Posted by David Sherman on Friday, December 22, 2000 at 10:28:24:
In Reply to: Yes, I'm serious. posted by Brian in Oregon on Friday, December 22, 2000 at 02:51:50:
I don't doubt there's people who're trying to do all that. In my opinion, though, the UN's a club for a bunch of whiny little people who like to make speeches to themselves all day. It's the US that pays for the whole game, so they can whine all they want but if they want to do something, they've got to do it with our money so the best we can do is get our congress to give them just enough money so they can amuse themselves talking but not enough to do anything real.
Personally, I'm more worried about the largest multi-national corporations having governments in their pockets since everything they do is in secret. Environmental laws aren't going to hurt these companies (they might even be sponsoring them). Morrison-Knudson is probably making just as much money moving dirt for superfund "cleanups" as they used make moving it for dams. Or imagine if most people decided that their old cars were good enough and they didn't need the latest plastic SUV with built-in GPS. GM would be in a world of hurt unless they passed a law saying we all needed to get new electric cars for "environmental" reasons. Look at the asbestos "remediation" industry; it's so entrenched and so incredibly profitable that even though it's pretty clear that asbestos only hurts you if you breathe clouds of dust day after day, there's no way they'll change the laws that force anybody with a scrap of old insulation on their pipes to pay thousands of dollars to the "remediation" mafia.
I guess there's enough things to be paranoid about for all of us to be watching different places, I just haven't get too excited about the UN yet.