that's where we part from the rest, we are smart, well educated and culturally advanced, one of the main reasons we have faith in Euro. Britain is in EU for the sake of it. They are Europeans, some of them think it's the right thing to be in, most of the rural workers say "Hey, let the EU continue flood us with their money.", others say they should have Euro, but apart from any other country in Europe the students do not wish to learn any other culture, any other language and see immigration a big problem, and EU is helping this problem to grow. It's the kind of conservative protectionist ideals England have been defending for centuries since the initiation of their national identity.
I would say most of the ideals have passed through other colonies, the ones you are talking about. The rest of Europe is quite distinctive, we like diversification, multi-cultural identity of EU...we like to open frontiers, we like to help others, we like to help ourselves. The rest of Europe isn't ecofreak, it's just cooperating with what have been established way before this whole Al Gore thing, Al Gore is just important to many of us because he really tries to pass the message to Americans, but what the hell, they rather make the climate worse, i wouldn't care if we weren't living in the same world.
forced-energy-saving-lightbulbs
no one is forcing me, i still use some normal lightbulbs, oh but wait, they give us free forced-energy-saving-lightbulbs at the supermarket...why should i waste money in something that is worse than the ones they offer? do Americans like to waste energy on purpose? by your argument, it sure seems so. Maybe you should look at USA budget to see other wastes...maybe yours taxes would go down...who knows.
So sure, lets talk about China. Desertification = Rural Exodus = + Desertification = Unbalanced-workforce-between-rural/metropolitan-areas = + Rural Exodus = + Desertification = + Cheap-Labor = Cheap-Industries = pollution = + Cheap-Energy-sources = + pollution = + Desertification = +Rural Exodus. They are millions and have million kilometers of fertile land, but this multiplication divided by the millions give huge problems. There's sand storms in metropolitan areas originated in former-agricultural areas. I'm not sure if there's laws against the 'bad' or 'evil' exploitation of the land making it sterile or if there's rules upon industries about not polluting the lands of any sort, or even if there's protective laws on agricultural areas. If there are all that judicial matter it doesn't seem to be in effect. Is there a problem with the Chinese Law? or is there a problem with Chinese Industry? Will this affect the Chinese Population numbers?(for the worse or better?)