Official Poll: Does the UN suck?

[Frankychan]

Hmmm, my bad. It sounded like ppl were putting these issues on the back burner. Even if the Kyoto protocol was faulty, at least it would be a step in the right direction. If the US decided to sign it, at least it would show the world that the US see's the need to clean up the environment.....but I guess they didn't see it that way.

[PLATO]

Oerdin, What you are describing is an alliance, not a world body. Unfortunately, it takes all (or most all) countries to make the UN forum appropriate. The three ring circuses that you describe serve a purpose in usually exposing these dictatorships and banana republics to the world for what they are.

WRT the veto power, I agree. It must remain in place. When authorization to use force can pass the US, Russia, China, UK, and France, then the action is most likely to be world wide accepted with or without a UN. My point is that the UN does not prevent action in a case like Iraq, where there have been a couple of dozen resolutions outlining the world communities distaste for what was happening there and demanding change. Once this is done, then a member body should be able to take action even without broad support. Not one of the UNSC people proposed a resolution ordering Iraq not to be attacked. This could have been done. Even over a US/UK veto, the "opposing" countries could have claimed the "moral" victory everyone saw as important. The fact that this did not happen speaks both volumes for the "opposing" countries true positions and the ultimate effectiveness of the UN.

[PLATO]

Originally posted by Frankychan
Hmmm, my bad. It sounded like ppl were putting these issues on the back burner. Even if the Kyoto protocol was faulty, at least it would be a step in the right direction. If the US decided to sign it, at least it would show the world that the US see's the need to clean up the environment.....but I guess they didn't see it that way.

Kyoto was not really about cleaning up the environment. It was about redistributing where the pollution came from. Ultimately it was about redistributing wealth from the US to developing nations.

[Frankychan]

? I thought that it tried to implement new environmental regulations? Wasn't one aspect somewhere along the lines that all the industrial nations had to install air scrubbers or what-not to reduce the amount of particles released into the air?

Maybe I'm thinking of different regulations but I know that the US scoffed at the idea....calling it, "Too costly".

[PLATO]

Kyoto set mandatory pollution reduction targets for developed nations, while allowing developing nations to increase pollution far above the developed nations reduction. The "scrubbers" you detail are already installed in a large part of the US and The Clean Air Act has moved the US discharge per ton of fuel burned into one of the better ranges. The problem is that the US is the major consumer of fossil fuel. To mandate a reduction in this without setting limits on developing nations would cause industry to move to locations where they could produce.

[Dinner]

Kyoto didn't/doesn't just have a few problems. It is fatally flawed in that it allows 90% of the countries to increase emitions to an unlimited degree while severally penalizing a handful of wealthy countries. The only way to substantially decrease CO2 output would be to dramatically increase the tax on gasoline and heavy industry since that's where most of the CO2 we can do something about is coming from (Agriculture is also significant but how do you decrease the amount of gas a cow farts or burbs?).

After the tax levies are put in place people will still want to buy steal, paper, automobiles, and all that stuff but now these items will be made in poor third world countries which are not required to cap CO2 emitions. In fact almost all of these 3rd world countries have no enviromental enforcement at all so that means not only will we not decrease world wide CO2 output but we will also make the world's enviroment worse and ruin the 1st world's economy.

That's not good policy by any measurement.

[Sava]

Kyoto was bad.

[RGBVideo]

Does the UN suck?

In it's current state, yes.

However, it could, and would, be a lot worse, if UN wouldn't exist.