Originally Posted by AdultDeals

I can understand the need some have to embrace flawed and slanted data about things like abortion or other issues. But I fail to understand what the impact is on Joe Citizen that causes such an outrage about environmental laws. How does it affect YOU if a bunch of big rich corporations have to pay to clean up their operations. Is it going to tank the economy? Because it hasn't over the last few decades while the EPA enforced various other regulations.

For example, new coal burning power plants built by a certain contractor (can't recall the name) are equipped to run at almost zero negative emissions due to reclamation devices that process CO2 and other coal waste. However it's not yet required by law that companies use this technology. The plants have all been retrofitted with it anyhow 'in case'. So what is the cost to big business there? Next to nothing, it's a few thousand dollars per unit to retrofit. Just like the cost of adding exhaust recycling units to city busses was around $100 per unit, but it wasn't done across the country due to failure to enact laws to require it.

So who loses here? The argument that the poor Africans burning fires in their huts are the ones suffering from alternative energy legislation is total BS. Those countries can't provide basic services to their populations but CO2 from fires is a big threat to their famine-stricken, disease-ridden existences?

So I ask again, what is it about environmental protection (saving plants and wlidlife) that you find so objectionable? What is it about having big billion-dollar corporations pay to make your cars cleaner or your power cleaner that you find such a violation of your morals? You'd rather breathe in the smog in Los Angeles with impunity?

Whether global warming is caused by cars and cows, or Mother Nature, the bottom line is that humans DO contribute to it. Arguing about who got the math wrong on the CO2 equation doesn't change the fact that we are undeniably polluting the atmosphere. Even if the main benefit we get from changing our lifestyles is that we breathe cleaner air and our children end up with less birth defects, who cares?

I've never understood why conservation was such a hot-button issue for some people. If you are against it, essentially you are saying 'I don't care if animals die, I don't care if the smog cloud over my city is so bad people use masks on the street, because I would rather have XYZ than clean air and a planet with ecological diversity!'

I just can't figure out what XYZ is, and how these proposed changes affect YOU personally.

If an anti-warning anti-environment person can answer this, it will set my mind at ease.