Its not a right message to send out that “it is still OK to be addicted to over-consumption … all it has to be is GREEN over-consumption. Its like coming off heroin but moving on to methadone.

We have to remember that a large proportion of that Moaist smog heading over the Japan Sea is pumping out cheap goods for the Wallmart and Home Depot. Its source is not China but America and the American economy that is been exported worldwide.

Sure Japan is wise to protect itself with subsidies, but who is it subsidizing? The consumers of the world who ought to be paying for their pollution.

Sadly, the real heroes of the environmental movement, the Deep Ecologist, are just too damn tough for the patsies of the Whitehouse or Nobel Institute. Yes, there are a whole bunch of wah-wah ex-spurt paid to confuse the argument and seed minds with confusion. There are billions being spent defending capital from their environmental responsibilities, responsibilities Adam Smith would have been behind shouldering.

Its call internalizing one’s externalities, one’s external costs that never make it onto the balance sheet .. like the cost of species loss, re-forestation, the suffering on folks driven to live in marginal lands due to multi-national corporate influence etc …

I have heard your neighbouring prefectures suffered from opto-chemical smog originated from China this year.
How about your prefecture?

I personally believe the world is warming, and has been for millennia, a few cold snaps (eg the ‘little ice age’ notwithstanding. The degree of recent warming and the involvement of greenhouse gases etc are more debatable, but it’s not warming per se that worries me but increased extreme weather as the global weather patterns readjust.

I can’t tell you how the weather is going to be like a week from now, but I can claim that February will be colder than June. Climate study is not weather study.