A round of applause for Toastmasters! I highly recommend it.
As a young engineer, it gave me a lot of confidence to attain competence in speaking to a diverse audience. Before Toastmasters, when speaking before groups of people, I was one of the speakers whose arms, neck and torso could be...
On the spot, in terms of arguing that the USA is "raping and pillaging" the environment, its failure to ratify Kyoto is obviosuly the red herring.
zdas04, I would turn the tables on the engineer who holds up the Kyoto protocol and cite other examples that show raping and pillaging are already...
Education is sorely needed regarding the human impacts to the world's environment. Limiting CO2 emissions alone does not translate across the board to a cleaner world. I would like to see how the countries rank according to storm water, solid waste and reclaimed water management activities...