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Posted on 08/03/2008 2:56:26 AM PDT by Clive
The hole in Kyoto's 'cap'
Why taxes and the cost of consumer goods go up and carbon emissions don't come down
Last week we looked at the leaky foundation at the base of the Kyoto accord, known as carbon credits.
Today, let's examine the holes in its roof -- its so-called "cap" or "hard cap" on carbon emissions, linked to man-made global warming.
In reality, there is no "cap", either in the Kyoto accord or the "cap-and-trade" markets and carbon taxes it has spawned.
In addition, while politicians like to pretend it's easy to create a cap-and-trade market or institute a carbon tax, nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact, there will be a huge knife fight behind closed doors between Big Government and Big Business about which industries' emissions will be included under these initiatives and which will be exempt.
The exemptions will blow even more holes into Kyoto's so-called "cap" on emissions.
Finally, government and business will fight in private about how the spoils of higher consumer prices and taxes, the inevitable result of cap-and-trade schemes and carbon taxes, should be divided between them. What the public will be presented with at some point is a fait accompli.
The most gaping hole in the roof of Kyoto is that 143 of 180 member countries have no cap on their emissions until at least 2013 (if ever), including China, the world's largest carbon emitter.
Only 37 countries, and, only a handful of major industrial ones, including Canada -- but not the U.S., the world's second-largest emitter, which has refused to ratify Kyoto dating back to when Al Gore was its vice-president -- are required to reduce emissions by an average of 5% between now and 2012. (For us, 6%.)
However, as the Christian Science Monitor reported after researching the issue in 2004, up to 850 new coal plants planned by China, India and the United States alone over the next few years -- none covered by Kyoto -- will put up to five times more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, than Kyoto is designed to remove, even if every country required to reduce emissions hits its targets. Many, if not most, including us, won't.
But that's just the start when it comes to the holes in Kyoto's "cap" through which carbon emissions are escaping every day.
To cite just a few of many examples:
- When Europe created its Emissions Trading Scheme, the world's largest carbon trading market, it handed out free carbon permits to industry totalling more than current emissions. So much for "capping" them.
- Germany exempted its coal industry, despite the fact coal causes the most carbon emissions of the major fossil fuels when burned.
- A 2002 study of Norway's carbon tax by researchers with Statistics Norway concluded it had "a relatively small effect" on carbon emissions, in part because of the "extensive tax exemptions" it granted to industry.
- In Canada, Liberal Leader Stephane Dion has exempted the retail price of gasoline from his proposed carbon tax (although it will have some impact on production and distribution costs) while Liberal house leader Ralph Goodale, a Saskatchewan MP, said last month about two-thirds of Saskatchewan's oil and gas industry will be exempt because the fossil fuels they produce aren't burned here but are exported to the U.S. (Where, of course, Kyoto's cap on emissions doesn't apply.)
- The cap-and-trade Western Climate Initiative which Ontario, Quebec, B.C. and Manitoba are joining in conjunction with seven U.S. states, plans to exempt carbon emissions from the making of biofuels, despite growing evidence the manufacture of ethanol, while receiving massive government subsides, doesn't significantly reduce greenhouse gases and has been identified as a contributing factor in global food shortages and skyrocketing prices.
Just won't work
A cynic might argue if Kyoto and its support systems are such a disaster, why not the more exemptions the better?
The answer is that given these exemptions, Kyoto and its offshoots will not do what politicians assure us they will -- lower global carbon emissions.
Why? Because they weren't designed to do so.
What will they do? Raise taxes and our cost of living through higher consumer prices, with Big Business and Big Government dividing up the cash between them like crooks after a bank job.
Count on it.
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fyi...
Only 37 countries, and, only a handful of major industrial ones, including Canada -- but not the U.S., the world's second-largest emitter, which has refused to ratify Kyoto dating back to when Al Gore was its vice-president -- are required to reduce emissions by an average of 5% between now and 2012.
...may be the worst sentence ever written.
Refusing to sign Kyoto con my be the greatest thing Bush has ever done to preserve our sovereignty.
I knew that China is building coal fired plants as rapidly as possible, BUT the author claims that the USA is building coal fired plant also. Find that almost impossible to believe with the eviro-wacky “chicken littles” in the government.
"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 Palelologus
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Kyoto does NOT reduce “evil” emissions. It merely allows one country which produces needed products to pay another country which produces nothing to sell them their unused carbon footprints. That results in the same amount of “evil” emissions in the world, and Al Gore gets richer and richer.
Most people don’t realize that there is only a trace amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The latest number I have seen is 380 parts per 1,000,000 parts, up from 320 parts 50 years ago. Further, no one really knows how much of this is due to human or industrial activity, and no one really knows what affect it has on climate. The Gorons preach the pagan religion known as man-made “global warming”, but it is total hogwash. It is political science, not real science.
By the way, the primary greenhouse gas is water vapor, and the other one is methane. I think the latter is clearly increased by Demo-Socialists, other charlatans, and cows.
Written (as it should be) from a Canadian perspective, but the writer (in serially condemning the US for not signing Kyoto) fails to point out that US emissions have decreased/remained generally steady (due to a poor economic growth), while those in Europe (who did sign the treaty) have increased overall.
Emissions in Canada increased over the same time, and our Liberal government had signed on too.
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