[valve bouncer]

the failure lay in the execution QUOTE]
The execution.... you Poms...funny stuff. Actually I'd be interested to hear what you mean when you say the idea was sound.

 

[JMAC]

Kyoto was looking good until the yanks demanded emmisions trading as part of it's structure, thus giving rich industrialised countries an easy out, then refused to even be a party to it. Nice job. Make sure it won't work as intended then ignore it anyway. Since then GW has systematically gutted your anti-pollution laws. You're still the biggest consumer and most wasteful society on earth by far. You're responsible for 25% of the world's polution. Not bad for 1-2% of the population.

The point about Kyoto is that the 144 countries who have signed up to at least give a **** about the planet and are trying to do something. Kyoto is just the first stage as has been said many times. However I fully expect the US attitude that the world is yours to destroy on behalf of everyone else to continue.

WOW finally thank you a monkey who shares my thoughts..

 

[$tinkle]

emissions testing and credits are two different creatures. i can't believe they are ending emissions testing for cars in your area. how do you feel about that? are they testing industry still?

i think it's pretty irresponsible, especially since our city's population has almost doubled in 10 yrs. Even though the auto industry will [hopefully] continue to crank out less env. irresponsible cars & hybrids, there's still a buncha wanna-be gang bangers who dirty up my riding air w/ their modded hoopties

 

[fluff]

The execution.... you Poms...funny stuff. Actually I'd be interested to hear what you mean when you say the idea was sound.

I didn't exactly say that the idea was sound....

The idea of the great leap forwards was to bring growth year-on-year, along with industrialisation. One of the methods used to try and ensure growth was a level of competition between districts to produce more grain (etc). A percentage of output was then diverted to the cities. Each year should then produce more growth and more for the cities. Local officials inflated figures for prestige with disastrous results. Add in a drought and hey presto - famine. Oh and then there was the ridiculous drive for more steel with DIY smelts converting useful items (such as woks) into useless lumps of impure crap steel.

The cultural revolution was something else, misconcieved and as counter-productive as Stalin's purges of the Russian army in the mid 1930s.