When you add up all the energy consumed by all the dignitaries, politicians, and star-wannabees who make the trip with their accompanying entourage of limousines, personal protection vehicles, private airplanes, and re-routing of airport transportation corridors for them to be whisked to the waiting parade— (all in the name of politically doing the right thing)— you got yourself one big gathering of greenhouse gas emitters trying to look like they believe what all those scientists are saying (even if they’ve not endorsed the Protocol’s and put words into actions quite yet).

Message to all the aforementioned: there is irrefutable evidence that temperatures are, (on average), increasing around the world—-On Average—and, at least part of the increase in temperatures can be blamed on MAN’s industrial process emissions, so what’s to stop us from doing the things we know how to do to implement real-time changes that will reduce whatever MAN’s portion of global warming can be reduced? And, you know that it’s only the ‘MAN-caused’ portion of carbon emissions that we can control.

It isn’t necessary to agree on what percentage of the total (global) carbon load each industrialized country needs to reduce. If country leaders simply challenge each other to set goals which require them to look for the most efficient and least expensive ways to reduce carbon emissions from the same or similar industries in their own countries, I’m betting we can make it a global win-win that everyone will find beneficial.

It is easy to forget in all the bluster and rhetoric out there but there are a myriad of industrial processes that the major European Union countries, the U.S., China, Japan, Russia, India and several other Asian countries share which are basically done the same way—power plants use coal and other fossil fuels, electronics manufacturing facilities around the world use VOC’s and similar chemicals to produce products, plating shops of precious and heavy metals all pretty much use the same techniques and emit the same types of emissions. And, it would seem a simple task to share our collective expertise in reducing those emissions wherever they occur. Now, that would be a global win-win!

Peoples of all races, religions, or political leanings agree that breathing industry’s emissions isn’t healthy for anyone so instead of agreeing to disagree about Protocols that really don’t have much teeth anyway, why don’t we take a common sense approach and promote our common goals of having fewer greenhouse emissions, fewer people breathing fewer pollutants, and share the solutions to our common industrial emissions with everyone?

So, as with the original statement about average global temperature change, my question is, why don’t we spend our efforts (and taxpayer dollars) finding ways to reduce emissions with proven technologies and techniques (for the good of everyone), instead of setting up conferences where scientists continue to argue the validity of the scientific basis for actions to be taken? The politicians who end up with the decision-making power to take actions don’t really care what the "science" shows anyway—so, in the short term, why not take actions that we know will successfully reduce greenhouse gas and other air emissions?

And, any action that wins points in the polls for the politicians will be the one’s that get implemented. We already know how to do emissions reductions in many, many processes and industrial facilities; all we really need to do is show the politicians why its in their best interest to carry the message, then we can forget about all those planes, trains, and automobiles going to conferences where nothing is ever resolved.

And, most of all, we could get on with the real business of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions and let the scientists get back to their laboratories and tackle that pesky problem of how to put our energy consuming world on a fossil diet. When we solve that problem, we can really say we’ve ensured a better future for our children’s, children’s, children.