Neck-deep in the Netherlands

An excerpt from a piece that appeared in the European print edition of The Economist:

Carbon-dioxide emissions rose by 15% between 1990 and 2010. Only vast purchases of emission rights keep the Netherlands below its Kyoto targets.

This report betokens the question: how effective is the Kyoto protocol in ensuring a good quality of life? If the purchase of emission rights is allowable to blunt the losses incurred when shifting from high-polluting to low-polluting infrastructure, then the redistribution of pollution around the globe is inevitable as the baton is passed from countries with higher growth volumes than those with lower ones. That is why nation-specific solutions to a global problem are meaningless.

Here's another one from the same article.

... the UN's human-development index ranks it as the third-best place to live in the world, after Norway and Australia. High living standards, good health and low accident-mortality rates matter, says Mr. Boot.

Pieter Boot is from the Dutch planning bureau for the environment. I see this as evidence that the environment and lifestyle aren't under the same banner, that even at policy-level, they aren't addressed with a unifying perspective. And this problem will last for as long as the state is able to treat sick people, because when demand outstrips supply, environmental pollution will become a more direct concern by having become a fiscal concern.

Just for the record, I'm not passing judgment. I'm saying that's just the way things are: if the state's coffers weren't filled so quickly, Dutch tourism would be non-existent, wouldn't it? We just have to discover relevance - instead of inventing it - and reorder our priorities as the times change. Personally, I believe we have a better chance at terraforming an exoplanet than managing to save the earth completely.