As they should be. Do you care to give me any other obvious pearls?
I guess you do want to give other pearls. Would you expect any less from a Representative Republic that's about 100 years ahead of what is basically a totalitarian regime?
A combination of weak leadership and NIMBY folks running amok. You do know I live in Alaska, a resource economy state, right?
Not exactly news. If you go back and read some of my posts on ANWR, you'll see exactly the same things being stated.
You'll have to forgive me for not giving a moment of my life to USA Today. I'm not at all pointing at China as a world leader in environmentalism, simply telling you that they aren't as bass-ackwards as you seem to believe. So you're going to have to put your right-rhetoric away for awhile, I'm afraid. They have done some things recently to point in the right direction. That was my point.