Environment - How Big is your Carbon Footprint?

If you believe in recycling, then read on.

It may be more important to reduce your Carbon Footprint, than recycling.

The average North American produces 0.7 ton of garbage per year. However, this same person produces 18-20 tons of CO2 per year, which is equivalent to the weight of 3-5 elephants.

Calculate your Carbon Footprint at Zerofootprintoffsets or various other sites. (Note: some of these sites will plant trees to offset your Carbon Footprint for a fee, however, some of them can be scams.)

Your Carbon Footprint is the cause of Global Warming, which can leave a destroyed environment for your children. So, don't be greedy, or hypocritical. As you would tell your children, "leave it as clean as you found it".

According to a UN report, natural disasters are on the rise, killing more people:

The earthquake/volcanic disasters have not risen. The climate related disasters have.

Between 1950 and 1959, there were 20 disasters, costing $38 billion in economic loss.
Between 1990 and 1999, there were 82 disasters, costing $535 billion in economic loss.

Note that each disaster has become more expensive. Number of disasters has increased 4X, but the cost has increased 14X.

Therefore, Global Warming can cost you a lot of money and reduce your standard of living, not to mention a possible refugee crisis banging on your country's border.

Supposedly, in the past 10-20 years, the size of houses have exploded but the size of families have shrunk. Houses are huge generators of CO2.

We need to deter people from buying such big houses. We need to provide incentives for people to live in condos or apartments.

Of course, SUVs are huge generators of CO2. They carry 700+ lbs of extra gears and machinery so that they can go over rivers, creeks, logs and up rocky hills. Yet, nobody drives over logs and up rocky hills, not even the SUV owners in small rural towns. SUVs are the extreme form of pretentiousness, as the owners pretend to be outdoorsy and rugged, yet the majority of them are as urban as you can get.

Therefore, we should immediately stop the sales of SUVs.

We need to provide incentives for companies to allow people to telecommute, since commuting cars is a huge contributor to CO2 emissions.

Sources:
http://www.uneca.org/wssd/Env_Rprt.PDF
World average: 1.13 metric tons of CO2 per person per year

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/TenWays/story?id=2049304&page=1
American average: 22 tons per person
World average: 6 tons of CO2 per person per year

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:CO2_per_capita_per_country.png

http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2003/EugeneShnayder.shtml
http://www.upali.ch/weight_en.html
Elephant weight: 3500-7000 kg

20 metric tons = 2.8 - 5.7 elephants

http://www.recycling-revolution.com/recycling-facts.html
Garbage per person: 4.4 pounds per day = 0.72 metric ton per year

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debris
Garbage per person: 4 pounds per day = 0.66 metric ton per year

Economic loss:
UNISDR

Foreign Policy - Africa

This article explains that African governments is an impediment to wealth creation in Africa.  It also explains that the sources of wealth for any country are:

1. Hard Work
2. Innovation
3. Natural Resources

Africa is rich with natural resources.  Therefore, we believe that the governments in certain African countries should be replaced by UN formed governments to remove the corruption and incompetence in order to help their people.

This is, of course, easier said than done.  Replacing a government can be a bloody event as seen in Iraq.  Some have argued that Africans should be governed by Africans and would not like their government to be composed of non-Africans.  We agree that this is not an ideal situation, however, many Africans already do not like their governments. Their governments are oppressing them and keeping them in poverty.

As explained here, Chad, Equitorial New Guinea and Sudan are rich with oil, but the corrupt governments keep their people in poverty.  Some governments are killing them and causing genocide, such as the Sudanese government.  Should the Sudanese government be replaced for humanitarian reasons?  We do not advocate any violent policies, but we do believe that the Sudanese government should be replaced.

[Added Aug 2011:]

Greece is suffering from a severe debt crisis, as it has borrowed too much and earned too little.  Its economy is shrinking and the country is becoming poorer.  One of the options that Europe is looking at to solve this problem, is for Greece to sell some of its assets.

According to this article:

"German public figures called Greeks cheaters, and German magazines ran headlines like why don't you sell your islands, you bankrupt greeks? , ordinary Greeks took it as an outrageous insult.  In June of this year the Greek government started selling islands or at any rate created a fire-sale list of a thousand properties—golf courses, beaches, airports, farmlands, roads—that they hoped to sell, to help repay their debts."

Excluding the Sahara desert, Africa has approximately twice as much real estate as the U.S.  Many African countries have not only have ample real estate, they also have more natural resources than other countries around the world.  Just one small African country such as Somalia or Ethiopia has more land and natural resources than Japan.  South Korea and Taiwan have even less land and natural resources than Japan.

The rest of the world has poured aid into Africa for multiple decades, only for Africa to continue needing aid.  If replacing governments in Africa is not an option, another option is for African countries to sell their assets in return for aid.  North Americans pay thousands of dollars each winter to sit on a warm beach in Mexico or a Caribbean island.  It's likely that North Americans would be more than willing to give money to Africa in return for ownership in some of their stunning tropical beaches or real estate.

Solutions for Corruption

"Inside Job" won the Oscar for Best Documentary. It chronicles the rampant corruption and crime in Wall Street and Washington. At his acceptance speech, the director reminds us that three years after the worst financial crisis, "not a single financial executive has gone to jail".

We should:

• Push for investigation and conviction of government and corporate corruption.
  • What happened to the Liberals responsible for the $400M in the Sponsorship Scandal?
• White Collar Crime:
  • How did the biggest insider-traders in history (Andrew Rankin and Dan Duic stole $8 million) get away with no punishment?
    • Why was the proposed punishment only 6 months of jail time, when the jail time for blue-collar crime is far more? Moving an endangered bird can get you 6 months. Stealing only a few thousands dollars from a bank can get you far more than 6 months.
• Better funding for enforcement agencies, such as OSC.
• Immigration:
  • Tighten immigration from parts of the world where corruption is rampant and even ingrained in the culture.
• Increase compensation to elected officials to:
  • reduce their temptation to take bribes and kick-backs.
  • attract top talent. CEOs, who manage 40,000 employees, make many times more than government leaders who manage millions of citizens. Consequently, government positions may not attract the best talent as corporate positions do.
• Pass a law that holds political parties accountable to what they say they will do in their election campaign. Compensation should be similar to CEO compensation, which is based on achievements. Example: Political Party made 4 election promises. For the leader of the country, set base salary to be $200,000 and target compensation to be $1,000,000. For achieving each promise, the leader is paid another $200,000.