Posted on 06/02/2007 3:57:05 PM PDT by GMMAC
Greenhouse grandstanding just a bunch of hot air
David Warren, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Saturday, June 02, 2007
Every politician eventually enjoys his 15 minutes of media popularity, and this last week U.S. President George W. Bush got his. All he had to do for it was propose that the world's 15 major producers of industrial pollution -- recently redefined to include carbon dioxide, which is not a pollutant but one of the basic conditions for life -- should meet to decide upon emissions targets. What a brilliant idea. (Irony icon.)
This will not happen at Heiligendamm, ye olde seaside resort in ye olde Duchy of Mecklenburg, Germany, when the G8 leaders assemble on Wednesday. The European politicians wanted to talk about almost nothing else but climate change. For they've found talking about the weather 100 years from now a very welcome distraction from talking about their real problems, of economic stagnation and demographic collapse. The latest of many fashionable distractions.
Still, as host Angela Merkel diplomatically admits, the Canadian, American, Japanese, and Russian leaders (Russia left Europe a century ago) won't have it. What she didn't quite explain is that they're tired of European posturing on the issue, and eager to do some grandstanding on their own terms.
When I write "posturing," I mean posturing. The U.S. economy is growing fast, but carbon dioxide emissions are actually falling (by 78 million tonnes last year, according to the latest report of the U.S. Energy Information Administration). But European industry is exhaling CO2 ever faster with no significant economic gains. No wonder that they whine on about a failed Kyoto protocol, which was more about throwing a spanner into the American economy than about cleaning up anything that could be dangerous to someone's health.
But now Mr. Bush, slow as some people think he may be, has found, a little late in his administration, one of the basic principles of political success. You talk about problems and propose visionary-sounding, other-worldly solutions that depend entirely on other people to carry out. And at all costs avoid doing what is necessary, difficult and long overdue (attack Islamofascism at source in countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq, for instance).
Has he really been won over to the "science" of global warming? From my understanding of the man, this question is poorly phrased. He knows nothing about it himself, but is surrounded by a bureaucracy that wants to buy into it in a big way. Of course he "believes" in it, and is willing to put American taxpayers' money where his mouth is, on the same wildly generous scale with which he is (they are) funding the fight against AIDS in Africa -- another "good cause" in his earnest estimation. Would that the world worked so that problems would solve themselves when you threw money at them. Alas, we live on a planet where government "investment" tends invariably to choke off any good that humans could have accomplished.
But Mr. Bush's proposal for a kind of W-15 (code W for "warm-mongers") is likely to prove a political success -- for even longer than 15 minutes -- for the simple reason that no politician can resist the glory of participating in a grand summit on a "pressing" global issue. Of course they will attend, for it promises to be the photo-op of the decade.
I have mentioned, above and in the past, that (what I consider to be) the global-warming fraud is a convenient way for politicians to sidestep real problems, all the while adding immeasurably to the world's fund of bureaucratic regulations, and excuses for new taxation.
But it is also an environmental disaster in the making. This is because the demonization of CO2 specifically distracts us from the real and consequential problems of global pollution, which are not the less worrying because they are better understood. And the problem here may well require "First World" help, but is not of its nature a First World problem.
Environmental standards in the West have improved continuously over the past couple of generations. Meanwhile, China has become the planet's emissions queen. But China's rulers in Beijing have no intention of making economic sacrifices. Nor are they under any plausible political pressure to acknowledge, let alone repair, the extraordinary environmental catastrophe that is the postmodern Chinese economy. For in the absence of general elections, the Chinese politburo retains the power of life and death over the 1.3 billion souls trapped under its jurisdiction, and feels free to pursue its own superpower aspirations. The destruction of China's physical environment is the outward expression of that moral obscenity.
David Warren's column appears Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday.
© The Ottawa Citizen 2007
Pres Bush should have a look at what the Australian govt. proposes. Their plan doesn’t set any targets (considered completely useless by the climate guru at the Australian National University)but proposes a national, and eventually international carbon trading free market with no government interference after 2012 (when the phoney Kyoto protocol finishes). This is driving the lefties in Australia nuts because it encourages the capitalist free market and doesn’t conform to their agenda of destroying capitalism and increasing government control through greenhouse stealth.
And that has always been the Democrat, RINO and America haters' agenda.
Crippling America without having to invade a superior nation and culture.
Amen to that!
Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
Bookmarked!
I laughed when Nitwit Nancy said yesterday that she just didn't know why the NASA chief would say what he said. I guess it was not in her talking points.
As for Bush, enviro skeptic Linzin at MIT says Bush knows the issue better than anyone in Washington. I like the way he has figured out how we can make money by selling technology to India and China as part of Pacific initiative. France wailed when they heard we would sell nuclear power plants to India,
The summit he has proposed is a way for leaders to back off gracefully from ridiculous committments. There are real problems to spend money on. About that island for the crazies...
It was pretty tricky of Bush to pretend to get on the global warming band wagon at the precise moment that hordes of scientists are debunking the theory.
OXFAM, and organization whose published goals are to "work with others to overcome poverty and suffering," has already stated that because the US is charged with producing one half of all greenhouse gases, that we should be made to contribute $50 billion to their organization for 2007.
I wonder if all of those school teachers showing An Inconvenient Truth to the kiddies realize that when we start paying carbon taxes to European "feel good" bureaucracies that the economy is going to decline and their jobs or pensions might be in jeopardy?
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