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Greenhouse grandstanding just a bunch of hot air (David Warren)
Ottawa Citizen - Canada ^ | Saturday, June 02, 2007 | David Warren

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


TOPICS: Canada; Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: environonsense; g8; globalwarming; kyoto
More enviro nonsense: Toronto's war on the car ~ Kelly Patrick, National Post, Saturday, June 02, 2007
1 posted on 06/02/2007 3:57:09 PM PDT by GMMAC
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To: fanfan; Pikamax; Former Proud Canadian; Great Dane; Alberta's Child; headsonpikes; Ryle; ...

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

2 posted on 06/02/2007 3:58:29 PM PDT by GMMAC (Discover Canada governed by Conservatives: www.CanadianAlly.com)
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To: GMMAC

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.


3 posted on 06/02/2007 4:13:51 PM PDT by generalhammond
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To: GMMAC

4 posted on 06/02/2007 4:16:09 PM PDT by sourcery (Democrat: n. 1. Quiche-eating surrender donkey.)
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To: sourcery
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.

And that has always been the Democrat, RINO and America haters' agenda.

Crippling America without having to invade a superior nation and culture.

5 posted on 06/02/2007 4:51:13 PM PDT by HoosierHawk
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To: HoosierHawk; sourcery; generalhammond
"Cui prodest?" (Who gains?) was the question the Romans asked themselves when trying to figure out an explanation for improbable actions.

A: certainly the North American left - short term ... but overall & writ large RED CHINA
6 posted on 06/02/2007 5:58:50 PM PDT by GMMAC (Discover Canada governed by Conservatives: www.CanadianAlly.com)
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To: GMMAC

Amen to that!


7 posted on 06/02/2007 6:08:26 PM PDT by HoosierHawk
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To: HoosierHawk
Canada is now effectively the front lines in the war against ecco insanity.
The good news is right-thinking folks are plainly winning.
Why else would our domestic and otherwise anti-American reds continually be bringing 'foreign' mercenaries, like Al Gore, to bolster their losing cause ???

Our friends in the media are serving us well, for example, feel free to consult the veritable arsenal of ammunition via the National Post's on-going - so far 23 (!) part - series "Climate change: The Deniers".
All installments are available via the indicated link.


8 posted on 06/02/2007 6:29:47 PM PDT by GMMAC (Discover Canada governed by Conservatives: www.CanadianAlly.com)
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To: GMMAC
Western leftists are at war with Western prosperity. The hysteria over "global warming" is just the latest but not the last, manifestation of their discontent with the prosperity the Industrial Revolution created. Indeed, I am at one with the socialists of old who were concerned with improving the human condition and creating a better life for all. Their successors are more concerned with the fate of lakes, forests and other living creatures than the welfare of Man. They are indeed the true reactionaries of our time.

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

9 posted on 06/02/2007 6:37:09 PM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives In My Heart Forever)
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To: GMMAC
I saw your link a while back.

Bookmarked!

10 posted on 06/02/2007 6:41:51 PM PDT by HoosierHawk
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To: goldstategop
There are 30,000 of them raising hell in Germany right now. Communists, anarchists, and enviros. Is there an island we could put them on to isolate them?

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...

11 posted on 06/02/2007 7:28:36 PM PDT by ClaireSolt (Have you have gotten mixed up in a mish-masher?)
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To: GMMAC

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.


12 posted on 06/03/2007 3:15:34 AM PDT by syriacus ("...had the US troops remained [in S. Korea in 1949], there would have been no [Korean] War")
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To: GMMAC
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.

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?

13 posted on 06/03/2007 4:10:35 AM PDT by Texas Jack
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To: Texas Jack
"I wonder if all of those school teachers showing An Inconvenient Truth to the kiddies realize ..."

Other than in the area of captive indoctrination, the teaching 'profession' isn't exactly famed for its collective long-term thinking.

btw, seen this 'front page' item:
So how did it become required classroom viewing?
Even climate change experts say many of the claims in Al Gore's film are wrong.

~ Kevin Libin, National Post, Saturday, May 19, 2007


14 posted on 06/03/2007 2:18:31 PM PDT by GMMAC (Discover Canada governed by Conservatives: www.CanadianAlly.com)
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