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US Opposes G8 Climate Proposals
elrond writes "The US appears to have summarily rejected draft proposals for G8 members that would have agreed to tougher measures for controlling greenhouse gas emissions. The BBC reports that leaked documents have indicated the positions of the various world powers, from the timetable-setting of Germany to the US's intractable stance. Red ink comments on the documents hint at the US's irritation: 'The US still has serious, fundamental concerns about this draft statement. The treatment of climate change runs counter to our overall position and crosses 'multiple red lines' in terms of what we simply cannot agree to ... We have tried to tread lightly but there is only so far we can go given our fundamental opposition to the German position.'"
This world is fragile in our hands.
surely its only a matter of time before europe imposes trade tarrifs on US goods? Otherwise they are basically subsidising US industry, operating with far looser environmental standards. I'm sure the US will complain and 'retaliate', but I don't see any other option in the long term.
The overall position of the US at this time is that people and dinosaurs lived together in harmony and that soon George the idiot and all his money-grubbing pals will fly into the sky up to heaven. Global warming and the changing environment is a problem for those of us LEFT BEHIND to deal with. So as dubya says "What me worry?"
Hey, you think your house is cool?
this news is sadly unsurprising.
when will the US finally step up and take something other than short-term, economic driven decisions concerning the environment?
~~~ Paf. Le chien.
the world is more like a single civilization these days, any sanctions brought by europe would have far reaching consequences for the world economy. while I do think that the only way to get the top C02 producers' attention is to hit their wallet, I dont think sanctions are it. mainly because sanctions interrupt the global economy not just america's. but hey if there is a way, I hope they do it- I am sick of politicians and industry putting their own monetary goals ahead of life on Earth- something must be done.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
The US still has serious, fundamental concerns about this draft statement.
Correction: The US Government.
Here's a related bit of news that may make you feel better.
An investigation at the Department of the Interior (Manages US wildlands) has resulted in numerous resignations and may result in real domestic reform.
Accusations from leading scientists include:
Elimination of data regarding imperiled species in resource rich areas
Rubber stamping of logging permits on public lands without due process
Improper contact between dept administrators and corporate interests including the allowance of corporate influence on impact assessments
All of the allegations center around administrators who were placed by the Bush administration. Several highly placed scientists have left for the private sector and there may be an expose published. The elimination of data was egregious. Apparently data was not only removed from official reports, but other data was *actually* changed and whistleblowers were railroaded out.
Bet you five bucks this becomes a campaign issue if Gore decides to run.
Washington DC
Climate Change denial ends
under rising sea.
We don't suppose you can spare some rice and some oil, by any chance? Only the desert now stretches from the West Coast to Chicago and we have a bit of a food problem. And the Canadians have built a big fence along the border and won't let us in as none of us want to mow their lawns or harvest their oranges.
We can offer plenty of stuff in exchange. How about some strategic nuclear missiles? Or some fighter aircraft? We've got plenty of them. Unfortunately, turns out they don't work too well if you want to invade another country and make people grow food for you.
Pining for the fjords
That's exactly right. I read a Gore Vidal essay explaining how Regan was absolutely convinced that the biblical end of times would be within his lifetime. It's scary to think how such beliefs influence national policy. Vidal also proposed that no president should be elected who holds a literal view of the bible. I wonder how much the Christian Right influences Bush's environmental policy.
Why bother looking out for future generations if the leader of the free world believes we'll all be getting beamed up in a few years?
i remember the last g8 thing demanded major reform from usa while ignoring third world countries. if this is still the case, i could understand not wanting anything to do with it.
I miss the Karma Whores.
it is the usa, a republic, not a democracy
Democracy: government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.
Republic: a state in which the supreme power rests in the body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by representatives chosen directly or indirectly by them.
(source for both defs, dictionary.com)
The difference is what, precisely? Other than that "republic" is a more precise term than "democracy" which is somewhat vague about the exact mechanism, nothing relevant.
The thing is not inly if "greenhouse gasses" affect the climate. It's also about outrageous and irresponsible use of resources. It's about pollution.
You don't pollute your own house, so stop polluting this world.
Although I don't live in your house and couldn't care less about what you do there, I and about 6 billion people live in this world so let's keep it clean.
Privacy is terrorism.
Twenty months to go, twenty months to go
Hi-ho the dairy oh, twenty months to go
I'm afraid you're flat wrong here.
The transportation and residential sectors combined make up more than half of our greenhouse gas emissions. I'm not talking about the switch from a Tahoe to a Prius, but from a Tahoe to something like a Chevy Volt (sized for real-world use, of course). Given most people's driving patterns, that could cut our CO2 emissions from transportation by more than half. Similarly, I'm thinking about houses that are grid-neutral most of the time (think solar roofs, on-site windmills, or whatever else can help power houses in x climate). These switches would have a *huge* impact on our CO2 emissions and none whatsoever on our lifestyle, if the policy framework were in place to support them.
I'm convinced, due to knowledge about human nature, that the climate change problem will only be solved with market-driven solutions.
I don't think the government, or governments, can solve it without the private industry. Private industry is the only organizer of the masses and it must be utilized in every way on every level.
It must be cheaper to run a business in an environmentally friendly manner. It also must be cheapter to start a business that is dedicated to solving climate change.
I propose that we allow people to start small businesses, tax free, for 5 years, as long as that business is dedicated to the principles outlined, of reducing environmental harm. This is what worked for the internet, so many businesses moved to the net because theres no internet taxes. One way to bring business support is to simply remove taxes.
Are you telling me that Democrats and Republicans can't agree to cut taxes for this issue? If we want environment-conscious businesses, we need to cut taxes for environmentally conscious businesses. I think Tarrifs are another one of those old ideas from the last century. We are globalized now, and the elements of our system which are globalized, are tax laws, and business laws.
We need to update business laws so people can start corporations who's main goal is not simply profit in money, but also to advance social goals. If a business is started by law with the social agenda of being environment conscious and of preserving the environment, then it will be illegal for that business to go against the social agenda set forth through law.
So lawyers, who understand business law, need to team up with environmentalists, who need to team up with social activists, who need to term up with business and economics majors, and together they can come up with something similar to the GPL, or creative commons, only this would be a legal document and script for starting eco-corporations.
This eco-corp document should redefine corporation, into eco-corporation, and being eco-friendly should come before all else.
At the same time, by redefining what a corporation is and how it functions, it will give people the freedom to organize the market to solve climate change. I see this is a legal/technical problem of business law. The way it can be solved is through new corporate models, new classifications, new laws to manage corporations on the local level.
If anyone here is a lawyer and capable of understanding exactly the impact the GPL had on the open source movement, could something similar to the GPL be invented to assist the climate change movement? And is anyone interested in starting a project to do it?
Respond with your comments, this post is designed to advance discussion and promote new idea generation. New ideas are needed. Old ideas like tarrifs, and taxes, only make the government bigger but don't create the fundamental changes anymore than having the government build an OS would create the open source movement. So think bigger.
"... why should we wreck our economy over something that not everyone can agree on..."
Who says it would wreck the economy? Automakers cried wolf in the same fashion in the 70's and 80's when rasied MPG requirements and imposed the environmental standards that required catalytic converters and cleaner fuels. "Oh," said they, "it will cause the collapse of the industry as we know it and cause irreparable harm to the US economy."
Didn't happen.
At worst cleaning up our act and imposing higher CAFE standards "might" impact corporate profits for a quarter or two. But in return we get a cleaner environment, less polution, and less dependence on foreign oil imports. Not to mention spawning new industries to provide those solutions and technologies.
And that's a bad thing... how?
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
The implementation is everything. Democracy goes back to the Greek demokratia and takes as its model the 5th-century B.C. Athenian democracy, in which the people administered the government as directly as possible. It was marked by wild policy shifts, especially after the death of Pericles, and self-destructed under the pressure of the Peloponnesian war. A perusal of the Federalist papers and Madison's other writings will demonstrate how eager the American founders were to avoid pure democracy.
A republic is loosely modeled on the Roman republic, even though the Roman system, like the Spartan constitution to which the ancients compared it, was only superficially similar to modern republics like the U.S. The founders nonetheless saw in Rome (and Sparta) many ideas worthy of imitation: separation of powers; aspects of monarchy (president), aristocracy (legislature), and democracy (the voting public); term limits.
The key distinction in the modern sense is this: while Americans do elect their representatives, presidents, some judges, and local officials, they do not do so directly. The process is made indirect through the party system and the electoral college. And once the representatives, senators, and president are in power they are not immediately subject to the whims of those who elected them. The idea, for better or worse, is to introduce a measure of stability and keep the government out of the hands of the unwashed masses.
Those who argue that the people's representatives must obey the volatile wishes of their constituencies once in office would do well to read more about Athens and learn where that road leads.
Ok, so Greenpeace leaked that the US is against this "communique" but they don't specify anything in the communique except that it requires reducing emissions. What are the specifics? Does it single the US out in any way? Does it put broader or more strenuous penalties on the US? Neither of these things would surprise me coming from Germany. There are a million things that the US could be objecting to. Not including third world countries in the agreement, singling out coal power production for special penalties, maybe it specifies per capita caps (the US uses more energy per capita than anyone else). My point is, without seeing the actual communique, this is just Greenpeace making headlines. It is more of the same from the environmentalists: "Here's something scary and bad, but we won't give you the actual facts, just take our word for it, the US sucks".
Further, if the G8 did reduce emissions by 50% by 2050 (below 1990 levels... um... ok, so we reduce our energy consumption by 50% and don't completely destroy our economy how?). Even if we come up with a huge breakthrough on the energy production front, and we manage to reduce emissions by that much, China and India will both be producing 5-10 times more emissions than they are today, and today China and India are producing almost as much as the US. They aren't covered by this agreement at all. So net result is, global warming still just as much of a problem and the developed world has no economy left, or wasted hundreds of billions converting over to clean power.
The problem with agreements like this is that you can't know, say the G8 (including US) signs this agreement, and now its 2048, and no one has made fusion work, wind power is still too costly, and too sporadic, wave power doesn't pan out, solar power is still only 15% efficient, nuclear power because of local regulations is not an option... And we have this global treaty that on Jan 1 2050 requires us to pay huge penalties or turn off half our economy.... There is not a good solution to the energy problem, and you don't commit yourself to something extremely detrimental to your economy, way of life, people in general hoping for a massive breakthrough. And that is exactly what this is hoping. We would need a seriously massive breakthrough on some renewable energy front (nuclear, solar, wind, whatever) to comply with this regulation. There is nothing that seems to be on the horizon which would allow us to comply. Hydrogen cars? Great but hydrogen takes energy to produce, so now we're burning more coal. Electric cars, same problem. The only solution is to go completely nuclear. But thanks to these same environmentalists, that is 100% impossible in the US. It will not happen.
The only other possibility is to start spending billions if not hundreds of billions buying up huge swathes of land to put up wind farms or solar panels, and then there is still huge amounts of regulation, law suits, all sorts of things that will happen with that. I wanted to take my house off the grid, but it is impossible for 99% of americans to pull this off, because solar panels to power even a modest home cost > 30k. Very few people have that money sitting around, and even if they did, they would be stupid to spend it on something that will at most save them 100-150/mo on their electric bill. 30+ year ROI is not considered a good investment anywhere.
You do realise that the ecological footprint of North America is TWICE that of a European and about SIX times of someone living in Asia?
n t=global_footprint
See bottom of this page:
http://www.footprintnetwork.org/gfn_sub.php?conte
Double standards? Double USAGE you mean!
Just because the US Govt chooses to ignore the issue, America is not. A number of states are doing their own thing in spite of the White House's attitude. Although it's only something like 10 states, it is those that matter. I.e. CA and the N.E.
Please, listen to the state governors (yes, that's Arnie) and not the muppets in DC. Things are changing here.
Anyone know what these "red lines" actually are? I mean, it's fun to just assume that the US is wrong, but it would be neat to know what we are actually disagreeing about.
Also, I wouldn't sign anything that was an "Agreement to slow the rise in average temperatures this century to 2C". How can we possibly agree to that? Do we have some reason to believe that is withing the G8's power?
-Peter
I mean, why don't they listen to the USA. Our position is that since the earth is only 3000 years old, there isn't enough long term data to determine if climage change is even being caused by humans. Not only that, why would God let the planet get too hot? It just doesn't make any sense.
There are some hints in the news here that the USA was sufficiently embarrassed by this leaked memorandum, that it had to mollify its position somewhat.
It happens that the governments of the UK and Germany happen to take global warming very seriously, and both want and need to deliver a deal. If the US refuse to compromise, then the allies of the USA will be in a very awkward position indeed. Chancellor Merkel and especially prime minister Blair will have closely associated themselves with a power that refuses to take action on an issue that they have themselves identified as a significant, even the most important, threat to the future of their own societies and economies. And as no nation on this planet produces even remotely as much CO2 per head of the population as Americans do, that makes the USA a de facto threat, instead of an ally.
The sad truth is that Merkel and Blair they have no reason to expect much in the way of concessions. So their best way out of this corner is to dismiss George W. Bush and his policies as an irrelevance, which they could do with some justification. Many US states have already taken serious steps to fight global warming, and as Tony Blair pointed out today, "I can't think that there's going to be many people running for presidential office next time round in the US who aren't going to have climate change in their program." Never mind the current president... and that's King Tony speaking!
Of course, even from the Bush administration's point of view, provoking such a situation seems rather counterproductive, and I would think that sanity will induce them to offer at least a compromise that people can attempt to interpret as a step forward. On the other hand, consistency or clear sense of purpose have never hallmarks of the Bush Jr. era.
The funny thing is, that Christianity has been perverted to a big degree, I dont know where those groups derive their believe from, it cannot be in the words written down.
Lets sum those words up, there was a guy 2000 years ago, he went into confrontation against people who had strict religious rules, he sided with hookers poor people etc, and called the rich ones being not his people. He went into opposition against things which would make the life miserable for ordinary people, and he was in his core message not really a very capitalistic guy (some people nowadays probably would call him communistic, I just would say he puts the people in the core of his message not the money)
He also was absolutely opposed to any war or violence whatsover even dismissing defense as valid form of violence.
Now lets face it, if a guy with such a message would go out into the crowds nowadays, how long do you think his life expectancy would be. Probably three years as well, the killer, probably some corporate sponsored guy, or a religious zealot, who wants to the defend the words of jesus (and does in fact do totally the opposite). Jesus probably would go in total confrontation with any right wing cristian groups like he did with the jewis zealots in the past, and probably would call them severe names out of anger, he also would go into opposition with lots of governments including our own, and generally our society of self righteousness while we bring lots of misery onto the rest of the planet.
I dont think the message he would bring us would be very comforting for us!
Well, yes.
The only reason the U.S. is not making a bigger stink out of the Airbus subsidies is because it is subsidizing civilian construction as well. Usually via the slightly indirect route of fat defense contracts, but if it walks like a duck...
Now, did you have anything to contribute, aside from snide anti-Europeanism?
Mart"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
The problem is that you cannot make real money preventing global warming. All you can do is to put yourself at an economic disadvantage.
However, there are mountians of govenment money to be made trying to correct the effects of it once it gets up and slaps people in the face.
So why try to stop it. Ride the tidal wave and make some real money in the future.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
If we simply redefine our system into the globalized century, we can compete.
The reason we cannot compete is because we ignore our strengths. The USA should be the easiest/best/cheapest place on planet earth to start a small business, period. The USA should stop fearing growth, and change the laws so that growth is encouraged.
Pollution is not profitable for anyone. The solution, is simple, if we want a better market, we have to make it more free, and the only way to make it more free is to allow for increased flexibility, more options, more choices for corporations, consumers, etc. The person who wants to start a corporation should have more freedom to define and classify their corporation. The whole (for profit) and (non profit) segregation, is ultimately why we have corporations which are run irresponsibly.
I'm not saying a corporation should not focus on profit, but a founder of a corporation should have many options of many different types of corporate entities they'd like to start, and we need to allow for options which encourage social responsibility and environmentally friendly operation.
We also need to make it more expensive to be irresponsible. How can we make corporations responsible if we don't?
Most importantly, we need hundreds of new tools. Taxes are an old tool. Tarrifs are an old tool, and both of these tools depend on a big centralized government. What about tools that a local community can use? What about tools that allow for the corporation to, by design, operate in the way we require environmentally?
Corporations could be made to pay hefty fines, or high taxes, we could have a pollution tax. We'd also need to give tax credits and benefits to corporations which don't pollute. We'd also need new types of corporations which by law are required to minimize pollution while maximizing profits. We also need corporations which, by architecture, function just the way they should.
What you have to do, is use your ideas, your concepts, your thoughts, to be an intellectual architect, and develop a new corporate architecture. We need corporation 2.0, and corporation 3.0, and 4.0 onto infinity. We have better product standards for motherboard and CPU designs. We design better graphics cards than we do corporations and policies.
Do we need to host a contest with a 10 million dollar prize to see who can come up with the best new policy ideas, best new architectures for corporations, best new corporate classifications?
Because the ideas the green party offers to me, are not going to work. Raising taxes will never work because there is no evidence that the government was ever a more efficient driver in society than the corporation. If there ever were a time, it was when corporations were just barely invented. We have hedge funds now, and a global market, but governments still operating on old models. We have a global market now, but we still have corporations operating on old models.
Corporation need the freedom to operate on new levels, and once this happens then we will be able to solve climate change, and there will not be a need for trade wars. We just need to become more efficient, and the way for us to become more efficient, is for the USA to become the investor nation. We should invest in the third world, and have the third world working for our corporations. When those in the third world start their own corporations, we can buy stock. We have a global market, and it's extremely proitable, but the only thing holding us back at this point is ourselves and our own inefficiency.
Why do we have people starving in the third world, dying of cureable diseases, when we could be using 100% of our human resources? We could invent new sports for people to watch, we can invent new industries, new markets, and then maximize our human resources to realize our dreams.
We could be building stuff on the moon, underwater, or whereever, and you'd think space travel would be a lot cheaper if we had a workforce of 6 billion. How much easier would
Climatologists are uniquely and especially qualified to tell us what's going on with the climate. I don't doubt that what they're saying, is happening.
However, the ultimate question is: what is the most effective course of action to limit the impact of climate change--if indeed it will have any--on human activity?
It does not necessarily follow that the answer is to stop what is causing climate change. Perhaps it would be a more efficient use of resources to address not climate change itself, but rather its effects.
For instance, resources that go into cleaning up power plants are resources that can't be used to, say, develop a better means of combating malaria. Perhaps this new malaria treatment would have a more beneficial impact than stopping whatever is causing climate change.
Yes, this is a rather simplified example, but hopefully it helps you get the idea of what I'm talking about.
No, I don't know for sure if that will be the case--but neither does anyone else, and especially not climatologists.
This is an area where climatologists have no special competence, and that is why their policy suggestions are not necessarily more worthy of consideration than those of the average layman uneducated in economics and the other social sciences. They have no specific qualifications that enables them to discuss, say, risk aversion or time rates of preference, or individual subjective values.
If the goal is to limit the impact of climate change on human activity, then climatologists should not have any special role in the formation of public policy.
Modern societies and their economies are so complex that no individual or monolithic panel can ever hope to comprehend them fully. Over the past few centuries, the free market has demonstrated time and time again that it is the best method yet devised for dealing with just these sorts of problems. No one individual or government can know what the best means of dealing with climate change is--if it is even a problem. But the free market, by aggregating millions and billions of individuals, each with their own bits of information, can.
And if it turns out that the market does not respond to climate change, that is a sign that perhaps it's not as harmful to human activity as climatologists claim.
"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
Unfortunately, the political will to make real changes seem to be lacking, not only in the US.
Ultimately, everyone's in favor of doing something to help our environment, but there's nearly always something they care more about, and very few people vote on the basis of a politician's stand on the environment.
And, perhaps more importantly. With democracy the way it is, politicians profit (get reelected) by looking no more than 4 years into the future. Any good they do which doesn't show significant results before the next election simply doesn't matter to the professional politician. Politics is a job, and securing your job is one of the greatest motivations for most people.
Making the drastic changes required to slow global warming significantly has a very high political cost - more unemployment as polluting businesses go out of business, and a great deal of money taken from other posts that will be obvious much earlier, and influence the next election a great deal.
We're all environmentalists, but when the interest rates start increasing, when your house falls in value, and you're in danger of losing your job... You don't vote for environmentalism, you vote for your own short term best interests.
And I fear that by the time the global climate becomes the immidiate problem for a majority of the population, it will be far too late to do anything effective to change it.
I'm a dreamer, the world is my playpen. But hey, I'm a serious person, I can't dream all the time.
There's nothing scientifically invalid about eugenics and directed breeding. It may be morally reprehensible, but that's a whole other story entirely.
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
Well, I guess you just proved that human nature hasn't really changed that much in 2000 years. They killed him then, they would kill him now. And them really means we.
Rather than write it here, I'll just link my Slashdot journal with some very easy, hard-fact based calculations showing it's the Sun, not man that's driving the situation.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The problem is that you cannot make real money preventing global warming.
The High Priest of Global Warming begs to differ. He even pays himself.
"North Americans plant billions of trees each year. There is no reason why the rest of the world can't do the same."
This somehow remembers me some cute Maire Antoinette saying on pre-revolution days: "if there's no bread, let them eat cake!"
Please, remember how Marie Antoinette ended.
No, it's not a red herring. You claim the right to exclude others from your house *even when such use doesn't conflict with your use of it*, just like musicians claim the right to exclude others from copying their music, even when it doesn't conflict with their own ability to hear or perform it. In both cases, it's not ability to have an instantiation of the good, but the ability to exclude others from it that is desired by the claimant. That is why appeals to non-scarcity cannot differentiate IP from other property.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
I don't imagine this is possible... but (I'll carry on anyway!) would it be possible for the G8 to instead try to reach agreement with individual states? I'd imagine that California (for one) might be more inclined to reach an agreement.
This might be a more practical approach than trying to reach any agreement with the current US administration, which would otherwise involve lots of foot-dragging and then finally a very watered down (and likely useless) agreement.
Also, if some states did sign up, it *might* shame the others into action? Or am I expecting too much?!
I'm hoping you realize that population density is, by it's very nature, also a "per capita" measurement as well.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Someone should come right out and call a shovel a shovel.
The U.S.A. is essentially an international criminal state on this issue,
and it's time that the rest of the world agreed to take some serious
punitive measures.
I think sanctions would be a good first step.
"No oil for you!"
('til you learn how to use it like a responsible adult.)
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
"North Americans plant billions of trees each year. There is no reason why the rest of the world can't do the same."
This somehow remembers me some cute Maire Antoinette saying on pre-revolution days: "if there's no bread, let them eat cake!"
Please, remember how Marie Antoinette ended.
Clever, but a non-sequitir. I imagine your +4 rating has more to do with your historical reference and playing to the anti-american-they'll-get-theirs-someday crowd then you actually having a point.
Trees are a renewable resource that can be predictably grown and harvested- it's just that the season isn't months, it's decades. I see no good reason that we can't expect the rest of the world to act accordingly when it's something we do routinely in the US.
Unless, of course, your opinion is that the rest of the world is too stupid and impatient to treat wood like any other crop.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Did she get to eat cake?
- These characters were randomly selected.
"Democracy is a form of government, like communism or monarchy.
A Republic is a type of state, like a kingdom or an emirate."
You are so way off it's not even funny.
--
US solar power: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Trees are the ultimate renewable resource because the more you harvest, the more area you have to replant them. It's not like, say, fish, where the more you harvest, the less there are to reproduce and replenish their stocks. The reason the world is losing forested area is because sustenance farmers are able to grow food and cash crops on cleared land, while harvesting trees is not as economically attractive. So they burn the trees down to clear land.
The U.S. only accounts for 24% of the world's carbon emissions. The U.S. also accounts for 28% of the world's economic production. In other words, the rest of the world is less efficient than the U.S. at producing value per ton of CO2 released. Europe is by far more efficient and the U.S. should try to learn from them, but these attempts to paint the U.S. as the sole bogeyman are horribly misguided. If the U.S. were to disappear overnight, by the time the world economy grew back to the level it's at today, there would be more CO2 emissions than before the U.S. disappeared!Also, trying to pin blame on a country by country basis makes no sense (aside from a policy perspective) because each nation has a different size and different population. On a per capita basis (CO2 emissions per person), the U.S. is not at the top, and there are several developed nations who are right up there with the U.S.
Finally, in terms of forest and protected forest, the U.S. has far more than all of Europe combined, nearly 1.7x as much in terms of area, and more than 3x as much per capita. In the above hypothetical scenario where the U.S. disappeared overnight, 7.6% of the world's forests and 9.6% of the world's protected forests would disappear as well.
What's needed to get us out of this mess is a systemic plan which address all aspects of the problem, not trying to single out sole nations for blame. If you do that, as we found out with Kyoto, the nation singled out will simply choose not to play ball. The developed nations need to set and meet energy efficiency goals (the U.S., Canada, and Australia especially). They also need to invest R&D money in non-carbon based energy sources. Environmentalists in these countries need to accept that nuclear is a much, much better option than spewing out millions of tons of carbon and other pollutants by burning fossil fuels. Developing nations need to restrict behaviors which are cheap in labor but expensive in carbon emissions (e.g. slash and burn). They will need economic and organizational aid from the developed world to help them establish economies which are not based on these behaviors.
Don't worry. I'm selling carbon credits. Just pay me and continue on what you were doing.
This is not "The US's opinion" and too many people confuse this with Bush in office. The guy has an Approval rating of low 30%'s and has made clear anyone who doesn't agree with him can go dip their balls in lava (credit: Daily Show). His decisions don't represent me nor the majority of the US people, not by a long shot. This isn't the US's stance, it's one guy who'd be out of power if the US had a means to dispose of removing bad mistakes from power.
The difference is what, precisely? Other than that "republic" is a more precise term than "democracy" which is somewhat vague about the exact mechanism, nothing relevant.
You've obviously never played Civilisation.
Selfishness seems to have become the core value of America right now. The measure of all actions is self interest. Individuals and corporations are encouraged to act solely in their own self interest, for that, we are told is the best way to ensure the common interest. While there is some truth to this, overall it is dangerous delusion. We are all part of a larger civilization, and the fate of that civilization effects all of us.
Climate change is an issue that will effect all of us. And no matter how many deluded denials there are, no matter how loud those deluded denials are shouted, no matter much we look away from the unpleasant truth, the laws of physics remain. No matter the slippery and reassuring words of oil industry funded public relations people, the landslide of data supporting the predictions of climate scientists will remain.
Reducing carbon emissions is highly likely to cause great harm to corporations whose main income comes from oil extraction. Thus we see many of these oil interests working hard to prevent any effective reduction in carbon emissions. After all, it's just self interest. If you were facing the loss of billions and billions of dollars, wouldn't you be fighting it? Except that the oil companies' profits are coming at the expense of the future of our civilization. I believe that unless we as a society overcome our obsession with pure self interest, our civilization will enter a period of profound decline. Is that really in our best interest?
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
There is plenty of doubt out there about whether man-made CO2 is the cause of global warming...including well-known scientists in the National Academy of Sciences. Like this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lindzen
For those looking for a PDF of the leaked document...go here :-)
m it%20Declaration%20-%20US%20comments%20May%2014-1. pdf
http://weblog.greenpeace.org/makingwaves/G8%20Sum
The US stance is purely because the US government knows it would ruin its own fragile economy by doing something about our global ecology. The US government would rather make a buck, and screw the world, than save the world and lose economical face. Funny eh?
The world now needs to recognise the US stance and take full economic sanctions against the US government and US industry. Sadly, this will hurt the average American, but this is your own fault for allowing the type of government to lead your people. You've had one revolution in the past, it is time for another, so that true democracy is returned to the people of the United States of America. That's my honest appraisal.
Cheers,
Dave
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. --Martin Luther King Jr.
"Anyway, what do you think is gonna happen as the US dollar (inevitably) devalues?"
The market will correct and life will go on. You're new to this whole economics thing aren't you? I love watching you US haters pretend that your wishes are anywhere near reality.
It seems to me that the best way for the rest of the world to react would be to stop negotiating with the US as a country and move to negotiating with the states. Some of them are as large as a reasonably sized country and act as such. California, for example, seems very ready to move on climate change.
The other states, some of which seem to have "rogue governments" that look very much like "axis of evil", can easily be ostracized. Sanctions can be implemented such as travel restrictions for their elected officials or freezing of funds in foreign bank accounts.
Of course military action cannot be ruled out but liberating Texas may be difficult.
This common refrain ("we won't reduce ours until they do so, too") is like two school-children arguing: "You first!" "Nu-uh, you first!"
You've gone right back to cherry picking just a few snippets of the broad range of facts I presented in order to argue that the U.S. is the worst. Policy decisions need to be made based on broad general facts and statistics. It cannot be based on a narrow hatred for a nation or nations.
e.g. Say the U.S. were to adopt nuclear power to the extent France has (78% of its electricity from nuclear). About 90% of the U.S. coal use is for electricity generation, as is about 25% of its natural gas use (source). (Petroleum is also burned for electricity, but accounts for less than 3% of electricity production in the U.S.).
Nuclear currently accounts for 21% of U.S. electricity generation. If that were increased to 78% with hydro and renewable electricity generation held steady, coal and gas consumption for electricity production would drop to just 17.6% of current levels. This would correspond to a 74% reduction in total coal use, and a 21% reduction in total gas use.
Factoring these reductions into U.S. CO2 production (same source as above), total emissions for the U.S. would drop from 5802 million metric tons to 3996 million metric tons. That's a 31% reduction in CO2 emissions without making a single change to how energy in the U.S. is consumed.
Oh come one, you know this is bullshit. Countries like that are still busy getting their economy up and running. You seriously think they should be held to the same standard as the US, who's carbon emission per capita is WAY higher than any of those countries ? (e.g. 6 times higher as China). Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
Yes exactly that was my point and the killers would be the same, the religious zealots in combination with those who have money and power (usually both groups are heavily interwined with each other)
:-)
Funny thing is under McCarthy he would probably have been dragged in front of the tribunal as being a hardcore communist
The other G8 nations are coming to the table with proposals that are already very much watered down, due to the demands of big business, and of course political expediency. That the US isn't even prepared to entertain these weak and inadequate changes shows the lack of regard they truly have for the state of the planet on which we live. They should try to bear in mind that the rest of us also have to live with the consequences of their selfishness and shortsightedness.
Bzzzzzt..."AAAAaaaaarrrgh!!!" Thud.
"Clever, but a non-sequitir. I imagine your +4 rating has more to do with your historical reference and playing to the anti-american-they'll-get-theirs-someday crowd then you actually having a point."
Or else, maybe those that rated the post understood it better than you. Just thing for your mind: Were the previous poster said "Finland plants thousands of trees a year so I don't see why the rest of the world can't do the same" I'd answer the same, so there goes your "anti-american" interpretation.
"Trees are a renewable resource that can be predictably grown and harvested"
So what?
1) A mature forest is an ecosystem that goes far, far beyond "a renewable resource that can be predictably grown and harvested".
2) In too many situations the people exploiting the lands are not those that have to live with the disaster coming later, but big fortunes rich enough to have a hard grip on those third world or in-development countries' governments (and do you know why they are third world or in-development countries? Exactly: because first world have already harvested their own forests for the most part -still it seems that it is countries like Brazil or Cambodya the ones that must take the hard part of the reforesting effort).
3) Even if were the natural population of the land the ones taking advantage of the forests, they are, again, third party or in-development countries with many more pressing needs than expending money on sustainable forest management. For instance, paying debt interests that point back to first world countries like USA.
All in all, saying "If USA can do it I don't see why the rest of the world can't" shows an utterly misrepresentation of the world and the situation of 2 out of every 3 people living on it -just exactly the kind of misconception that got Marie Antoinette missing the point why poor people were raging for bread... at Versailles there were no bread for a day, they would take cake!
"Unless, of course, your opinion is that the rest of the world is too stupid and impatient to treat wood like any other crop."
Statistically, the rest of the world is at the verge of dying from famine.
You're joking, right??? The term this thread is searching for is 'non-rival' ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivalry_(economics) ). Apples are rivalrous goods. If I eat an apple I reduce the amount of apple left for everyone else. Housing services (think 'house-months') are, too. If I live in a house for a month, I reduce the amount of housing left for everyone else for that month. A musical recording, or a piece of software, is non-rival. If I listen to (or copy) some country music it doesn't - regrettably - reduce the amount of country music left in the world for everyone else.
That is the difference, and is why intellectual property is fundamentally different. No free market can produce an optimal outcome for an economy containing non-rival goods (see my other post on the first theorem of welfare economics). With no IP protection there's too little incentive to generate IP. With IP protection people who might benefit from the IP but not by enough to pay the market price cannot make use of it, and this can add up to a lot of lost economic welfare (especially for those in poorer countries - consider AIDS drugs). There's a second-best maxima at some level of IP protection, but it isn't as much as the perfect economic choices (all IP which costs less to produce than the total benefits is produced, and anyone who can benefit from it uses it freely).
Per capita....
Great way to offset the reality.
US: 300 million
China: 1.5 BILLION
Translation, what China doesn't have on a per-capita basis, they make up for in sheer quantity.
What's more, the drive to modernize China will cause a per-capita increase.
Additionally, there are initiatives in the US already to reduce emissions. Sure, they may not move as quickly (the day before yesterday please!) as you'd like. But they ARE in progress.
Yet you want to excuse it because "Oh, they're a developing country!"
Essentially what you want is for us to wreck our economy around the same time China finishes building theirs.
Good idea! (NOT!)
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The US tends to produce about $2,000 worth of goods for every ton of CO2 emissions.
China produces about $500 worth of goods for every ton of CO2 emissions
There's room to grow up (the EU averages about twice as much output as the US, and some EU nations that tend to rely heavily on hydroelectric and/or nuclear do much better than the US, such as France (being a G8 nation, and producing almost 3x as much goods as the US for the same amount of CO2 emissions), but the US is far from being the most inefficient nation.
I suspect that the US will always have higher CO2 emissions than much of Europe, due to the US climate (we do have some large cities in rather cold regions -- Minneapolis, for example), and our lower population density (transportation, including mass transit if viable, won't be as efficient as Europe).
OTOH, the US would do wonders if its electricity generation looked more like France's. If, in the US, we went from 20% nuclear power to 90% nuclear power (replacing the 70% of US power generated from natural gas, coal and petroleum), we'd basically eliminate the third of our greenhouse gasses emissions that come from electricity generation, and end up being producing more goods per ton of CO2 emissions. As a bonus, nuclear power has had an excellent track record powering another industrial nation (France). Too bad that the ecological left in the US tends to hate nuclear power.
No, actually, they don't.
If you follow this link you'll see that the emission of the US is still WAY higher than China, even as China has a much larger number of inhabitants. (data is from '96, couldn't find more recent data using a quick google search and I'm too lazy to keep on looking).
The US isn't doing nearly enough, since the US is so wastefull compared to the rest of the developed world it should be relatively easy to cut down, 'we' already demonstrated it can be done. E.g. increase the gas prices through taxation so people will stop buying ridicious cars. (Contrary to popular belief US gas prices are insanely low).
For some other sources, check this graphic for per-capita emissions in 2002. For the US, we have about 19.8 tons, while for China it's about 2.2 tons. Using the CIA World Factbook for current population numbers, we get:
Of course, there is also Wikipedia:
When he urged Congress not to ratify Kyoto, and when he pledged the US could never sign on to the program as long as China and India were not held to the same standards. Now that Bush is refusing something similar being proposed by the EU, the US and its administration are characterized as hidebound, etc. China is now poised to pass the US and the EU as the world's largest emittor of CO2, yet is still given a free ride under the current B.S. carbon regime. Oh, and until we can create a really big umbrella to shade the planet, we cannot stop it getting warmer. CO2 is a smokescreen engineered by back room boys at the UN to redistribute wealth as THEY see fit. Don't buy into the hype.
FYI, according to the Washington Post, the US is reducing its carbon emissions -- at least when the weather cooperates.
What I would like to know is this: what evidence is there that reducing our carbon emissions now will affect global warming?