The obvious issue is providing clean drinking water and sanitation to every single human being on earth at the cost of little more than one year of the Kyoto treaty.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
You look at the large problems that we face - that would be overpopulation, water shortages, global warming and AIDS, I suppose - all of that needs international cooperation to be solved.
There are more effective ways of tackling environmental problems including global warming, proliferation of plastics, urban sprawl, and the loss of biodiversity than by treaties, top-down regulations, and other approaches offered by big governments and their dependents.
Kyoto was a flawed process. There isn't one industrialized country around the world that has ratified that treaty, and so that is a non-starter.
There are a tremendous amount of environmental issues that are on the table.
Look, very clearly there are things that need to be done urgently in relation to climate change, and of those the most obvious is to have an enforceable and equitable arrangement delivering deep cuts in emissions into the middle of the century.
The seas need their own Kyoto Protocol.
My suggestion is that we should first work to ensure the Third World has clean drinking water and sanitation.
It's obvious that the key problem facing humanity in the coming century is how to bring a better quality of life - for 8 billion or more people - without wrecking the environment entirely in the attempt.
I think the government has to reposition environment on top of their national and international priorities.
Climate change is happening, humans are causing it, and I think this is perhaps the most serious environmental issue facing us.
No opposing quotes found.