Oh Great

[ArauraDiscus]

Yes China by far is the most polluted country, no contest. They as a country have no care for their environemnt and have caused 100's of species to go extinct in recent years. America is close and we are nasty. I don't personally like the politics on environment here, I would love to move to australia.

 

[SuperColey1]

Seems strange to me that the US would let a british company (BP = British Petroleum) do this and not say no and wait for one of their own!!

Maybe one day the US will sig the Kyoto treaty and actually start enforcing environmental issues like they 'supposedly' do in britain.

We're as bad over here. We moan about coal fired power stations and that something should be done.

Then we protest against the Nuclear power station as we want it on someone elses doorstep.

Then some plonkers moan about the wind farms because they are visible from their window!!!


Last time I went to Lisbon I noticed that all around the hills that surround the city there are wind farms scattered about. Maybe us rich countries (US/UK.Germany) are actually more talk, less action whereas poorer european countries like Portugal are doing the action for us!!!

How many of you turn your standby buttons off (or are you more concerned about the timer and settings?)

Andy

 

[Danno]

I just want to say a little ditty here. The USA is HUGE! Heck when you add Alaska, which is is about 2/3rds the size of the continental US that adds a lot of land mass. But any who, small countries like lets say, France, Japan, UK, Germany etc etc say that we are huge polluters...we could fit 5 of there countries INSIDE ours. When you are dealing with statistics check the increase along with the control!

In the article it says **% or **% increase in yattayatta-chemical...it doesn't say how much they were originally putting in there without the increase!

Lets say that you want to shut down "big polluters"....think of the consequences. Maybe your TV will disappear, your car, maybe your heating in your house. You want to go take a trip to a camp ground? nope, not anymore, because you don’t have any gas to get there! We are spoiled, we don't miss things till they are gone.

But other then that, I am not by any reasons in favor of large scale pollution.

 

[starrynightxxi]

I just want to say a little ditty here. The USA is HUGE! Heck when you add Alaska, which is is about 2/3rds the size of the continental US that adds a lot of land mass. But any who, small countries like lets say, France, Japan, UK, Germany etc etc say that we are huge polluters...we could fit 5 of there countries INSIDE ours. When you are dealing with statistics check the increase along with the control!

my thoughts exactly, except for the alaska bit. It adds a lot of landmass, but the population's not very large. Most of the US's pollution is going to be coming from the contiguous bits, but that plays into the fact that we're huge. I'd like to see what the amount of pollution put out by smaller countries would [theoretically] be if they were as large as us.

 

[Danno]

Indeed, but, Alaska is where we (the US) gets our homeland oil. Plus think of all of the oil freight polution incidents there were up there. I would count that as an equal to the main US.

 

[Amunet]

You would think with all of that money they're making by sucking us dry, they would be able to figure out a better way of getting rid of the waste they produce....
Just sad that companies would rather ruin the world, take the easy way out, just to earn more money.

 

[pica_nuttalli]

several things, in no particular order:

1) suggesting a boycott of "living in the US" makes the one suggesting it sound like a twit. that said, US citizens concerned about the environment should get off their butts and vote to protect it.

2) "British Petroleum" is really only British in name. the rest of it is pretty international, just like the rest of Big Oil.

3) Wind farms are only productive in regions with significant amounts of air flow. remember, when identifying where an air farm can be located, one has to consider the relative amounts of air movement, the amount of contiguous land available, the price of the land, lack of obstructing objects and proximity to urban/residential areas. it's a complicated process.

4) all that being said, the US has a culture of instant, disposable gratification that encourages oil dependency and discourages responsible treatment of the environment. people drive too much and for too little reason. people use far too many disposable and semi-disposable plastic products. people aren't willing to make even small sacrifices to help stem global warming; the excuse is "well, there's already so much pollution that my part won't matter". i find so much of our material culture to be absolutely disgusting.

 

[andywg]

Okey dokey, let's try and sort some of what is being said out.

It's a shame but you really can't blame BP if they are acting within the law. It seems that the US government don't consider the environment a big priority. I don't have any statistics but the USA is often quoted as the worlds biggest polluter. I don't know if that's true, but if it is true, those people who object to using BP theoretically should boycott living in the USA as protest too.

Food for thought.

Just because of the number of people in the US and the number of cars we own, we are definitely one of the biggest polluters however there are a ot of constraints in place that keep our pollution from being as bad as it could be. Catalytic converters on cars for instance helps reduce the amount of pollution the produce.

Catalytic convertors are net pollution. They conatin platinum. The process to mine and refine platinum is far worse for the environment globally than car emissions are. However, the use of a catalytic convertor will move the pollution from the areas more affluent people live to less populated places (similar to using an electric car, the power is still generated by oil and gas, just not in the city).

Yes China by far is the most polluted country, no contest. They as a country have no care for their environemnt and have caused 100's of species to go extinct in recent years. America is close and we are nasty. I don't personally like the politics on environment here, I would love to move to australia.

China has only just been considered to have overtaken the US for emmissions pollution in the last couple of months. Now, consider the population of the US (around 300 million?) to China (around 1,200 million?). No country can come close to touching the USA for emmisions per capita.

Maybe one day the US will sig the Kyoto treaty and actually start enforcing environmental issues like they 'supposedly' do in britain.

...

Last time I went to Lisbon I noticed that all around the hills that surround the city there are wind farms scattered about. Maybe us rich countries (US/UK.Germany) are actually more talk, less action whereas poorer european countries like Portugal are doing the action for us!!!

Kyoto has badly drafted and does not address per capita emissions. Furthermore, it chose 1990 as a base year, meaning countriees that had improved their efficiency since then (such as Russia) could benefit greatly, but those (like Japan) who have had far better efficiency since long ago (Around 1973 with Japan) are penalised.

As to wind farms, a recent piece of research in Germany (who have truly embraced wind technology) found that they were actually (on average) getting around 4% of the stated power of each turbine. If you factor that in then you would almost have to cover the entirety of the UK in turbines to get power.

I just want to say a little ditty here. The USA is HUGE! Heck when you add Alaska, which is is about 2/3rds the size of the continental US that adds a lot of land mass. But any who, small countries like lets say, France, Japan, UK, Germany etc etc say that we are huge polluters...we could fit 5 of there countries INSIDE ours. When you are dealing with statistics check the increase along with the control!

However, when it comes to pollution per capita (as I have mentioned above) the US is in a league of its own. The USA emits at least double the amount of CO2 per capita as the countries you have mentioned.

Land mass means nothing, or else we should be praising Russia and Canada, the two largest countries by land mass for polluting nowhere near as much as the US.

Lets say that you want to shut down "big polluters"....think of the consequences. Maybe your TV will disappear, your car, maybe your heating in your house. You want to go take a trip to a camp ground? nope, not anymore, because you don’t have any gas to get there! We are spoiled, we don't miss things till they are gone.

But other then that, I am not by any reasons in favor of large scale pollution.

So, in essence, so long as your life doesn't have to change, you are all about saving the world?

Being greener doesn't mean completely doing away with things, just looking a bit more critically. Why use electricity or gas to heat water when you can have the sun do it? Maybe less TV and more outdorr pursuits is a good thing? Maybe you could drive to the camp ground in an economical car rather than a 3 tonne SUV with a 6 litre engine?

 

[CruX]

I was under the impression that the label of largest polluter didn't come from the actual amount of pollution caused per country but the amount of pollution per number of people. ie by this method it would be possible for the smallest country measured by land mass to be labelled as the worlds biggest polluter, but it seems I may be slightly wrong here.
Of course the USA is huge, it would be interesting to compare it in similar size, according to this site the largest country in the world is Russia followed by Canada and then the USA, with Australia not far behind in terms of population China tops the list as most populated, with the USA in 3rd and Russia in 7th. Interestingly Canada and Australia are in the top 10 least densely populated list.

While browsing I came across this article of interest on the subject of carbon emissions.

Last week seemed to be quite productive for scientists and politicians. Although how much change the politicians are going to go through, we will see. From Monday to Friday, there were talks about climate change in Bangkok, Thailand. The IPCC released a report on Friday 4/5/2007 which actually aims at businesses to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. This time the scientists triumph rather than the politicans.

The talks did not go so well for China. China, being the second largest carbon emmitter, compared to the USA which holds the first position had some complaints to the report. A country which produces most of the electronics and various products which it supplies round the globe said why should it reduce emissions where USA has no intention on cutting emissions.

So if this article is to be believed then China, who has a population 4 times greater than the USA emits less carbon than the USA. Also Russia, who is more than one and a half times larger in terms of land mass than the USA emits less carbon than the USA. This article talks about how China will overtake the USA in terms of carbon emissions this year if it hasn't already, which is hardly suprising as they have a similar sized country with more than 4 times the population of the USA and they have no intention of making an effort to cut emmissions as the USA has no intention.
Logically you would expect the USA given it's size and population numbers to be high on the list of world polluters, but would you expect them to produce more carbon emissions than a country with a population as high as China's? It certainly shocked me.

This article claims that California is the 12th largest carbon emitter in the world. Which sounds pretty bad, but you must take into account that California is probably bigger and likely has a higher population than most european countries.

Cross referencing the Wiki article listing carbon emmissions you can calculate that it takes on average 50 Americans per year to emit a metric tonne of carbon, whereas it takes nearly 310 people in China to emit the same amount, as for Brits, it takes nearly 108 people to emit 1 metric tonne of carbon, so by them figures you could argue that the USA is twice as bad as the UK, and 6 times worse than China, of course the UK is nearly 3 times worse than China.

Of course statistics can be manipulated to reasonably show what anyone wants them to, I have tried to take statistics from different sources and to be fair none of them I would call 100% fact as looking at population and emissions are everchanging statistics, even if I posted the 100% correct stats for this instant in time by the time someone reads it the data is out of date, people are being born and people die constantly and people buy gas guzzling SUVs or sell their cars and cycle instead or cut carbon emissions in other ways. I have tried to be as fair as possible and my own opinion is the UK is certainly the worst in Europe but they are supposed to be improving and have made solid commitments to do so.

As for BP being a British company in America, I may be wrong but I think that BP is the second largest oil company in the USA, it probably employs more Americans than Brits, it probably earns most of its revenue in America and has absorbed many oil companies there over the years, they do seem to have more Brits on the board of directors though their website seems to infer they see them selves as an 'international' company.

 

[CruX]

several things, in no particular order:

1) suggesting a boycott of "living in the US" makes the one suggesting it sound like a twit. that said, US citizens concerned about the environment should get off their butts and vote to protect it.

If you read my post fully you would understand that I didn't mean it literally, I meant it as why chose to boycott BP for doing this when the US government are obviously the ones who have allowed them to do it. BP haven't to my knowledge broken the law to do it. But thanks for saying I sound like a twit, and then agreeing with me.

 

[screamingdonkey]

Agree with everything Andy & Pica said.
Unfortunately, we have ALL become too dependent or too used to environmentally unfriendly products and services that make our lives easier/better.

Can't remember who mentioned the thing about leaving the TV on standby but, on a similar note, I received something in the post at work today about leaving your PC monitor on standby overnight. Apparently, over the course of a year, this uses the same amount of energy that it takes to print 3,000 pages on a laser printer.

Education and awareness of environmental issues isn't by itself enough... we need to make significant lifestyle changes. Just as a for instance: did you know that cows are one of the biggest producers of methane (the second most significant greenhouse gas) - their multiple stomachs, combined with their diet make them a pretty spectacular gas machine! Think about that, next time your tucking into a McAwful Big Mac.... and while you're at it, remember that huge stretches of forest and woodland have been cut down in many cases to provide pastural land for mega-herds of cows to graze upon....

Enough of my rant, I'm off to build a solar powered external filter and powerhead for my tank, which is heated by wind-powered hair-dryer....

 

[rdd1952]

We have gotten off onto mainly carbon pollution which I assumes mainly comes from cars. I definitely don't have the statistics but I'm sure the US probably has more cars that any country in the world. At the very least we have more big gas gussler, heavy polluting cars so it stnds to reason we are the biggest producer of carbon emmissions. Unfortunately, that's not the only kind of pollution. Although a lot of it may be a side effect of them such as the junk mentioned in the OP.

I think some people are finally taking note of the effect bottled water is having on our environment. Several major cities in the US (San Francisco being the last to make the news) have banned official use of bottled water partly because of the effect it has on the environment and partly because of cost. There are billions of plastic water bottles being tossed every year and as seen on the link I posted earlier, those aren't all going in land fills (and that's not the proper way of disposing of them either) but into rivers and streams.

Besides that, I saw a news article on TV a week or so ago that stated that by the the a bottle of water is processed (including making the bottle and cap) and shipped to a store for someone to buy, it takes about an ounce of oil. Considering that in 2002 over 6 billion gallons of water were sold in the US alone that comes out to over 29 million gallons of oil (based on an average bottle of water being 10 ounces) just to supply the US with bottled water. This article says 1.5 million barrels of oil are used every year just to produce the plastic bottles alone for bottled water, not counting bottling (the machines that bottle it need oil), shipping and handling it. And most surveys I've seen say that it isn't any better for people than tap water bt once again, it's a convenience that people have become accustomed too.

Sorry for my rant too which is off the OP but just wanted to point out that cars and oil companies weren't the only form of pollution and there is something we could all do very easily to help: stop drinking bottled water. If your tap water isn't good, get a purifier.

 

[SuperColey1]

It took me over 2 years to finally stop my wife buying loads and loads of bottled water. She is portuguese (lol) and is used to only drinking bottled water being untrusting of tap water.

I told her that the water in the UK (or at least in my region) is flouridised for the benefit of our children's teeth and to stop giving them bottled water.

She went and bought a damn Brita Filter and the kids were then not getting any mineral from water.

she does let them drink tap water now (at least when I am there, but she will only drink the Brita Filtered water)

Andy

 

[rdd1952]

There was a study out a while back about how many more cavities people, particularly children, were getting because they were drinking bottled water instead of tap water containing flouride.

 

[Danno]

Lets say that you want to shut down "big polluters"....think of the consequences. Maybe your TV will disappear, your car, maybe your heating in your house. You want to go take a trip to a camp ground? nope, not anymore, because you don’t have any gas to get there! We are spoiled, we don't miss things till they are gone.

But other then that, I am not by any reasons in favor of large scale pollution.


So, in essence, so long as your life doesn't have to change, you are all about saving the world?

Being greener doesn't mean completely doing away with things, just looking a bit more critically. Why use electricity or gas to heat water when you can have the sun do it? Maybe less TV and more outdorr pursuits is a good thing? Maybe you could drive to the camp ground in an economical car rather than a 3 tonne SUV with a 6 litre engine?

You misunderstanded me I guess. What I was trying to say was that if you cut something (such as resources) people will have to be willing to change there life. People are spoiled, and if they have always had something they don't consider what they would do without it.