greaves said:
			
		
	
	
		
		
			The world's top polluter is the the USA, and it still refuses to sign up to the Kyoto Treaty to which 140+ countries have signed up to.
		
		
	 
Is that 
per capita, or overall? There are a hell of a lot more of us than there are of you-all, y'know. And we are considerably more industrialized than most other industrial nations (how many American cars 
are there on the streets of London?) 
 
Yes, we drive more, because we have a lot farther to go... the entire nation of Great Britain would fit into the State of California several times and still have room to rattle around; the entirety of Western Europe is smaller than Texas.
 
Industry is currently in control of our government, and has been for some time... money talks in this joint; please remember when you say "the US" and "Bush," it's not necessarily the same thing.  No American president is ever going to sign anything that will limit the profitability of his own supporters.  This will only change when the American populace gets fed up with this corruption, which I don't think will happen until and unless our economy collapses. 
 
Look, I agree that the pollution issue is escalating and that car-culture is contributing heavily to it; I also agree that being wasteful of resources is stupid, driving SUVs or classic cars that get no gas mileage whatever not only speeds the inevitable process but also has a let-them-eat-cake tone that sets a lot of people's backs up. 
 
However, there are limits to how much responsibility I am willing to take. My sense of responsibility to the planet extends as far as recycling my refuse and buying recycled products whenever possible; it extends to using pump bottles instead of aerosol for my personal grooming and house-cleaning products; it extends to avoiding the use of paper whenever plausible; it extends to having a car that gets good gas mileage, and keeping it in good enough repair to maintain that mileage; but it 
does not extend to the monumental inconvenience of buying organic vegetables three at a time and schlepping them home, a mile uphill from the nearest grocery, on foot or a bicycle. It does not extend to tripling my commute time in order to save the world a quarter-gallon of gas... I have better things to do with my time.
 
My head is not in the sand... I simply have a limited number of shits to give.