The Giant Sink

This semester I am taking Global Studies, which is also one of my majors. It is a really interesting class, a lot of reading and a lot of papers, but really interesting. We read many books about globalizaion, have many guest speakers and talk about topics like the European Union and the United Nations, about intercultural communication and global warming, about politics and culture....
Anyway, right now we are reading a book called "One World" (by Singer), which also talks about globalization and it is interesting and easy to read, because it uses a lot of symbolism and analogies. One I found interesting was that of "The Giant Sink"

Imagine you live in a global village and the village has one giant sink. This sink can be used by everyone in the village for garbage disposal and other. Everyone in the village has equal rights to dump anything they want down this sink. The sink seems to be endless and seemes to never "overflow," so eveyone keeps dumping more and more waste down this sink.
One day, however, an "unpleasant smell" (called Global Warming...) arises and the people in the village now have to figure out who is responsible for it and who should have to clean up the mess. Some people in the village think that whoever put down the biggest percentage of garbage (the US right now...follwed by China, india...) should be responsible for most of the clean up.
Who should be responsible?!...
Well, I am not sure what the right way to handle this would be...BUT, I think it sounds fair to make whoever wastes most, clean up most. According to Singer, this has to do with the principle of "good and enough" for everyone. Yes, it is fine to dump more into the sink, as long as there is "good and enough" for everyone in the world, but once our waste results in global warming affecting others around the globe, then there is NOT "good and enough" for everyone. And doesn't it seem unfair that while we sit at home with air conditioning and our SUV's in the garage, others in the world have to suffer this "unpleasant seepage" eventhough there is not "good and enough" for them... It's just like the good old story of the poeple in the village at the beginning of the river dumping toxic waste in the river, and therefore not leaving "good and enough" for everyone else living along the river, or even killing others that might drink the water.
Anyway, I think that this is a very good example, a good illustration of the current problem. Considering that the US (and India and China) did NOT sign the Kyoto Protcol, what does that say about us...that we don't give a sh**...?!?!? I realize that our economy needs a lot of resources and energy, etc to uphold ours and therefore, the world's economy, BUT does that mean we have to get into our gigantic SUV's everytime we want a burger form the Mc Donalds 100 feet away....
And I guess what really frustrated me, is that eventhough the class in which we discussed this in small groups is called GLOBAL STUDIES, that there were people who truely believe that we are not doing anything wrong and it is not our fault when cattle at the other side of the globe die of heat waves due to global warming.
Are we partly responsible for the "unpleasant smell" of the GIANT SINK and should we be held responsible for a bigger portion of the clean up than others?!?!
Yes, i think so....