. Mexico can set up laws about polluting their own water, but how are they going to enforce it in the USA? Same with CA--we can ask China to cut down on pollution, and they'll apparently promise it, but who's to enforce it? Ask more nicely? Or is it on the factories / companies themselves? Is a factory in China going to sacrifice economic growth so that a Cal…
This reminds me of the debate of sovereignty in the context of mass surveilance. Ultimately, you can't keep a country from doing something that affects citizens of another country. You can only nudge them away from doing that with treaties, trade pacts and sanctions. China and the United States are Too Big to Care: small countries can't really tell them to stop doing something, and the effects of a sanction would be ridiculously small. The closest you can get to get a compromise from a superpower is to form an alliance of small to medium sized nations and then ask the superpowers to stop doing X.
But regional powers already have a lot of trouble keeping good relations with other countries and often have dirt of their own (see the UN), so these alliances are usually ineffective for anything but trade regulations.