Climate Change Bill Includes IP Protections

moogsynth writes "Buried in section 329 of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act (H.R. 2410), voted in recently, are measures to oppose any global climate change treaty that weakens the IP rights in the green tech of American companies. Peter Zura's patent blog notes that 'the vote comes in anticipation of the upcoming negotiations in December as part of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. ... Previously, there was sufficient chatter in international circles on compulsory licenses, IP seizures, and the outright abolition of patents on low-carbon technology, that Congress felt it necessary to clarify the US's IP position up front.'"

Comments

I'm so sick of the American Congress

[Anonymous Coward]

Why can't a bill about something be only about something?

"We will bone you hard but we will give you a reach-around..."

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[Snaller]

As banana republic there are certain things which must be done. This is one of them.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Unfortunately, that is a messy one. It is easy to suggest(and very likely desireable) that bills not include bundling to sneak things through. However, since it is strategically desirable to do so in many cases, you would actually have to prohibit the practice to keep it from happening. Trying to draft a workable definition of "about something, and only about something" that excludes abuses without excluding legitimate conduct, and doesn't rely on "good faith"(a commodity known to be in short supply near most legislative chambers) is virtually impossible.

In a case like this, it would be trivial to argue that, since technology is almost certainly a component of any viable response to climate change, and since IP is arguably connected with technological development, IP protection is arguably related. If you are subtle enough, you could easily slip in broad enough wording that your climate change bill has ramifications for all kinds of IP, while ostensibly remaining "on topic".

It might be possible, and would certainly be desirable, to curb the worst abuses; but there is essentially no way to attack the (large) grey area.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[johnsonav]

Why can't a bill about something be only about something?

Because, without the behind-the-scenes horse trading that results in these kinds of provisions, nothing would ever get passed.

Wait...

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[Darkness404]

What really needs to happen is a line-item veto type thing for congress. Where they can choose to support only part of legislation, if that part passes, the bill passes, if that part fails, that part of the bill fails.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[FiloEleven]

A topical anonymous first post is a rare occurrence.

The American Congress looks out for the political class (i.e. themselves) and for whoever lines their pockets. This is very hard to change.

Congress's preferred method for doing so is to attach unrelated unpopular measures to popular multi-hundred page bills. I don't believe that this clause is such a case, but it happens often enough and there are probably other unsavory tidbits hidden within this bill.

The only way Congress will stop such a practice is if we force them to. To that end, DownsizeDC has drawn up the One Subject at a Time Act. This bill would force Congress to bring every measure to a vote instead of burying them inside some behemoth legislation named "Rekindle The American Dream Act of 2009."

Public pressure works: see for example the 224 co-sponsors (over half the House) of The Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009, which you may not have even heard of yet. But the Campaign for Liberty organized a call-in campaign that has been running for a month, maybe a little longer. C4L has around 100,000 members, easily less than a thousandth of the population, and they've already got half the house behind their bill. The phone call is the most effective means of public pressure. OSTA will law by this time next year or sooner if you call your congressmen and get four friends to do the same.

OSTA is a bitter pill for Congress to swallow, yet you'll be hard pressed to find 10 average Americans against its principles. If just a hundredth of those who say "it sounds like a good idea" were to actually call and ask their congressmen to support it, the congressmen would have no choice.

Seriously. Call. Slashdot 'em.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[realmolo]

The problem with line-item veto, or any kind of system that tries to minimize the practice of "sneaking things into" a bill, is that the party in power (majority party) can simply choose to remove any part of the bill they don't like, or ADD whatever they want to any bill, confident that they will be able to pass it.

Basically, you have to be careful about any kind of legislative system that does to much to increase the power of the majority. The current system makes sure that EVERY bill is a compromise on multiple issues. Yeah, that means that most bills have all kinds of ridiculous things attached that we could probably live without, but it some of those attachments are GOOD, but would never manage to get passed if they weren't part of some larger bill with wide support.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[sumdumass]

You also have the problem of congress critters actually reading the bills they vote on.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[kdemetter]

Basically, you have to be careful about any kind of legislative system that does to much to increase the power of the majority

Wait , isn't the point of a democracy to give power to the majority ?

The only reason they add these things in attachment is because they hope no one will notice until it's too late . And that's because they know the majority of people won't approve ( otherwise they would do it openly ) .

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[MaskedSlacker]

I dislike the term congress critter, if only because "critter" in my mind conjures up images from Bambi. I think congressional cretins is more appropriate.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[MaskedSlacker]

Wait , isn't the point of a democracy to give power to the majority ?

No. Not in a liberal democracy. The purpose of a liberal democracy (every democracy based on either the US or British model) is to protect the rights of citizens from transgression by the government. Constrained power to the majority is the means, not the end. And most importantly, that power is constrained.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[Mean Variance]

Wait , isn't the point of a democracy to give power to the majority ?

IANAPS (I'm not a political scientist). However, I think the pure answer to your question is yes. However, as I understand, the U.S. is not a democracy; it's a republic which uses multiple forms of representation, i.e. House and Senate, who themselves are democratically elected, but that composite doesn't imply pure democracy, nor does their decision-making process imply democracy.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[icebike]

Except that line item vetoes, as we know them, apply only to appropriations bills, allowing the executive to strike specific expenditures.

No one has proposed a line item veto allowing the editing out of specific words or phrases other than appropriations. ,

The kind of line item you imagine might allow the executive branch to change the meaning of a law which disallowed a specific act/event into one that specifically required that same act/event.

So, be careful what you wish for.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[icebike]

The problem with line-item veto, or any kind of system that tries to minimize the practice of "sneaking things into" a bill, is that the party in power (majority party) can simply choose to remove any part of the bill they don't like, or ADD whatever they want to any bill, confident that they will be able to pass it.

Line item Veto does not ADD items to bills, nor does it make it easier for the majority to ADD items to bills.

All it does is to make it possible for the Executive branch to kill entire projects. Not add them, not change them.

Line item veto is used in several US states, quite successfully. It does not lead to abuse.

Minority projects still make it in. Often these are negotiated in advance with the Governor's office to assure no line item veto, often in exchange for allowing majority projects thru.

Governors virtually never turn around and line-item veto projects thusly agreed upon, to do so would poison the well.

Any state that elects a super-majority from one party deserves exactly the kind of government they elected, and soon learns the wisdom of their way.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[icebike]

"Liberal Democracy" is code for something, but I know now what.

We have in the US, a republican (lower case R) form of government, best described as a representitive democracy.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[demachina]

"see for example the 224 co-sponsors (over half the House) of The Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009"

That is a pretty easy bill to garner widespread support. After the last year of shenanigans out of the Fed and Treasury I think just about everyone is realizing fiat currencies are bad, as is letting a hand full of people who don't really answer to anyone control it.

A week or so ago a couple Japanese nationals were caught in Italy trying to smuggle what appear to be $135 billion in U.S. Treasury bearer bonds in to Switzerland, in $500 million and $1 billion denominations. Either Japan was trying to quietly dump their vast T-bill holdings in Switzerland because they don't trust the U.S any more and didn't want to be too conspicuous about it, or there are some other shenanigans going on. If they are genuine Italy may have erased a big bunch of their deficit thanks to a customs checkpoint who found the false bottom in a suitcase.

There are strong suspicions Bernanke and Paulson intentionally froze up the credit markets to coerce $700 billion out of Congress and transfer to Wall Street. The hundred plus billion that went to AIG went in one door and out the other to a number of large firms who desperately needed payoffs on their credit default swaps that AIG couldn't pay. Paulson's old firm Goldman Sachs got billions of dollars with no strings attached from U.S. tax payers through AIG, and chances of AIG paying it back are slim. The firms who had credit default swaps through AIG on their toxic mortgages came out smelling like a rose thanks to the U.S. tax payers and Paulson pulling strings to protect his old firm.

There are also rumors the Fed has been using their printing press to intervene in the stock market at the end of the day to manufacture the unusual rally of recent months. One sure way to break the psychology of a depression is to make the stock market always go up. Unfortunately doing it by printing funny money makes the entire U.S. economy a sham.

Its not even a rumor, its a fact Bernanke has been using the Fed to print money to buy U.S. treasury bills to prop up the massive U.S. government debt and to try to keep treasury and mortgage rates down. That stinks no matter how you look at it, the U.S. fed printing money to bankroll U.S. government debt, and since T-bill rates are spiking lately it doesn't seem to have even worked.

Everyone thinks its a wacko's rant but fiat currencies really are inherently dangerous. They are fine when responsibly managed and there is no stress, but as soon as a crisis develops and irresponsible managers start printing money to get out of it, they can wipe out people's life savings in no time through hyperinflation.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[St.Creed]

You know, the whole money smuggling thing reminds me of when Don Johnson (of Miami Vice fame) got arrested at the Swiss border with the trunk of his car loaded with a few hundred million in "value papers". A similar case. He was released a few days later and surprisingly no paper I know ever published anything about it afterwards. They claimed it was legit. The world of high finance must be an amazing place :)

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[LKM]

The fact that the majority holds power is typically how a democracy is defined, but it's not the only common attribute most modern democracies have. Another one is the rule of law and the separation of powers, meaning that the majority can't just do whatever the hell it wants.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[Anonymous Coward]

More relevant, I think, is the contention that no Congress can bind a future Congress by its own action. Here, we'd say that no Congress + President can bind themselves, but it's really a short exercise to show that the Constitution defines powers and is superior to law, later laws supercede earlier laws, and there's just no basis to prevent omnibus legislation if both lawmaking parties agree. It'd be the typical feel-good political action of absolutely no consequence.

The question is a lot less interesting (though covered more extensively in political writing) in the British system, where there's no diffusion of power.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice, but there's no way. There's plenty of law indicating that a Congress and President that enact something contrary to earlier action are entirely aware of the conflict and specifically chose to do away with the earlier, conflicting portions. A constitutional amendment might work, sure, but that's only because you're escaping all the decisions that would make the OSTA meaningless.
 
The presumption is that the lawmakers know and intend what they're doing. I can't imagine how you do anything, short of a constitutional amendment, that isn't easily repealed by implication the next time some rider amendment gets through.
 
  In any judicial action brought pursuant to Section 5(g) of this Act, the standard of review shall be de novo.
 
And now I'm convinced DownsizeDC are idiots. First, de novo is an appellate standard of review and has nothing to do with the original jurisdiction 5(g) grants. Second, if they mean that they want the whole Congress 1/Congress 2 line of precedent to be ignored, that's fine, but the weight of the world's political philosophy will have them right back where they started: a later law trumps an earlier one.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[Hurricane78]

Because they are only marionettes?

That's the "nice" thing about this system. You can have a dictatory government, and nobody knows it. You just play the lobby, and regularly let the people choose, which group of your strawmen they like the most.

People, become lobbyists! I recommend destroying Monsanto from the inside. Feed them their own toxines. ;)

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[selven]

but it some of those attachments are GOOD

If they actually are good they can survive on their own merit. If they need to be a rider to get through, then by definition they aren't good enough to pass into law.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously. Call. Slashdot 'em.

Yes, let us do that.. HEY, WHO ARE YOU, WHAT ARE...

Actually, i disagree, let us not do that, All Hail Congress!

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[Hognoxious]

However, as I understand, the U.S. is not a democracy; it's a republic which uses multiple forms of representation

You understand wrong, the two terms are not mutually exclusive.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[Anonymous Coward]

USA is governed by money, not the people.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[mrchaotica]

It would also work for the President to grow a pair and simply veto everything that touches multiple separate issues. That's what I'd do, anyway, which is why I'll never be President...

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, this has been proposed, and even signed into law by Bill Clinton. it was later struck down as unconstitutional. The Executive branch cannot govern- that's the job of the Legislative branch. Line item vetoes violate the checks and balances.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[EvilAlphonso]

Either Japan was trying to quietly dump their vast T-bill holdings in Switzerland because they don't trust the U.S any more

It would be hard to blame them for that. If you look at the numbers from the point of view of a lender, there's a snowball in hell chance of the US repaying its foreign held debt. Without a deus ex machina, the interest on the existing debt will be the most expensive part of the US budget in a couple of years... from that point on, the debt will increase steadily without any need for deficit spending.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[jonaskoelker]

The Federal Reserve Transparency Act

How do you pronounce that? "The frat act?" "Tea-Frat act"?

Is that some sort of wordplay on Tigris and Eufrat? Tifrat? The puns are just flowing... ;-)

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[Darkness404]

The kind of line item you imagine might allow the executive branch to change the meaning of a law which disallowed a specific act/event into one that specifically required that same act/event.

Thats why I wanted a congressional line-item-veto type thing. Where rather than voting for Bill number 2323, they would vote on bill number 2323 item 1, if that passes than the one item becomes law without the bill going to the congressional equivalent to development hell.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[Paul Pierce]

Very good post. The US is using Bretton Woods and their dept to stay 'on top'. It won't last forever. They only reason it is going to take a while to play out is because other countries have wealth in the US dollar. Japan, China, and Russia don't want to admit the dollar is worth jack because they have too many of them. I find it interesting how many countries are coming out and saying the dollar is strong and they have 100% confidence in the dollar - if the dollar was strong why would you have to make such statements?

No one wants to admit their 50k mercedes is now only worth 20k, but one day they will have to trade it in.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[floorgoblin]

The inflation rate has actually been much more stable since we weakened the gold standard during the world wars and the depression, and eliminated it in 1971. (ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cpi/cpiai.txt) Actually, fiat currency was instituted specifically to allow the government to better respond to economic recessions and depression. When on a gold standard, it is very difficult to react to a recession through monetary policy, but with fiat currency the government can increase the money supply in order to counteract a decrease in consumer spending. Certainly care has to be taken to prevent excessive inflation, but that is a easier problem than heading off a recession or depression.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[T Murphy]

Maybe it's time to exchange those savings for Euros.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[FiloEleven]

The summary of the bill reads as follows:

A BILL
To prohibit the abuse of legislative power: by requiring that each bill or amendment hereinafter introduced (other than concurrent resolutions or appropriations bills within the jurisdictional authority of each subcommittee of each Appropriations Committee) be limited to only one subject, so as to end the practice of addressing more than one subject in a single bill; by requiring that each bill's single subject be descriptively expressed in the title thereto; by requiring each appropriation bill, including any supplemental appropriation bill, by amendment or otherwise, not to contain any general legislation or change of existing law not germane to the subject matter of said bill; by requiring each bill amending an existing statutory provision to set forth in full in the amendatory bill the section as it would read if the proposed amendment were adopted; by declaring that all bills enacted in violation of this Act shall be void, having no legal effect whatsoever, which should be treated as nullities by the American people, this Act being mandatory in purpose, not directory only.

The language is strong and unambiguous and rules out the possibility of being repealed by implication.

And now I'm convinced DownsizeDC are idiots. First, de novo is an appellate standard of review and has nothing to do with the original jurisdiction 5(g) grants.

You're telling the wrong person. Why don't you email someone from DownsizeDC with your concerns? If you've actually found something they missed, they'd be glad to hear about it, and if not they can tell you why the bill is sound. They're not infallible, but they do have a legal team working on this stuff; it's not just a bunch of amateurs like me.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[darkvizier]

Maybe we should have a compositional structure to the bills, where they can be broken down into sub-proposals. Each would have a summary, and could be revised independent of the other proposals, but the whole package would still be voted on as a single unit.

A big question I have regarding our legal process is why are we not able to change it? I see this as a huge disadvantage. Considering the massive amounts of data that have to be processed by the legislature, it seems very counter productive that they are not able to make full use of the information technology which is available today. Part of the reason that our government is not transparent is that it would be a huge time sink just to understand the documents that they have made available. I can barely follow the language of our bills, and I doubt I'm the only one. I think we would benefit a lot from a more organized structure.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[kdemetter]

Wait , isn't the point of a democracy to give power to the majority ?

No. Not in a liberal democracy. The purpose of a liberal democracy (every democracy based on either the US or British model) is to protect the rights of citizens from transgression by the government. Constrained power to the majority is the means, not the end. And most importantly, that power is constrained.

Constrained power to the majority means that that majority will have less power , and thus , less rights (as power is required to ensure rights are upholded) . So how can that be protecting the rights of the majority ?

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[Attila Dimedici]

I dislike the term congress critter, if only because "critter" in my mind conjures up images from Bambi. I think congressional cretins is more appropriate.

Yes, but calling the beings that serve in congress "cretins" is really an unfair assault on those who hale from Crete.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[steelfood]

GP isn't so much proposing a line item veto, as a line item vote. Veto powers apply to the executive, but GP is talking about the legislative process.

GP wants legislators to be able to vote on specific parts of a bill, and only the parts that pass would continue to the next step in the process.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[Rich0]

Constrained power to the majority means that that majority will have less power , and thus , less rights (as power is required to ensure rights are upholded) . So how can that be protecting the rights of the majority ?

Reasonable restraints on majority power help to protect the rights of EVERYBODY (that is all people under the jurisdiction of the Government). That includes the majority, and all miniorities that are represented.

Basic human rights should not be subject to legislative perogative. We are not granted these rights by government. Instead, the people of the nation give the government power to defend their rights.

Suppose a majority of voters in a referendum vote that women shouldn't be allowed to be employed outside of their homes? Would it be right for government to enforce such a decision?

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[FiloEleven]

Great post. The more eyeballs that meet this info about the Fed the better.

Yes, HR 1207 is an easy bill for House Reps to support, but most of them would not have jumped on board without the fervent prodding done by members of their districts. OSTA could very well be a more difficult battle since it removes the chief vehicle for letting Congress take care of their special interests.

However, if enough people put up enough pressure, Congress is left with no choice. OSTA has widespread support amongst the population, and we're gearing up for more congressional elections. If OSTA is made into a big issue, one that gets spotlighted by the media, anyone running for Congress (including incumbents) will be forced to take a stance. I guarantee that the majority will go with the popular stance. Once they've done that we can hold them to it. The key is to get lots of people to call and to not stop calling until OSTA is a law.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[He who knows]

A topical anonymous first post is a rare occurrence.

Normally it is woo first

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[sorak]

That, and that there is something to be said for two groups coming together and achieving a compromise. Let's say group A wants lower taxes, group B wants health care. It makes sense for them to work something out that says:

1. Cut tax A
2. Cut Spending B and C
3. pay for healthcare

There is little reason for politicians to ever work together if the party in power can cut out items 1 and 2, or item 3.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[Anonymous Coward]

"The language is strong and unambiguous and rules out the possibility of being repealed by implication."

I think you misunderstand that. A congress coming along later can repeal any section by implication, including something that says 'we will never repeal this' because a past congress cannot bind a current one. It's not just that Congress and the President acting together are above the law, they are the law. On what possible basis could the judiciary insist that some, say, 100-year-old law binds the current lawmakers?

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not even a rumor, its a fact Bernanke has been using the Fed to print money to buy U.S. treasury bills to prop up the massive U.S. government debt and to try to keep treasury and mortgage rates down.

The fed "prints" money just as much as banks "print" money.

What do you think happens when your bank takes a million dollars in deposits and gives out $16 million in loans? That's right - they "printed" fifteen million dollars. Now when banks are required to return to only lending out 10x as much as they have in deposits, they have to un-"print" five million dollars. If the Fed loans the bank $0.5 million instead, then the bank doesn't have to call in its loans.

So you would prefer that banks call in their loans to minimize their risk exposure. And you have no problem with banks creating money from capital and risk?

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[DocHoncho]

Yes, but calling the beings that serve in congress "cretins" is really an unfair assault on those who hale from Crete.

Actually, we call people from Crete, Greeks.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[Attila Dimedici]

And how do you distinguish them from someone from Athens? The term cretin derives from the statement by Epimenides, "Cretans, always liars" at least partly by way of the New Testament book of Titus (Epimenides was by the way from Crete).

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[FiloEleven]

No, I understand your argument; I'm just not convinced. I don't know much about the topic, so I did a modicum of research. I found a fascinating overview of repeal by implication and the rule against it on Google Books.

My reading of this,

To understand the rule against repeal by implication, Congress cannot bind a future Congress (or a later action by the same Congress). Under this rule, Congress is free to amend or repeal prior legislation as long as it does so directly and explicitly. Although it is also possible for one statute to implicitly amend or repeal a prior statute, it is firmly established that such "repeal by implication" is disfavored, and statutes must be construed to avoid this result whenever reasonably possible. (emphasis mine)

leads me to believe that OSTA will stand up just fine, and due to the nature of OSTA its repeal would require an explicit bill whose sole purpose is the repeal of OSTA. Anything else would run afoul of the rule against repeal by implication. The case law detailed in the link above stands in my favor.

Why do you believe differently?

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[Anonymous Coward]

I appreciate your further thoughts on this. You've at least convinced me that I had short-circuited some steps in my position, and helped me understand that I am predicting the Supreme Court's reaction to the situation rather than relying on clear law. In my defense, I'd like to say I was considering this issue on the basis of what I've seen in immigration law, where legislation is almost always single-subject and specific.

Here, rather than trying to figure out whether lawmakers wanted to build a dam or save a fish when you can't do both, I think we see a conflict intrinsic to the legislation itself. As such, I think a court would be less likely to disfavor repeal by implication, simply because the prior act relates only to legislation. We wouldn't be asking which of two mutually exclusive policy positions we should uphold, we'd be asking whether a law that meets the the only explicit constitutional requirements of bicameralism and presentment can be invalidated in toto by a prior procedural law. It's my opinion that justices are committed enough to maintaining the power of each of the branches that they would not reject a law in this manner.

As I hope I made clear, I now understand this to be essentially a guess. And I thank you for helping me to understand it that way.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah....Monopolising any solutions for profit is FAR more important than addressing the immediate problem.

It's become the American way....which is why America is forever deeper in sh*t.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[randyleepublic]

>> They are fine when responsibly managed...

That is exactly the problem as we have a system, fractional reserve banking, that is catgorically imposible to manage resoponsibly. One of the "benefits" of this system is that it besmirches fiat currency. The vast majority of people who think they are responsible concerned citizens are convinced that fiat currency is the devil and that we need to return to the gold standard.

They've been played like a fiddle. The gold standard is just as easy as the private central bank's credit-based system to manipulate. This may or may not be true, but I recently read that the Rothschild family has about 12 trillion dollars worth of gold. "You want to go back on the gold standard?" "No problem - we already own all the gold!" Besides even if it isn't true, I guarantee you that if we ever went back on the gold standard, we would still have fractional reserve banking. Things would be even worse. That is what all the gold bugs forget: the reason that we have the system that we have is that things were much worse before we adopted it. We didn't adopt it because everything was peaches and cream - we adopted it because it was sold as an answer to the decades of financial chaos we had endured under the gold standard.

The answer is fiat money, but only with fractional reserve banking outlawed. Read my sig.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[metaforest]

"Suppose a majority of voters in a referendum vote that women shouldn't be allowed to be employed outside of their homes? Would it be right for government to enforce such a decision?

Referenda are more like mob-rules than representation. As we have seen in the past many bad laws and a few good laws are created via referendum. I recall a Referendum that was sold to Washingtonians as a reform for vehicle licensing that effectively gutted the State's transportation budget. The net effect of this law was to give the wealthy a hefty tax break on their luxury vehicles at the expense of the public roads and public transportation.

OTOH a referendum was very useful in forcing WA State to create an Insurance Commissioner. The law also gave that office a mandate to protect consumer interests, and the teeth to enforce it properly. This was not something that the generally spineless and self-serving Legislature could do, and if they had managed it would have been a paper tiger.

The balancing act there is that such law making can be challenged by the minority via the Judiciary where the law is tested against the Constitution.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[FiloEleven]

There's no need to defend yourself - the whole point of discussion is to further knowledge, and we both know more now than when we started.

We wouldn't be asking which of two mutually exclusive policy positions we should uphold, we'd be asking whether a law that meets the the only explicit constitutional requirements of bicameralism and presentment can be invalidated in toto by a prior procedural law.

I think you've hit the crux of the matter with that statement, and it's accurate to say that we are both only guessing at the outcome of a court's ruling. I, not knowing of the issue's existence, was unaware that I had made a guess in the first place.

Now knowing a little bit more about it, I still think that OSTA would be good to pass. The way I see it, if there's enough public pressure to get it passed in the first place, that same pressure would tend to keep congressmen from attaching a rider to the next bill down the line. Some "maverick" aware of repeal by implication may think about using it, forcing a court case. Naturally his or her name would soon be known to the public at large as the one who broke with OSTA, and he or she could kiss elected office goodbye no matter the outcome of the case. It is my opinion that the prospect of being thrown out entirely is enough to keep Congress in line for a number of years, and that those years would see a significant increase in the quality of both the laws coming out of Congress and the political discourse between the elected and the electorate.

If the law were overturned while its popularity remained, it would become clear that we do indeed need a Constitutional amendment. The movement for an amendment has to be a lot stronger than the movement for a law, and I believe the only way to get enough strength to pass an amendment in this case is to first get enough strength to pass a law. If the law isn't challenged, great! If it is challenged and falls, that event would act as a springboard for the population's support, getting many more people fired up than you could by starting out calling for something as rare as an amendment. OSTA is strategic legislation that, if passed, would have a very good chance of checkmating Congress into making a change desired by the people.

That's just my take on it, but I think it's a pretty rational one (assuming I haven't missed anything else!). If this chain of events seems rational to you, would you support OSTA even believing in its failure as a law? Right now support consists of getting the word out, calling your elected reps, and getting others to do the same. It's really a minimal effort for a potentially huge payoff, a cleaner Congress, and it doesn't feel like work: another function of this interesting conversation is to garner more attention and hopefully support from pseudo-random passers-by.

I'm not looking for a pledge or anything so cheesy, but I am interested in knowing how much more willing you are to take action, if at all.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[skarphace]

The kind of line item you imagine might allow the executive branch to change the meaning of a law which disallowed a specific act/event into one that specifically required that same act/event.

Thats why I wanted a congressional line-item-veto type thing. Where rather than voting for Bill number 2323, they would vote on bill number 2323 item 1, if that passes than the one item becomes law without the bill going to the congressional equivalent to development hell.

We have something like that. It's called bills. Instead of having another level of abstraction, get back to putting these 'items' into separate bills. Your idea wouldn't change a thing.

Re:I'm so sick of the American Congress

[skarphace]

And we already have this. First you have committees fool around with the bills, then congress does their whole amendment junk(or line items if you will), then it goes for a final vote. This process you describe already goes down.

Oooops

[zegebbers]

not this bill http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kininmonth_(meteorologist)

Re:America is full of itself

[thedonger]

Not any more. The climate may have been changing for the last 5 billion years, but the buck stops here! As a nation we officially oppose any changes in the climate. We are one people for one season, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all! Mostly.

Re:America is full of itself

[hedwards]

But, I don't want summer, can't we go back to worrying about nuclear winter?

Karma whoring for science

[Kligat]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/1206_041206_global_warming.htm

Re:Karma whoring for science

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, a 404 page. That's awesome.

I think you meant http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/1206_041206_global_warming.html

Re:America is full of itself

[DigiShaman]

America seriously has attitude problems...

Because we would be the nation most punished by the Kyoto. Duh!

America is many things. Being sadomasicistic isn't one of them.

geo engineering

[meow27]

As long as they dont screw around with the environment trying to "fix" what we dont know is broken, then im happy

That is of course if im not forced to wear white everything, breath at a certain rate, exercise at certain times, eat certain foods, and other things that generate greenhouse gases (co2 and methane) im fine.

But seriously, in new york i cant stall in a car. id get a $200 fine if i did.

Speaking of climate change though, is it legal to build solar panel power plants in the US again, or is it still undergoing "environmental testing"?

Re:geo engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

If your actions don't negatively affect my health and well being in any significant way, you can do anything you want.

As soon as your behavior leaves your realm and affects mine, I'll try to be tolerant, but it gets bad I might need to defend myself.

Live and let live.

Re:geo engineering

[JackieBrown]

Bring it

Re:America is full of itself

[thedonger]

I miss those days. Commies were red, beer was cold, and homosexuals were flaming! These days I work with two guys from former eastern block countries, some beer is supposed to be served less-than-ice-cold, and everyone is gay. Where is W.O.P.R. and a game of thermonuclear war when you need it? Hell, the government probably hosts it on EC3...

Re:America is full of itself

[Martin Blank]

Search "Kyoto Protocol" in wikipedia and see what you get, a Map with all countries green except for the US.

That's the "signed and ratified" map, not the map of countries which are going to make their goals. The same article includes a chart showing that a significant portion of the industrialized nations not only failed to reduce their CO2 output from 1992 to 2004, but increased it dramatically. Most of the nations increased their emissions to at least a small degree. Of the nations listed, only Denmark, Germany, and the UK unambiguously reduced their emissions, and Australia and Norway are only included as decreasing when land use and forestry are taken into account.

I would suggest that it's not only the United States that is having problems with the protocol.

It's a token law.

[tjstork]

Pretty much the Congress is covering its rear over what will likely be a huge fight over the economic cost of global warming compliance. Let's be real, it's going to be expensive and its going to mean a dramatic reduction in our standard of living, and so everyone is looking to say they were against it, right up until they vote for it.

Bottom line is, a Treaty is the Law of the Land and it trumps other law. In the pantheon of things, a Treaty ranks just below the Constitution and below that is other law. Shrewd critics, on both sides of the aisle, have long noted that the Treaty is a pretty good way to subvert the Constitution, because it only needs the Senate to approve, not the house, and a treaty carries so much force.

Re:It's a token law.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone else getting tired of these posts which spew strange accusations, and which don't cite any reputable sources? Maybe you're correct, but it sounds wrong and it sounds like yet more FUD coming from the right wing. Your sig said something about the "center right" so I'll trust your word more then some of those dorks on the far right.

"Citation needed"

And global warming compliance may be expensive, but it's probably cheaper then the alternative. And at least we'll be pomoting some useful science and creating some jobs during the process. A bit like building military items or building roads.

Re:It's a token law.

[MobyDisk]

You should read this month's Scientific American cover story "The Top 10 myths about Sustainability", which discusses why the sustainable approaches do not lower the standard of living.

This is a point that always seemed obvious to me: investing in technology never lowers anyone's standard of living. The only reason it seems otherwise is because the proponents of such arguments ignore things like choking on car exhaust in their standard of living calculations, but make sure to point out that they will have to downgrade to a 43" TV from a 52" to save power. Nevermind the fact that it pays off the long term.

Re:It's a token law.

[NewbieProgrammerMan]

But the US doesn't even bother with treaties for such things nowadays, does it? We just call it an "agreement," and then we all act like it's a treaty without all that pesky two-thirds consent by the Senate. Hell, one of my former senators from Virginia didn't even *know* that you need a Senate supermajority to ratify a treaty.

Re:It's a token law.

[tjstork]

You should read this month's Scientific American cover story "The Top 10 myths about Sustainability", which discusses why the sustainable approaches do not lower the standard of living.

Scientific American is wrong and by the end of this summer I'll have an open source computer model that explains why. The problem is increased efficiency demands increased complexity. This complexity implies that that the cost increase of a more efficient system is actually exponential, not linear, such that, going from 10% efficient to 50% efficient is pretty cheap, but it gets way more expensive after that.

This raises the price of the good, which in turn, causes some people to stop buying that product. Because there are less purchasers, while the complexity driven capital cost remains the same, the unit cost goes up. So, more people drop off, and the cost goes further up. Eventually, the good cannot be produced at all.

Right now, you see this in Health Care in the USA. Everyone can blame it on the lawyers or the capitalists but really a lot of it is just sheer complexity of care. Complexity drives the cost up, and a ton of people drop out of the system, driving costs up more for everyone else. For health care, the only way out is rationing of some sort, coupled with mandates to keep everyone in the system, but that doesn't really control costs as much as it does stave off the doom of complexity for a bit longer.

We'll see the same, though, as we exhaust our resources of any kind. You might have more complex systems that can use them more efficiently, but they will get so expensive that what will happen is that the resource will not get used at all. A drop in the standard of living is inevitable.

Re:It's a token law.

[Jartan]

Let's be real, it's going to be expensive and its going to mean a dramatic reduction in our standard of living, and so everyone is looking to say they were against it, right up until they vote for it.

Let's be real. Any benefit a "dramatic reduction in our standard of living" would have on the bottom line would be completely swamped by 3rd world countries upgrading their own standard of living. Thankfully nothing of the sort will be required. Despite what you might want to believe science really can give us our cake and let us eat it too. Trying to argue otherwise only drags out the process and increases the toll our environment has to take in the meantime.

Re:It's a token law.

[JackieBrown]

An losing jobs that produce what you would say is undesirable output.

Re:It's a token law.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with health care in the US is the doctors make sure more people cannot become doctors, allowing them to charge as they please.

Specialists especially.

the US has too few doctors per capita, yet good candidates are turned down by schools, as the school has reached its AMA quota

Re:It's a token law.

[Logic and Reason]

This is a point that always seemed obvious to me: investing in technology never lowers anyone's standard of living.

What? Where do you think the money invested in technology comes from? Ultimately, it comes from people's savings, which is money not spent on current consumption. Investing more means saving more, which means a reduction in our current standard of living.

Moreover, there's no guarantee that investing in any specific technology will raise people's standard of living, even in the future. No matter how much we invest in, say, perpetual motion machines, our standard of living will never increase by much as a result-- certainly not by enough to compensate for all the money we invested in a bogus technology.

Re:It's a token law.

[toppavak]

And where in the constitution is the topic of intellectual property covered? In what way does legally obliging the federal government to not sign any treaty that may "weaken the stance of American intellectual property" then subvert the constitution?

Re:It's a token law.

[Zordak]

Actually, the GP is nearly on target. A treaty has the force of a statute, and can permit the President, with the Senate's approval, to do things that could not be done by the House and Senate together with the President's approval (via statute). I forget the case (sorry, out of law school, so no more free Westlaw access), but Justice Holmes held pretty clearly that treaties are not bound by the same "Congress shall nots" that limit statutes. When the Rhenquist Court started showing signs of actually giving the Commerce Clause some meaning other than "Congress can do whatever it feels like," the Greens got nervous that they wouldn't be able to get their environmental legislation approved (since Article 1 Section 8 does not give Congress the power to regulate the environment), and started advocating that treaties were the way to go, since they are not limited by Art. 1 Sect. 8 and the 10th Amendment.

As an interesting exercise, does this mean that the President, via treaties, could do things like limit freedom of speech, press, assembly, and religion, since the First Amendment says "Congress shall make no law ..." without mentioning treaties? It may sound far fetched, but I'm not aware of any case that has held the contrary, which would leave us with just Justice Holmes' analysis.

Re:It's a token law.

[TooMuchToDo]

You make propose an interesting theory, although I think our standard of living will be maintainable via increased efficiency. So much energy is wasted by us in inefficient processes (internal combustion engines), energy transmission (being fixed with HVDC transmission lines), etc. There's still a lot to squeeze out of the power we already have access to. And worse comes to worse, the Sun spits out enough sunlight in fifteen minutes for us to power the world for a year. We just have to make sure we can make solar power without fossil fuels.

Re:It's a token law.

[drago177]

So I may be missing something, but it sounds like you're saying that if all the systems only got 50% more efficient, and everyone was forced to join, sustainability is actually possible without destroying demand?

I am a numbers guy, and I haven't seen them, so you may be right - we might have a lower standard of living here in the US. But if we don't curb global warming, I see huge refugee camps forming, where people starve to death and start wars (and the defense dept agrees). So be sure to include those factors in your program: the # of dead parents and starving children. And come to think of it, if New Orleans refugees in Texas were any indication, the US will not be a happy place either, although they'll probably be alive and fed well.

I'm not trying to troll, but its how I feel and can't figure out a less inflammatory way of sayin it. Please try to extract the logic part w/out the emotion :)

Re:It's a token law.

[Max Littlemore]

From my personal experience, a low emissions lifestyle can make for a much higher standard of living than a high emissions one. Good housing design is a good start, using passive solar desing techniques to make comfortable living spaces which don't require as much fuel.

When I was in my teens I lived on the verge of a rainforest with a small generator powered by the creek which fed us and about 10 other houses. We had stereo, TV, lighting and a computer (Amstrad CPC 464 it was), all of those cons, and a beautiful setting to boot. My standard of living was much higher than any I have experienced since.

Often higher efficiency can be achieved with lower complexity and a subtle shift of focus.

Scientific American is wrong and by the end of this summer I'll have an open source computer model that explains why.

Making statements like that silly. Your computer program modelling something within your narrow paradigm will be able prove absolutely that an article in a magazine is wrong? Give me a break.

You can make a model to explain just about any point you are trying to make but unless it takes into account the flies buzzing around the bullshit ~150 kms from where I am sitting, it will never be an accurate representation of reality and to assert that it is is pure arrogance.

Re:It's a token law.

[khallow]

The problem is increased efficiency demands increased complexity. This complexity implies that that the cost increase of a more efficient system is actually exponential, not linear, such that, going from 10% efficient to 50% efficient is pretty cheap, but it gets way more expensive after that.

Let me save you a summer. Your model utterly fails when you apply it to integrated circuits.

Re:It's a token law.

[TapeCutter]

"The problem is increased efficiency demands increased complexity."

I have a jet engine that says you are wrong.

Re:It's a token law.

[Anonymous Coward]

what a crock of shit... you're blaming US health care costs on complexity? Take a look at :

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_spe_per_per-health-spending-per-person

The US spends more on health care than anyone, yet universal access to health care is pathetic. Complexity has nothing to do with it, but having middle-men (insurers etc) whose primary goal is to make billion dollar profits is the cause. In other countries, certain things (eg healthcare) are regarded as a right everyone has (akin to freedom of speech in the US - which conveniently costs nothing), yet in the US free healthcare is considered some kind of radical socialist ideal not fit for a free market economy.

This extends not only to health car but other sectors. As long as there are people making money (big money) out of the status quo, there's always going to be huge resistance to any change.

Increasing efficiency with a specific technology may be exponential (eg increasing efficiency of combustion engines, or even bicycles) but totally ignores new breakthroughs.
Random example - telescopes: a limit was reached using single mirrors. They displayed a Similar exponential increase in weight, construction costs, time and resources for a linear gain in performance. But new tech and methods and research led to developments such as the Kek telescopes (segmented mirrors) with orders of magnitude more performance, using a fraction of the previous materials/effort).

Having said that, if ever they manage this :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power - if they finally manage that.... all bets are off :)

 

Re:It's a token law.

[snowwrestler]

I think your statements are contradicted by the history of technology in markets, which shows a consistent march toward lower costs and greater efficiencies. This makes sense since from a business standpoint anything less than 100% efficiency shows up as waste, which contributes directly to expense. Even a slight gain in efficiency can confer a competitive advantage which can drive increased business. Natural resources may be zero-sum but economic growth is not!

Graph out the watts per megaflop since 1950. A Core 2 Duo is far more complex than ENIAC was, but uses far less energy in operation. Sure, we use a lot more total electricity for computing now than we did in 1950, but that is because there are more people doing more computing. And they are doing so because it is so much less expensive now than it used to be.

Re:It's a token law.

[sumdumass]

This is something that is somewhat contested still. I have read his argument/opinion and don't agree with it. I will go on to explain why later but,

The funny thing here is that congress's power to do anything because of the commerce clause was granted by the supreme court after it already ruled the programs unconstitutional. That's somewhat important because when the Rhenquist Court started showing signs of actually giving the Commerce Clause some meaning, they were actually reverting that movement away from the unconstitutional ways. Now what funny or interesting about this is that a future court could view the subversion of the constitution as a negative and reverse this previous ruling with treaties. So at best, it's possible that given the right treaty, it could be negated within a matter of time.

Of course that would depend on whether the supreme court interpreted the constitution or thought of it as a living document and decided that "freedom of speech" as you mentioned, was only reletive to what society thought at that time.

Now, here is my objections to his ruling and it happens to be most of the controversy surrounding it that others have expressed. Article VI of the constitution says "This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land;". (it actually says more but this is what we need to work with.

Here is says that all treaties made, and which shall be made, under the authority of the united states. Two problems with the anything goes in treaties argument. First is that both congress and the president are sworn to uphold and protect the constitution. The president is sworn with "will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." but congress has no leniency (also, congress's oath is not mentioned in the constitution.) So it would seem that either by constitution or congressional rules, that the treaty would have to be in line with the constitution in the first place or they aren't allowed to adopt it. However, when we look at the supremacy clause, it makes a distinction between treaties already made and treaties that will(shall) be made. It says made under the authority of the united states.

To me, and quite a few others, this should mean that the president nor congress have the power to only create treaties within the limits of the constitution because the participants authority is only derived from the constitution which prohibits prohibits certain actions and only allows others. To this extent, It is where I disagree with the Holmes opinion. In it, he says "The language of the Constitution as to the supremacy of treaties being general, the question before us is narrowed to an inquiry into the ground upon which the present supposed exception is placed." he then goes on to talk about the living document in how we can't rely on what the framers meant 100 years ago and need to breath our own experiences into it. I don't buy the living document idea as not only could it be used to expand the powers of congress, it could also be used to allow indefinite detention of terror suspects, warrant-less wire taps or searches, and so on. As soon as we break away from the intentions of the founders, we are more or less making crap up as we go. The constitution allows for changes and it should be the only way it can be changed (as long as the amendment is constitutional).

Anyways, a constitutional court with a strict constitutional interpretation would most likely reverse the idea of a treaty trumping the constitution.

Re:It's a token law.

[MaskedSlacker]

You'd be surprised at how few elected officials could pass high school civics.

Re:It's a token law.

[sumdumass]

SO IC are all we are talking about? or is it other things like home heating and transportation in which IC may be part of, but aren't considered the big power ticket.

Two years ago I was replacing my water heater. About the best I could find at a reasonable price was around a .60-.70 efficiency rating. that's supposed to be good. However, I could have went with a .85-.90 efficient water heater but it costs more than twice as much. The savings from the increased efficiency would have been a little less then $100 over the 13 year expected life span.

Re:It's a token law.

[sumdumass]

IP is in article one section eight but I don't think that is what he was getting at.

The IP isn't the issue with him, it's the global warming treaties and what this government has claimed they were wanting to do.

Re:It's a token law.

[jonwil]

The number one problem with health care in the USA is the lack of competition.
Too many people are stuck with a company health plan or otherwise locked into their health insurance for whatever reason.

If there was more competition (including removing any barriers to entry for new health insurers who want to enter the market, stopping/banning any anti-competitive activity or collusion currently taking place and changing the tax rules so people can get exactly the same tax benefit by choosing their own health fund as they do now by being on the company plan), the forces of the free market take over. Someone (either a new player or an established player) recognizes that they can get an increased market share by offering better service (i.e. actually giving people health care when they need it) and make more total profit (even if they may make less profit per person)

Economics 101 shows that markets which have competition generally have better value for consumers than markets which do not have competition.

Re:It's a token law.

[Rycross]

United States Constitution, Article 1, Section 8

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

Re:It's a token law.

[Anonymous Coward]

What? No.
Two words: Mass production.

Re:It's a token law.

[little1973]

It looks like Scientific American never heard of Jevons paradox which states "technological progress that increases the efficiency with which a resource is used, tends to increase (rather than decrease) the rate of consumption of that resource".

In short, technology cannot save us.

Re:It's a token law.

[toQDuj]

Health care: see Denmark, or even Cuba!
Efficiency: Households in Denmark use 1/2 the amount of energy as those in the US. And we're even much further north than f.ex. NY.:
Denmark: 160.98 GJ/year
US: 327.38 GJ/year
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_consumption_per_capita

Don't tell me you _really_ need all that energy. A few cheap slabs of isolation in your houses will reduce the energy use dramatically, without much increased complexity. The Danes did it with houses dating (mostly) from the turn of the previous century, and are living in luxury with good health care. The US (or populated parts of it) must be able to achieve similar goals.

B.

Re:It's a token law.

[TheSync]

If there was more competition...

Indeed, here is a report which describes the regulation of HMOs and another which describes the the cost of state regulations on health insurance premiums.

I'm not totally against funding for the poor to get medical service, but I suggest we first de-regulate the existing private system before we expand the 50% of medical costs paid by the US public sector.

Re:It's a token law.

[ibbey]

Economics 101 assumes that the two sides of the bargain are on relatively equal footing. If one side of the bargain has an unfair advantage, then economics 101 no longer applies. That is why there are laws against insider trading in the US.

That's also why econ 101 doesn't apply to health insurance. Even if you get rid of things like pre-existing condition limits, the consumer will never be able to adequately judge which health insurance provider is best for them any more than they were able to judge the relative risks/rewards of an ARM vs. a fixed rate mortgage. The market is just to complicated and specialized for even a well educated consumer to make a decision, so they are forced to rely on a possibly unscrupulous insurance broker, or maybe just throw a dart at a board to choose the "best" health care plan for them. Adding more insurance providers would only make a difficult situation even worse, while minimizing the one benefit that the big insurance providers have: economies of scale.

this article from this month's New Yorker looks at the city with the most expensive health care in the US (almost double the national average). It looks at quality of care, success rates and a variety of other factors, yet the only place where McAllen, TX is above average is in cost. So it asks where all that extra money goes. Interestingly, while it's not really accurate to say that competition is the cause of the increased costs, it is fair to say that capitalism is.

The article is very definitely worth reading. It brings up several key issues that I have not heard addressed in the health care debate previously. It doesn't propose a solution to the funding issue (single payer, public option, or stick with private insurers), but it does propose some simple fixes that will go a long way to reducing health care expenses regardless of which system we end up with. There's no single magic bullet that will fix the health care crsis in America, but the smarter care suggested by the article will do a lot more than just adding more doctors or insurers.

Re:It's a token law.

[Bongo]

The problem is increased efficiency demands increased complexity.

Kudos to you Sir, for mentioning "complexity". Complexity is a word that is just not heard enough when anybody talks about the environment, the economy, society, and any sort of change. Your model may or may not be worthless.... but at least you talk about complexity, about those weird counterintuitive effects in complex systems, and that is what anyone serious about human society and other species' survival should be talking about.

Re:It's a token law.

[Aceticon]

This raises the price of the good, which in turn, causes some people to stop buying that product. Because there are less purchasers, while the complexity driven capital cost remains the same, the unit cost goes up. So, more people drop off, and the cost goes further up. Eventually, the good cannot be produced at all.

That being the case, then there would still be sellers of the "lower" efficiency version of the product.

No product stops being sold because it's efficiency is increased - instead what happens is that a balance is achieved where a less then perfectly efficient product is sold at a price that people are willing to pay, even though the technology and know-how exists to make an even more efficient product which would however cost more than what people are willing to pay.

This a widely observable effect and related to the "law of diminishing returns".

Also in you efficiency versus complexity curve you need to take in account not just incremental improvements but also breakthroughs - not all increases in efficiency are driven by the slow accumulation of incremental improvements: significant increases in efficiency also happen when new knowledge/processes/technologies allow the removal of up to then insurmountably barriers, while often reducing complexity. For example, in the world of electronics, consider the transition from vacuum tubes to transistors.

Re:It's a token law.

[nadaou]

regardless of what your vaporware results may say (you've released results before even writing/running the model! ha! there's scientific objectivity for you), there is a serious flaw in your thesis which renders the rest of the argument irrelevant:

increased efficiency demands increased complexity

it demands nothing of the sort. if anything streamlining "demands" exactly the opposite, and less waste is a directly & tangible payback.

(actually it "demands" nothing, you just anthropomorphized it)

if you want a law you can trust, take a lesson from thermodynamics: the only thing that is 100% efficient is efficiency.

Re:It's a token law.

[nadaou]

I have a jet engine that says you are wrong.

dude, you've got a jet engine? excellent!

Re:It's a token law.

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me save you a summer. Your model utterly fails when you apply it to integrated circuits.

sssh, there is a subtle lesson here in lost efficiency which he may learn if we let him waste his entire summer valiantly trying to prove a pile of poo.

Re:It's a token law.

[MightyDrunken]

While what you say can be true BUT efficiency != sustainability. Efficiency is certainly part of sustainability, but sustainability is defined as the article states, "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". Consider oil, to meet sustainability for oil, to literally use it no faster than it is naturally created, would be impossible with efficiency gains. It means not using oil at all as an energy source.

The main argument I see used against sustainability is that it is too expensive. Well if that is true then our children are fuc*ed because we will leave them with far less then we had. People argue that once a resource becomes too expensive then the economy will naturally switch to another. The problem with this concept is we pick the lowest hanging fruit first, what we pick next is almost always going to be worse. As it is worse then we will be unable to support the infrastructure and population we already have. Secondly to switch from one resource model to another requires a lot of work and resources. If we are already running low on resources that the current economy is using how will we be able to change?

The only intelligent answer is that we look ahead and pick a path which is sustainable while we still have the resources to do so. Doing it now is far cheaper than in 30 years when we have to because no one can afford oil, fish, etc.

Fundamentally do we live greedily, taking as much as we can and meeting our every desire? Or do we use as much as we need in a way so that humanity and the Earth will fare well in the future?

Re:It's a token law.

[mrchaotica]

As an interesting exercise, does this mean that the President, via treaties, could do things like limit freedom of speech, press, assembly, and religion, since the First Amendment says "Congress shall make no law ..." without mentioning treaties? It may sound far fetched, but I'm not aware of any case that has held the contrary, which would leave us with just Justice Holmes' analysis.

Ratifying a treaty should constitute "making a law." The way I see it, you could write any treaties you wanted but the Senate would not be allowed to ratify them if they conflicted with the Bill of Rights.

Re:It's a token law.

[tjstork]

My standard of living was much higher than any I have experienced since.

Then, why don't you live there now? Are you sure you are not confusing a fond memory of youth in an exotic and beautiful setting with the grief of being older in a more "civilized" world?

You can make a model to explain just about any point

You are absolutely right, but what I'm looking for.

On my web site I have a simple climate calculator in Javascript for calculating the cost of CO2 reductions. It has an exponential term that users can enter the increasing cost of a good due to its increasing complexity. I have another exponential term relating to the cost of fossil fuel energy, which, can also rise due to resource exhaustion related to population growth. I subtract the two and that tells me whether or not the savings is break even or not. In this way we can say whether or not there is a return on the investment in efficiency, and on there I spit out a number that it will cost some x amount of trillions of dollars to drop the planetary CO2 enough to lower the temperature by so many degrees, and that, doing so will cause us to save so many (perhaps negative) dollars on energy.

But there's two holes in this model. First, if we did not invest more in energy efficiency, and the price of energy actually dropped, then, we would invest that money somewhere else and accrue those benefits. That's one way our standard of living is reduced. We won't be spending on curing cancer or building spaceships. We'll be buying better light bulbs.

Secondly, and most importantly, is the effect of turning a rental type cost in energy purchases into a capital outlay. In order to save energy, you have to make some capital investment. Like, I could save money over several years by putting in new light bulbs, but, that's a capital investment. At some point, I may just choose, and there will be some percentage of people that choose, to just have less lights. That too, is a reduction in the standard of living, and what's the economic impact of that?

Ultimately, of course, the proof of the model will be in its validation. What I'll be looking to do is ultimately predict different kinds of consumer responses to all of this energy changes and bans and increased costs, because, that's valuable to know for marketing and also for picking stocks.

Re:It's a token law.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well sure, we're compelled to honor treaties.
The 400 or so treaties to the natives here we had our fingers crossed.

Re:It's a token law.

[khallow]

I am a numbers guy, and I haven't seen them, so you may be right - we might have a lower standard of living here in the US. But if we don't curb global warming, I see huge refugee camps forming, where people starve to death and start wars (and the defense dept agrees). So be sure to include those factors in your program: the # of dead parents and starving children. And come to think of it, if New Orleans refugees in Texas were any indication, the US will not be a happy place either, although they'll probably be alive and fed well.

Why include these factors? Human life doesn't have equivalent value everywhere. As I see it, even in the absence of any global warming, there's a strong likelihood for massive human die-offs. Further the burden of these problems is concentrated on the people who are most causing the problem. Namely, high population growth regions coupled with weak food and legal infrastructure.

Also, Bush is gone. We don't need to exaggerate the effects of hurricane Katrina any more.

Re:It's a token law.

[TapeCutter]

No big deal, you can make a simple pulse jet with a jam jar

Re:It's a token law.

[misexistentialist]

Good housing design costs tends to cost more money than will be saved through efficiency. And while living in a tropical paradise by a river is nice, there is only enough room and work for very few.

Re:It's a token law.

[Zordak]

This is something that is somewhat contested still.

Well, maybe in the sense that there are still people who disagree with it, but not in the sense that it's unclear what the Court has held. Most people disagreed with Kelo too, but the current state of the law is that the state pretty much owns all your property. Is that a bad ruling? Absolutely. But it's not unclear.

I'm not saying that I agree with Justice Holmes. There are lots of Supreme Court opinions I disagree with, and I think the worst of them are the "make it up as we go" decisions. I'm just saying that this is the state of the law. Treaties can do things that statutes can't. It's not because treaties trump the Constitution, but rather because under the current state of the law, the Constitution does not place any substantial limits on treaties. Sure, I'd love to see a narrowly-construed Commerce Clause too. That would eliminate about 90% of the federal government. I'd love to see those restrictions apply to treaties. A narrowly-construed Commerce Clause and treaties limited by the 10th Amendment would mean absolutely no Kyoto, which would be great. But we're just not there now.

Re:It's a token law.

[drago177]

Human life doesn't have equivalent value everywhere.

Is that sarcasm? Are you serious? I thought it was self-evident that all men were created equal.

Re:It's a token law.

[sumdumass]

Well, maybe in the sense that there are still people who disagree with it, but not in the sense that it's unclear what the Court has held. Most people disagreed with Kelo too, but the current state of the law is that the state pretty much owns all your property. Is that a bad ruling? Absolutely. But it's not unclear.

True, the court has said X and other courts will use X. However, because people contest that premise, it doesn't mean that Y won't supplant X or that a successful arguments in the future will not supplant X.

I think the Migratory Bird Treaty Act opinion was agenda driven and somewhat unique to the specifics of Migratory birds. It can also be said that the opinion only allowed the Federal government assume obligations and rights not granted to them and reserved for the states and people when it can be demonstrated that a need exists. However obvious that sounds, it should limit the application of the ruling from applying to just anything.

I'm not saying that I agree with Justice Holmes.

I would hope that I never implied you did. You were bringing about information relevent to the topic of conversation and I hope I didn't attach that to your personal beliefs or anything. I tend to post as if anyone is reading it instead of directly communicating with a specific person and it could come out wrong.

There are lots of Supreme Court opinions I disagree with, and I think the worst of them are the "make it up as we go" decisions. I'm just saying that this is the state of the law

This is understandable. There are also a few others I don't agree with.

Treaties can do things that statutes can't. It's not because treaties trump the Constitution, but rather because under the current state of the law, the Constitution does not place any substantial limits on treaties. Sure, I'd love to see a narrowly-construed Commerce Clause too. That would eliminate about 90% of the federal government. I'd love to see those restrictions apply to treaties. A narrowly-construed Commerce Clause and treaties limited by the 10th Amendment would mean absolutely no Kyoto, which would be great. But we're just not there now.

I think your missing the point I was wanting to convey. Currently, the interpretation is that the constitution doesn't place substantial limits on the treaties because it isn't being interpreted correctly. It's like the commerce clause except that we don't have a slew of previous cases to prove it.

When I posted the treaties made, shall be made, under the authority of the United states, that statement was made that way for a reason. First it recognized that we were forming a new nation out of an existing one and the constitution was replacing the articles of confederation. It acknowledges that we had treaties already made and were obligated to which weren't under the same rules as the constitution. It then goes on to say which shall be made, under the authority of the United State which implies that all treaties are limited to the authority of the constitution which is the only thing at the time giving the United state authority (note: the articles of confederation would have been removed with the ratification of the constitution so it's authority would disappear).

In short, a treaty should be able to override a state law but only to the extent as the government has authority to do so. I highly suspect that if the Holmes opinion would have been over something like the press writing critical articles about England and how those articles were encouraging rebellion in Canada so the treaty outlawed it, it would have most definitely been completely different outcome. I expect that either the Holmes opinion will be limited or negated shall treaties start being the vehicle to get around the constitution.

Re:It's a token law.

[mesterha]

The problem is increased efficiency demands increased complexity. This complexity implies that that the cost increase of a more efficient system is actually exponential, not linear, such that, going from 10% efficient to 50% efficient is pretty cheap, but it gets way more expensive after that.

Let me save you a summer. Your model utterly fails when you apply it to integrated circuits.

While the GP tries to defend his model for integrated circuits, I don't think it's necessary. There are different types of efficiencies, and his model only needs to deal with energy. People need a certain amount of energy for our current standard of living, and thermodynamic limits make it impossible to continually increase energy efficiency. In fact, the problem is not that the cost grows exponentially, but that one can't do better than 100% efficiency.

While computers might get exponentially faster (even faster per watt) it still takes a certain amount of energy to grow and move food around the planet, to heat and cool our homes, to light our businesses and houses...

Of course, our economy is not only based on energy but on products built with that energy that use various raw materials and information. Fortunately, there are fewer thermodynamic limits on the performance of these types of products. Many of these products can cheaply increase in complexity because the thermodynamic constraints on computation are very low. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_computing

This equivocation of energy efficiency and general efficiency is often a source of confusion. Most people would agree that a human is much more complex than an electric motor; however, a good electric motor is more efficient in terms of energy. Complexity is better modeled by information theory independent of energy.

An interesting question on energy is can we provide the energy needed for people to live while still have a small amount left over to increase the standard of living in terms of technology. It seems the primary constraint is on the population and the energy that they need to live comfortably. This energy requirement can definitely be shrunk based on all the inefficiencies in the developed world. Unfortunately, a large percentage of the world is in the opposite situation. They need more energy to get a reasonable standard of living. However, as long a the population does stabilize at a point where we can sustainably supply enough energy to live, we should have enough left over to continue our economic growth in terms of information based products.

Re:It's a token law.

[icebrain]

In other countries, certain things (eg healthcare) are regarded as a right everyone has (akin to freedom of speech in the US - which conveniently costs nothing),

There's a fundamental difference between those two examples.

Negative rights, like freedom of speech and freedom from unreasonable search, are protections of things you already have. They are things which are truly free--as you point out, it costs me nothing to speak my mind--and you can exercise them at any time, even if nobody else is around.

Positive rights, like the "right to health care" or the "right to an education" are different. They are not free. In order for you to have your "right" to health care, someobdy else must provide it for you--and claiming it's a "right" implies that you can force them to provide that service to you. Also remember that someone else has to pay for that health care; does that give you the right to take that money from them by force, even if they don't want to pay?

Re:It's a token law.

[bzipitidoo]

increased efficiency demands increased complexity

No. You can't make a blanket statement like that. And, that's not even true in most cases. It is unfortunate that that correlation is so firmly embedded in the American mindset. The minute you say "efficiency", they all start thinking miserably miserly small and cramped cars and spaces, huge economy wrecking expenses, and painful sacrifices. It's such a narrow view of efficiency. It's really more of a knee jerk rejection of change. People don't want to change, and will only consider change when the pain of not changing starts looking worse than the status quo. And yet, we have had a lot of change slipped in.

Some uses of technology have been really boneheaded. We used to build houses to make them as naturally temperate as possible-- the shotgun homes of the south, the southward facing doors and windows of northern homes. Now builders largely ignore all such considerations, knowing that mistakes on those aspects can be covered over by putting in larger A/C systems. It's cheaper for the builder, but it sure isn't cheaper for the home owner. Another bad one is the displacement of the clothesline by the dryer. It's sick the way clotheslines are now viewed as negative status symbols, lowering property values of the entire neighborhood.

Some efficiency improvements increase costs and keep complexity about the same, such as replacing steel in automobiles with lighter metals. Some are more costly but simpler such as replacing a traffic light and intersection with an interchange. Some have bigger up front costs but lower maintenance and operating costs, resulting in lower overall costs and better efficiency. Those are the ones that manufacturers typically fight tooth and nail. They don't hesitate to trot out variations on the Broken Window Fallacy, screaming that such will cost jobs, increase costs for consumers, etc. All the usual hot buttons, and mostly wrong. The attitude is that what the customer doesn't know won't hurt anyone.

Some drastically reduce complexity and cost. The internal combustion engine is far more complicated than the electric motor, and is made even more complicated and less efficient by having to be generalized to handle a wide variety of operating conditions, and yet must still be hooked up to a transmission. If we had decent storage and refueling capabilities for electricity, it'd be no contest whatsoever between the ICE and the electric motor. But however bad the ICE is, the horse was an order of magnitude worse. Horses are much, much higher maintenance.

Re:It's a token law.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool sayings is not the same thing as wisdom. Go back to stone knives and bearskins if you think that is a higher standard of living.

Re:It's a token law.

[Anonymous Coward]

All men were created equal. What they do after creation is another matter altogether.

Re:It's a token law.

[Max Littlemore]

Design costs maybe higher when you are doing something new. Materials can be a lot cheaper. Rendered straw bales are very cheap, provide excellent inulation, are less prone to rodent and termit infestation than timber or brick constructions, and are highly resistant to fire. Surprising, but true.

Oh and I haven't actually lived in the tropics, but the point is that you look at the site for each dwelling and maximise what is available. Live in the middle of a desert? Use photovoltaic solar or even better solar thermal power generation.

Even highrise blocks can be made very efficient by running water pumps cool the building throughout the day and then use the stored heat to warm the building at night. A friend of mine just had a job retrofitting that to a 30 story building and the cost of the job was covered in energy savings in the first year. Highrise also makes for wind tunnels - why don't we use that energy more? My sister works in a 10 story building that generates more power than it consumes, recycles water and in a heat wave a couple of years ago when the temperature was around 40C for a few days, her office was a pleasant 21C with no air conditioning while my office with traditional airconditioning was stifling.

All of these things are cheap compared to other plant costs, the only thing is you really need to look at each case individually rather than have consistant off the shelf solutions, you even need to look at the relationships between you and your neighbours in a cooperative sense and the PHB in most people can't cope with that.

Re:It's a token law.

[khallow]

Is that sarcasm? Are you serious? I thought it was self-evident that all men were created equal.

I don't believe in self-evident statements. Other poster already popped that balloon even if it were true.

Moving on, I just made a simple observation. For example, take a healthy, poorly educated man from anywhere. He could be making $5k to $10k per year in the US even if he doesn't know English. In good portions of the Third World, he might make a tenth of that even if he's native and has as much of a cultural advantage as one can get. Merely being an uneducated stranger in the US makes him a more valuable person than being a native in a good portion of the world. And to be blunt, I think the economics drives the morality.

Further, while a great deal of effort has gone into blaming the Developed World for the ills of humanity, it remains that most ills are the fault of the people who have them. Even global warming, which is the ultimate externality, it still remains that most people aren't affected by it and those that are can move. Nor do I see the people who are allegedly most at risk doing anything to payoff or coerce the rest of us.

I don't see why the Developed World should crimp its style because some screwed up country has a massive die-off. Should I sacrifice my lifestyle so Zimbabwe has a massive die-off in 2018 instead of 2015? Besides if there is an even more massive refugee problem coming up, a healthy economy globally will help a lot.

Re:It's a token law.

[khallow]

An interesting question on energy is can we provide the energy needed for people to live while still have a small amount left over to increase the standard of living in terms of technology.

Why do you think we can't? The current state is that we are successfully expending tremendous resources to improve the standard of living. If we can do that, we should be able to implement this far more timid approach.

Also, energy is very cheap. I don't understand the rational for such extreme rationing of it. It's unnecessary and actually hurts our more important efforts (like improving the standard of living or advancing the state of human knowledge).

Re:It's a token law.

[mesterha]

An interesting question on energy is can we provide the energy needed for people to live while still have a small amount left over to increase the standard of living in terms of technology.

Why do you think we can't? The current state is that we are successfully expending tremendous resources to improve the standard of living. If we can do that, we should be able to implement this far more timid approach.

I think we can, but I haven't done any research on the numbers involved. I would guess the US could eventually bring its energy consumption down to 25% of the current level and still maintain a good standard of living. With the current population, this might be sustainable using various forms of solar energy (biofuels, wind, photovoltaic...) Of course, while possible it's not politically realistic.

Also, energy is very cheap. I don't understand the rational for such extreme rationing of it. It's unnecessary and actually hurts our more important efforts (like improving the standard of living or advancing the state of human knowledge).

The current use of energy is not sustainable and involves various negative externalities. This has many dangers. Our society can become dependent on that cheap energy and when it runs out our society could collapse. We can devastate our environment to the point that it excessively damages our standard of living and/or damages the economy.

Re:It's a token law.

[khallow]

The current use of energy is not sustainable and involves various negative externalities. This has many dangers. Our society can become dependent on that cheap energy and when it runs out our society could collapse. We can devastate our environment to the point that it excessively damages our standard of living and/or damages the economy.

I think our views on what is sustainable energy consumption are vastly different. My view is while current energy use is not completely sustainable, it wouldn't be that hard to make it completely sustainable at current levels of consumption. As far as cheap energy goes, we have plenty of sources of energy that are increasingly growing cheaper. Solar looks like it'll be considerably cheaper than coal in twenty years. The cost of solar per watt of generating capability fits well an exponential decay curve. We have nuclear, wind, and some other sustainable power sources. I really don't see unsustainability as a problem. And environmental damage is overstated.

Re:America is full of itself

[malchus842]

When the rules apply equally to all countries, no problem. When China and India get a pass and the US would get economy destroying limits, well, then it's a major problem.

I have news for you - the US is a drop in the bucket compared to China and India.

Kyoto is broken.

Whats wrong with that?

[spyder-implee]

I'm generally against IP, but if this helps make green power technology more profitable it's really not that bad is it?

Re:Whats wrong with that?

[SanguineV]

Imagine your (parents') house has a small electrical fire threatening to burn it down. The fire brigade will licence you a fire extinguisher for twice the cost of the house. Your options are:
- a house with a small scorched area and be bankrupted
- live in a burnt out foundation with your savings

Sounds like a great solution to making "green power technology more profitable it's really not that bad is it?"

(Yes I am ignoring insurance etc.)

Re:Whats wrong with that?

[broken_chaos]

One problem is this means either corporations and individuals will be forced to pay licensing fees of some sort if any of the technology covered by various other corporations IP is needed to meet any form of emissions or "green" requirements. It's either that, or there will be a limit on how much "green" can be required, and it would be stopped at the point where there is any licensing fee for the technology.

It means more profit for companies at the cost of the environment or the individual. So it's pretty much par for the course, but that's not a good thing.

Re:Whats wrong with that?

[pimpimpim]

IP most likely has nothing to do with it. It reminds me of a few years ago when someone (not really clear to me who thought it out) tried to push software patents in the EU via the agricultural council. That was AFTER it had already been voted away before.

Re:Whats wrong with that?

[PhxBlue]

Your scenario sounds exactly like the current state of our healthcare industry ... which, surprise surprise, relies heavily on patents for its business models.

Re:America is full of itself

[ppanon]

So if one of the biggest US polluters were to lobby Congress that a proposed pollution control bill would harm them the most, you think that would be an appropriate justification for killing the bill?

Re:America is full of itself

[Anonymous Coward]

>America is many things. Being sadomasicistic isn't one of them.

Saying that signing the Kyoto is sadomasochistic is ridiculous. That would be like calling a 500 pound man who puts himself on a diet sadomasochistic.

Re:America is full of itself

[znerk]

... a Map with all countries green except for the US.

... unless you're not color-blind, and notice the handful that are gray (indicating not only that they have not ratified it, but haven't even signed it). The U.S.A. seems to be the only country that has signed but not ratified it. I won't even go into how well most of the other "large nations" are doing at actually meeting the protocol.

In other words, thanks for the inflammatory comments, now get back under your bridge.

Re:America is full of itself

[Anonymous Coward]

Citation needed.

Re:America is full of itself

[Rakishi]

The US is the single largest carbon emissions producer in the world by a decent margin. China is second and India is far away in fifth place.

On a per capita basis it's even worse as the US produces five times as much co2 as China and sixteen times as much as India.

So no, it's only a drop in the bucket if your intelligence makes our previous president look like nobel prize winner.

Re:America is full of itself

[siddesu]

"Punished"? And I thought it was about "leadership" and "taking responsibility".

Sad?

[anonieuweling]

This shows how the USA are 'into' it, even if the CO2 myth would be real: They'd rather suffer from a bad climate *AND* *WORSE* than give up their IP. How sad is that?

Re:Sad?

[demachina]

"... than give up their IP."

The question is if the U.S. will even have any green IP to protect. After the last eight years of denying there was a problem, and a proreligion, anti science and technology administration I'm wondering if the U.S. is so far behind Japan, Germany, China etc. that the U.S. is going to have to license technology from them instead of the other way around. The Japanese seem substantially ahead in hybrid vehicles. Not sure who is leading in battery technology but I'm skeptical its the U.S. There are some interesting things happening in the U.S. in low cost solar panels but Germany and China seem to have much higher existing production capacity.

Anyone have anecdotes for green technology IP that originates in the U.S.?

Re:Sad?

[TheSync]

nyone have anecdotes for green technology IP that originates in the U.S.?

Efficient polymer solar cells UCLA

Angle-independent anti-reflective coating for solar cells RPI

Printed solar cells Semiprius

Concentrating photovoltaic technology Greenvolts

Shallow drilling geothermal GroundSource Geothermal

Re:America is full of itself

[tpgp]

Because we would be the nation most punished by the Kyoto. Duh!

You're also one of the nations most likely to be punished by climate change (although losing Florida is probably more reward than punishment).

A win for big Oil?

[MrKaos]

Considering that the oil companies own a lot of energy technology patents it's quite possible that this is a bad thing because they still control when that technology will be released and use those patents offensively for any one re-inventing a technology that is actually effective.

Unintentionally, this bill could be consolidating the oil companies control of the energy market because viable technologies are not being allowed to make it to market.

Re:A win for big Oil?

[JackieBrown]

Why do you think it is unintentional? You don't want to imagine the democrats in bed with big evil corporations?

Re:A win for big Oil?

[drago177]

I'm probably lost here, but I'm confused why it is bad. I mean, I see Germany is one of the few countries that has met its Kyoto obligations. And I believe they did that at least partially by
1. force power companies to buy solar power from anyone for a great price
2. German companies started seeing huge demand for solar, and could be sure it would continue to increase, so they increased investments and manufacturing
3. profit!
4. German semiconductor stock market gets a boost from foreign investments, and does well.
5. more profit
6. other countries buying german solar products and technology
7. even more profit!

Joking aside, it was business innovation that started investing only when they knew they could profit from it, which resulted in a net profit for the companies, and Germany met their goals.

So what's wrong with protecting the patent rights of companies that innovate, even if a lot of it will go to big oil companies?

Re:A win for big Oil?

[MrKaos]

Why do you think it is unintentional? You don't want to imagine the democrats in bed with big evil corporations?

Not at all, it's a very good point you have made. It's hard to believe anything that pertains to maintaining the power structures of the world is not deliberate anymore.

Re:A win for big Oil?

[MrKaos]

I'm probably lost here, but I'm confused why it is bad.

Because the patents that are owned by the oil companies can be used the same way software patents are being used, offensively, to block new innovations (or even old innovations) getting to market.

Re:A win for big Oil?

[KingAlanI]

Big Oil would probably be quite glad to be Big Solar or Big Wind if the money keeps on flowing...

We talk about the RIAA not adjusting for the fact that their business model is dying, well, Big Oil *is* adjusting, kinda

Re:A win for big Oil?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm probably lost here, but I'm confused why it is bad.

Because the patents that are owned by the oil companies can be used the same way software patents are being used, offensively, to block new innovations (or even old innovations) getting to market.

Of course, patents are granted by the Federal Government, and ultimately can be withdrawn or invalidated by the same. Now as a whole the USA's body politic doesn't care when software patents are abused to stop innovations from getting to the market. However, that may not be the case if the Oil Companies employ the same tactics for environmentally friendlier engery technologies. IMHO, it very likely would set-off a PR nightmare for any Oil company that tried (e.g. many media outlets would jump on a story about "evil" oil executives using the law to suppress green technologies), one that if mishandled or ignored could cause the patents in question to be withdrawn (either by the Patent Office, or even by an act of Congress).

Green, not green

[T Murphy]

Congress is all in favor of green tech, just not the same green as the environmentalists mean.

Shortcut link to the provision

[donnydonny]

Here's the actual legislative language of the IP provision: http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h2410/text?version=rh&nid=t0:rh:985

Re:America is full of itself

[Anonymous Coward]

The US is a drop in the bucket compared to China and India?

>Countries by C02 emissions (% of worldwide emissions)
1. United States (22.2%)
2. China (18.4%)
4. India (4.9%)

The US creates almost as much C02 emissions as both the countries you mentioned combined. Keep in mind that the we're talking about the emissions of 300 million people versus 2.5 billion people.

Then fuck u.s. position

[unity100]

a new world consensus gets established, u.s. finds itself isolated. then your congressmen can fuck themselves in their little isolated corner. world is not going to listen to shit from rotten as u.s. congressmen while the world is turning upside down.

Re:America is full of itself

[Anonymous Coward]

Add to that the US' decades of unmitigated pollution vs India/China's recent trend to development.

Re:America is full of itself

[Scamwise]

Someone obviously knows absolutely nothing about the CO2 emmissions of various countries.

Fair warning: this post will make you think.

[znerk]

I'm generally against IP, but if this helps make green power technology more profitable it's really not that bad is it?

I'm generally against giving up my personal freedoms, but if getting implanted with a chip that allows me to be tracked accurately to within 3 meters will help stop the terrorists it's really not that bad, is it?

Uhm. Yeah. It is. Pork in your bill is always bad, and the IP laws are screwy enough, kthxbai.

Oh, and another thing... start substituting the word "expensive" when you read "profitable". It makes no sense to me to vote ourselves an automatic 400% increase in price for "green power" technologies, especially if we're excluding any ideas on making "green power" more affordable (read "more available") simply because they come from another country, and/or might step on copyright/patent toes in this country. (Do you really think China gives a rat's ass about violating American laws? Ask NEC about the counterfeit factories (yes, plural; 18, to be precise) they found because someone RMA'd a DVD player that NEC didn't even make. The workers thought it was a legitimate operation, they had NEC's name and logo all over the building and the uniforms, not just the products. Here, have a link.)

(Off-topic rant) My take on IP: 7 years (with a one-time extension of the same duration) was reasonable; 150 years is not. Let the mouse go already, I want my public domain works.

--
Please read and think before you respond or moderate. Thank you.

Re:Fair warning: this post will make you think.

[spyder-implee]

Agreed, but you need to have some incentive for investors to put money into the research of these technologies. It wont happen if they know they can't earn a decent return on their investment.

Re:Fair warning: this post will make you think.

[MaskedSlacker]

It doesn't happen anyway. You're a fool if you think long-term IP monopolies foster innovation. What they foster is a legal industry that sucks millions out of actual productive uses of capital, thus lowering the overall standard of living.

America never would have become an industrial nation if we hadn't simply ignored British patent laws, exactly the way China is ignoring ours.

Re:America is full of itself

[icegreentea]

Yeah. I'm from Canada, and while I'm proud of my country, I wince everytime I read some halfassed newspaper editorial talking about how America has to act and ratify the Kyoto, like ever country ESPECIALLY CANADA *chest thump* has done, while ignoring that we've failed epicly. Suppose to have a 6% reduction, instead we have a 20% increase. Whoops. So now we're moving the goal posts.

Yeah, you guys have to get your act together (and we do too). But frankly, Kyoto at this point is a joke, even ignoring China and the US not signing. Shit sucks.

Re:America is full of itself

[Anonymous Coward]

So no, it's only a drop in the bucket if your intelligence makes our previous president look like nobel prize winner.

Lucky you, it's not too late!

Talk about "fiddling while Rome burns"...

[Anonymous Coward]

They're supposed to be dealing with one of the *the* great challenges of our time and instead they're wasting time worrying about a pissy little mote of a side-issue like IP??? Are they completely in-freaking-sane???

Re:Talk about "fiddling while Rome burns"...

[MaskedSlacker]

Yes.

Re:America is full of itself

[Anonymous Coward]

Try not to confuse Florida with Floridians. Ideally, the water would come up, destroy Disneyland, then recede.

Re:America is full of itself

[Rocketship Underpant]

Even environmentalists who attended the conference hated the Kyoto treaty. It was based entirely on political concerns and wrangling rather than actual environmental data or facts.

Democrats are just looking out for the envionment

[Anonymous Coward]

...as long as their big corporate donors are protected.

And then somebody will tell you the Democrats really are different than the Republicans. It would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic.

Re:America is full of itself

[Anonymous Coward]

Are people really this dumb? China's emissions have been rapidly increasing because of all of the manufacturing jobs being sent there, primarily from the US. If the US had to reduce emissions, that trend would increase rapidly. It's already usually cheaper to produce in China, but that would make it a LOT cheaper. And, since China generally has less pollution controls than the US, over all pollution would probably increase.

Kyoto is a stupid idea; even more so if it's not applied globally.

Re:America is full of itself

[Rakishi]

In other words you expect China to produce a fifth the emissions per person the US does and you think that's FAIR? Or are you arguing that the US should drop it's own emissions 80% to be on par with China?

Re:America is full of itself

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Why is "per person" the standard? If using birth control reduces greenhouse gas emissions, why should a country be penalized for doing so?

Re:America is full of itself

[kdemetter]

Citation needed.

Here you go :

Kyoto is broken.

Re:America is full of itself

[Anonymous Coward]

here is the stats from 5 YEARS AGO
Over two years ago, China over took America. India is number 3 and will pass America in about 2 years. In terms of PER CAPITA, we are also down the list. In 2004, was our highest per capitia, and we were at #10. Since that time, we have gone down slightly, while many other nations have moved up and have surpasses us.
  And comparing China and india to America in terms of PER CAPITA is a joke. It is TOTAL pollution that matters.

The other issue that you forgot is that CURRENTLY China emits more TOTAL POLLUTION (ignoring CO2), then America has COMMULATIVELY. We NEVER allowed it to get anywhere near as bad as China has. Likewise, even india and Russia are major polluters in the world.

To balance this on the west's back is just plain wrong. The west MUST deal with this by encouraging all nations to think long term. To do this, we must impliment a tax on ALL CONSUMED GOODS BASED on CO2 emission and pollution that went into it. IOW, if something is consumed in Ill, and it was made in texas, than the amount of CO2 from its power plant, the trucks to transport it, and even the ingrediants that went into it should figure into it. OR, we can just say that Texas had ex amount of CO2 from there, and then apply a tax on it. Something from france which uses heavy nukes would have less tax due to power. OTH, China has LARGEST TOTAL AMOUNT OF CO2 and by far, the largest amount of pollution and should be hit the highest tax. This will encourage ALL major polluting countries to re-think how they are handling things. Hopefully EU will re-think kyoto which is proving to be WORTHLESS.

Re:America is full of itself

[kdemetter]

Well, CO2 emissions perhaps , but take a look at coal production :

http://www.nationmaster.com/red/pie/ene_coa_pro-energy-coal-production

China 44.5%
United States 10.7%

Re:America is full of itself

[MaskedSlacker]

No, but I can think of more than a few congressional cretins who would.

Re:America is full of itself

[MaskedSlacker]

Why is BadAnalogyGuy posting as an AC?

Re:America is full of itself

[MaskedSlacker]

No he's arguing that the only thing that matters is total global emissions, and that under the current Kyoto rules, any decrease in the US would be more than offset by the increases from larger outsourcing to China.

Maybe you're confused, but reducing carbon emissions isn't about being FAIR so that everyone gets to do just as much environmental damage as everyone else, it's about reducing carbon emissions.

Re:America is full of itself

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words you expect China to produce a fifth the emissions per person the US does and you think that's FAIR? Or are you arguing that the US should drop it's own emissions 80% to be on par with China?

No, I'm saying that the overall amount of pollution will remain the same or increase. I'm no environmentalist, but it would seem to me that the number of people polluting doesn't really matter.

Or are you trying to tell me that releasing a million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere in China is somehow better for the environment than releasing the same million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere in the US? How does that work?

Interesting

[Mathinker]

> The purpose of a liberal democracy (every democracy based on either the US or
> British model) is to protect the rights of citizens from transgression by the government.

When I read that, I just couldn't help thinking of a famous Arthur C. Clarke quote: "It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value".

Given the current trends in Britain and the US, it similarly remains to be shown that liberal democracy has any chance of attaining what you state are its goals.

Re:Democrats are just looking out for the envionme

[MaskedSlacker]

But...But...KEY ISSUES!!!....like....uh....Terry Schiavo!

Re:America is full of itself

[Sulphur]

Nuclear winter comes after nuclear fall.

Re:America is full of itself

[YouDoNotWantToKnow]

Yeah, ditching your SUV is like the most masochistic thing possible. Not.

Re:America is full of itself

[Anonymous Coward]

nonsense! The per capita emissions rail up more carbon than India's many street-dwellers could even dream of.

The population of India and China do pose a worrisome picture. But if it's the short-term result of the massive emission rate we're looking at, the US will have to take some action, and FAST.

Re:America is full of itself

[toQDuj]

True, but a bad start is better than not participating at all. At least it shows us (non-US) where you (US) stand. The annoying bit was that the treaty was heavily adapted that even America would join, then passed, and then mr new president decides it is not good for the industry (although Denmark has a thriving industry, thankyouverymuch). Really quite frustrating.

B.

Re:America is full of itself

[TheSync]

ESPECIALLY CANADA *chest thump* has done, while ignoring that we've failed epicly. Suppose to have a 6% reduction, instead we have a 20% increase. Whoops. So now we're moving the goal posts.

And it is really sad because Canada has endless hydropower and invented the CANDU nuclear fission system!

Re:America is full of itself

[BlueStrat]

Nuclear winter comes after nuclear fall.

Which is immediately preceded by nuclear summer, wherein you can take your nuclear family to the nuclear seashore to gather nuclear seashells.

Tra-la. Tra-la.

Tra-la.

Strat

Re:America is full of itself

[Rakishi]

Isn't the "it'll destroy America's economy" an argument based around fairness? Or does fairness only matter if it's applied to the US but not to other nations?

As that argument indicates a system that is absurdly unfair will of course simply not be accepted and likely it'd be considered little more than an attempt by developed nations to establish a monopoly on industries. In the end no one will actually change anything and pollution will continue to be a problem. Any economic impact would need to be spread evenly based on future economic trends not based on current economic conditions. China, for example, with its massively growing economy would be economically crippled if it couldn't increase it's emissions to even close to the existing US levels (technically even that would be harsh for them in terms of future growth).

One random logical solution is to find an acceptable future level of emissions based around something other than arbitrary political divisions. In other words find some desired world level of emissions that is X/person and establish some requires future changes for these levels. So, for example, China may be allowed to triple it's emissions (but only at some slow rate that is balanced out in other areas) while the US would have to drop them 20%. Everyone's economy gets fucked but no one is forced to spend quality time with a sear's tower sized dildo.

Right is right

[Anonymous Coward]

If I have an idea that can save the planet, why should I share it with the rest of the world just because they also want to save the planet? You're not looking at Mr Stupid here you know.

If you want to save the planet using my idea, you've got to cough up the readies.

Re:America is full of itself

[Hellsbells]

The US also has an incredible amount to lose by not signing the Kyoto protocol.

If we can't get China and India to limit their CO2 emissions and their emissions rise to western nation per capita levels, then the US is screwed.

Re:America is full of itself

[MaskedSlacker]

Isn't the "it'll destroy America's economy" an argument based around fairness? Or does fairness only matter if it's applied to the US but not to other nations?

First, I'm not saying that 'it'll destroy America's economy.' I wasn't even saying that it would increase carbon emissions overall. I was just saying that was the GP's point--though I DO think it is an interesting point, but in the absence of meaningful data I cannot draw any conclusions about it.

The American public's ability to think that bad things happening any where else don't count is well documented, and there is no need to recount it. To any politician, this is something they have to consider if they want to keep their jobs. Is this despicable? Certainly, but it's still true. All that a good chunk of the American public sees are a bunch of foreigners telling them to have less stuff for no reason (their perception is wrong, but it is still their perception). Of course they are opposed to that. Who wouldn't be? One of the things that pisses me off about global warming (and all the other political shibboleths) is the tendency of each side to think the other is a bunch of Snidely Whiplashes, evil just because. People never think they are evil, even Hitler believed that he was the savior of the German people and that what he was doing was right.

As that argument indicates a system that is absurdly unfair will of course simply not be accepted and likely it'd be considered little more than an attempt by developed nations to establish a monopoly on industries. In the end no one will actually change anything and pollution will continue to be a problem. Any economic impact would need to be spread evenly based on future economic trends not based on current economic conditions. China, for example, with its massively growing economy would be economically crippled if it couldn't increase it's emissions to even close to the existing US levels (technically even that would be harsh for them in terms of future growth).

I assume you're referring to total levels, not per capita (otherwise your point makes no sense).

One random logical solution is to find an acceptable future level of emissions based around something other than arbitrary political divisions. In other words find some desired world level of emissions that is X/person and establish some requires future changes for these levels. So, for example, China may be allowed to triple it's emissions (but only at some slow rate that is balanced out in other areas) while the US would have to drop them 20%. Everyone's economy gets fucked but no one is forced to spend quality time with a sear's tower sized dildo.

The reality is that any meaningful system has to be global, not national. The 'make country X cut their emissions this much' is stupid. It is easy to understand, but stupid, because it assumes that change happens in a vacuum (protip: it doesn't).

Re:America is full of itself

[mjwx]

America is many things. Being sadomasicistic isn't one of them.

Iraq would disagree. The US has pretty much tied up, whipped and screwed them pretty bad.

Re:America is full of itself

[init100]

The other issue that you forgot is that CURRENTLY China emits more TOTAL POLLUTION (ignoring CO2), then America has COMMULATIVELY.

But who cares? Other pollution is mostly a local problem. Soot, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and ground-level ozone do not spread significantly from the point of emission. If they want to destroy their own environment and population health, that's not my problem. I do take issue with global pollutants though, such as freons and greenhouse gasses.

If a line veto changes the meaning

[Anonymous Coward]

then the entire bill will fail, since you have to agree with the redacted bill after redactions.

If the bill is going to get mugged that badly by the executive, the bill is going to get mugged badly no matter HOW you code up the rules.

This is a Monsanto rule.

[Hurricane78]

And it was totally obvious that this happened. Monsanto hat huge revolving doors with the government.
Seriously. Microsoft, the oil industry, the pharma industry, the media industry... in terms of the chance to fuck us all up, they are all complete jokes, compared to that company.

There was a very well-made reportage on the French-German TV channel arte, looking behind it in a serious manner:
English: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_OJcPKEYDE
German: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7781121501979693623
French: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8723985684378254371
Also available via BitTorrent.

Re:America is full of itself

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with the "It's not about fair" approach that you're suggesting is that those who are asked to make the largest sacrifices can (and did) simply say "No". Now where does that leave us? The "It's not about fair" approach suddenly doesn't look so good when people can opt-out.

Re:America is full of itself

[Kirth]

> Saying that signing the Kyoto is sadomasochistic is ridiculous. That would be like calling
> a 500 pound man who puts himself on a diet sadomasochistic.

Right. And it's not like we europeans have a lower standard of living, _despite_ of consuming only half the amount of oil, and producing half the amount of co2 per capita.

Re:America is full of itself

[daem0n1x]

Because we would be the nation most punished by the Kyoto. Duh!

America is many things. Being sadomasicistic isn't one of them.

Yes, because we all know you're not being punished by global warming, not a little bit.

You're in the Titanic too, dude. Just travelling 1st class.

Re:America is full of itself

[oldhack]

Hey, buddy, go do yo preaching on your own patch of grass. Get the heck off ma lawn!

Re:America is full of itself

[MightyDrunken]

Maybe you're confused, but reducing carbon emissions isn't about being FAIR so that everyone gets to do just as much environmental damage as everyone else, it's about reducing carbon emissions.

Sorry, but reducing carbon emissions globally has to be fair. Would you accept being left at the bottom rung of the ladder while others are still living the high life?

Considering China and India are so populous we have to work with them otherwise trying to reduce CO2 emissions would be pointless. The only way through is not to bother or radically alter how we generate energy in our economies. Until we have achieved that, the west has to face up to the truth that we are greedy bastards and are able to reduce our usage far more that the poor of this world.

Re:America is full of itself

[LordLucless]

Huh? Kyoto wouldn't make anyone ditch their SUV. It'd make them pay extra for fuel, and send that extra money to India/China. Kyoto allows emission trading to offset emission reduction. You can pollute as much as you want, as long as you send money to the Annex A countries.

No it doesn't.

[tjstork]

Your model utterly fails when you apply it to integrated circuits.

Look at the capital costs (including R&D, the cost of a new FAB, etc, for the latest chips). Integrated circuits are more expensive than ever to get into.

Re:No it doesn't.

[khallow]

Look at the capital costs (including R&D, the cost of a new FAB, etc, for the latest chips). Integrated circuits are more expensive than ever to get into.

Why should I look at the capital costs? Per unit is the only thing I pay attention to. It also seems to be the cost you were describing in your model as well. Besides if we do start looking at capital costs, it's worth considering that for a given fixed transistor density (ie, a given complexity), that the capital costs may have shrunk. I can't say for certain, but there's a lot of existing support infrastructure out there, if you're looking to create new IC chips that aren't on the bleeding edge in terms of transistor density. For example, I gather there are companies that specialize in offering relatively cheap prototype runs for new IC designs. As I was saying, can't say for certain, but when the open market can efficiently cover significant portions of your development process, that's bound to make things cheaper and lower your overall capital costs.

Anyway, my view is that your current model doesn't cover the most significant industrial or technological changes of the past century, namely, the shrinking of electronics to atomic scales that goes under the label "Moore's Law". One result is that this allows you to embed complexity in a device in a way that couldn't be done even a few decades ago. Cars, for example, have much more complex control systems allowing for anti-lock brakes, minute adjustments in fuel/air mix to improve gas mileage or the polluting characteristics of the exhaust, and a variety of diagnostics to troubleshoot problems. The kicker is that these systems don't need to cost any more per car than the mechanical or analogue systems that they replace.

Re:No it doesn't.

[tjstork]

Why should I look at the capital costs? Per unit is the only thing I pay attention to

Because that money comes from somewhere, and, capital costs speak to competition. Look at how many players there were in the computer space a few decades ago, and how few remain today. You could make the argument that Moore's law not only dictates the number of transistors every two years, but inverted, also means the number of competitors.

One result is that this allows you to embed complexity in a device in a way that couldn't be done even a few decades ago.

Yes, but someone has to pay to design all that, pay for all the facilities to make them. That's a huge capital cost. If capital costs did not matter, as you say, why is Sun about to drop out of the SPARC business, and why do we wonder behind the scenes how long IBM will go on with POWER?

Re:No it doesn't.

[LionMage]

You could make the argument that Moore's law not only dictates the number of transistors every two years, but inverted, also means the number of competitors.

You could make that argument, but it would be very silly. Even if you could show a strong statistical correlation (though it's not clear what's being correlated -- transistor count with number of companies doing chip fabbing, I suppose), it's far from certain you could show a causal relationship.

It's also worth noting that at one point, Gordon Moore revised the time scale of his eponymous law downward from 2 years to 18 months, to reflect industry changes. The law has always been an observational one which industry players have striven to keep true with new technological innovations. Even if we assume the number of companies that fab chips has shrunk (which is far from clear to me, as there are numerous players now in countries that never had chip fabs in the early days), we can't automatically assume this is all attributable to increased capital costs and increased complexity of integrated circuits. As any industry matures, there will be consolidation -- mergers, the failure of some early players, etc.

Re:No it doesn't.

[tjstork]

s any industry matures, there will be consolidation -- mergers, the failure of some early players, etc.

Yes, that's right, and the early players tend to fail because they could not manage the complexity of the "next generation", or, they were marginal players who did not have sufficient capital to invest in the increasingly expensive next generation. Look at Motorola. The 68k was a great part for its day, but they exited the business because the capital costs of creating a competing product outweighed their potential profits. For them to keep going, they would have had to have matched the Pentium, Pentium 2, etc...all increasingly complex and more expensive designs.

Re:No it doesn't.

[khallow]

Because that money comes from somewhere, and, capital costs speak to competition. Look at how many players there were in the computer space a few decades ago, and how few remain today. You could make the argument that Moore's law not only dictates the number of transistors every two years, but inverted, also means the number of competitors.

Even if you were entirely true (and I think there's too much wrong with your lazy characterization for that to hold), so what? It still means your model is wrong since we have an example of a product increasing in complexity while no increasing in per unit cost.

Yes, but someone has to pay to design all that, pay for all the facilities to make them. That's a huge capital cost. If capital costs did not matter, as you say, why is Sun about to drop out of the SPARC business, and why do we wonder behind the scenes how long IBM will go on with POWER?

Capital costs aren't the driver behind Sun or IBM's decisions. Risk-adjusted return on investment is. If the profit were there for these companies, then they would come up with the capital costs.

Re:America is full of itself

[Anonymous Coward]

Because logging in is like writing the key to your luggage on your pants and then wearing them on your head.

Re:America is full of itself

[Idiot with a gun]

Talk is cheap.

Re:America is full of itself

[Sausage Nibblets]

Really quite frustrating.

What's frustrating to me is that of all the nations who ratified the Kyoto protocol, 3 of them have done anything about it, yet people are still harping Americans because a former president didn't sign it.

Re:America is full of itself

[toQDuj]

Yup. Costs about a lump of coal per Megabyte
http://www.ted.com/talks/jay_walker_s_library_of_human_imagination.html

Fusion is the only way

[tjstork]

Fundamentally do we live greedily, taking as much as we can and meeting our every desire? Or do we use as much as we need in a way so that humanity and the Earth will fare well in the future?

My point, ultimately, is that framing sustainability in such black and white terms is ultimately counterproductive and closes the doors to many solutions to improve life for now into the future. Like, here's an idea that black and white thinking closes off. You could drill ANWR, sell the oil, use the proceeds to buy the hundreds of nuclear power plants, retire all the coal plants, and have enough capacity switch over to electric cars.

Knowing that fission has its own resource exhaustion issues, you continue to invest in fusion and avenues of physics that can help fusion - like laser research is tremendously important [ it is very likely that some recent breakthroughs in lasers such as practical free elecron lasers] will make fusion plants actually viable. If NIF actually does get a fusion burn, we'll know that fusion is a function of better lasers and that's something very viable.

The bottom line is, wealth is a direct function of how much energy you have at your disposal. If there is a general and fundamental unit of money, it is not the gold brick but a joule. IT follows that a long term reduction in the available energy, and the goals of sustainability, mean, that long term, nuclear fusion is the ONLY answer for humanity going forward. The vision of windmills and solar panels is nice and all, but, long term, if a society wants wealth, its going to be invested in fusion.

Re:America is full of itself

[toQDuj]

The one does not exclude the other. Breaking down your comment, we see:

"What's frustrating to me is that of all the nations who ratified the Kyoto protocol, 3 of them have done anything about it"

and

"people are still harping Americans because a former president didn't sign it."

The actions of "a former president" in this case were despicable at best, widening the rift between the US and the rest of the world.

The first part of your response also describes a despicable act, although it does provide useful information for the future. Now we have a good idea who will keep themselves to their word, and who will not, in terms of environmental treaties. This can be used for further treaties to strengthen the penalties for not being true to one's word.

The situation without the treaty, poorly executed as it may be, would have been worse than what it is now.

B.

Re:America is full of itself

[smoker2]

So if you don't want to send money out of the country, emit less. It's really quite simple. You are not FORCED to trade emissions, but you should do something instead of sticking your fingers in your ears and denying others things you have come to take for granted. Per capita, the US emits the largest quantity of harmful gases in the world. I can't see how preventing 3rd world countries from reaching even lesser per capita levels helps the US. Yes the third world is dirtier at the moment, but without industry they will never have the cash to "go green". The US already has the cash, but refuses to because "they don't have to , why should we ?" Sounds like a childs argument. If you had any sense, you would develop the green technology then sell it to the third world.

No, you can't "pollute as much as you want" - that's my air you're fucking up as well as yours.

Re:America is full of itself

[Anonymous Coward]

It's have to come up pretty far for the water on the East coast to destroy Disneyland, which is in California.

Re:tell me

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right ! How could I have been so stupid all these years ?

* Stops investigating, exploring, deducing, analyzing and creating.
* Starts trolling internet message boards with badly written cliches exposing exactly how little I know about everything, but in particular sex.

Thank you, thank you, can I call you Father ?

Re:America is full of itself

[LordLucless]

So if you don't want to send money out of the country, emit less.

No, we'll just send money out of the country, and not cut our emissions. Net result: no decrease in emissions, and free money for India.

but you should do something instead of sticking your fingers in your ears and denying others things you have come to take for granted.

The theory being that doing something - anything - is better than doing nothing? Me, I'm of the opinion that you should take a rational approach that has a conceivable chance of bettering the situation rather than jumping on the first bandwagon to rumble by.

Per capita, the US emits the largest quantity of harmful gases in the world.

Except that China is set to take over the US next year, and Kyoto doesn't bind China to lower their emissions at all.

I can't see how preventing 3rd world countries from reaching even lesser per capita levels helps the US.

If you're talking about the Kyoto protocol, which is what I was discussing, I don't know what you're talking about. If you're talking about this particular bill, then no, it doesn't help the US as a whole. It helps those particular countries that have patents and can sell them at a profit.

If you had any sense, you would develop the green technology then sell it to the third world.

Which is what they're trying to do, and what this bill is attempting to protect. It's a pre-emptive measure to prevent companies with "green technology" having their patents "nationalized" by the world at large.

No, you can't "pollute as much as you want" - that's my air you're fucking up as well as yours.

Well, Kyoto's not going to stop me. You better find a better protocol, because that one's not going to accomplish squat. And if you look at the signatories current emission trends, you'll see that.

Re:America is full of itself

[Martin Blank]

It was signed by the Clinton administration, but never submitted to the Senate for ratification, because the Senate had already passed a resolution overwhelmingly against it. The Clinton administration didn't want the embarrassment of signing it and then having it shot down in flames by the Senate.

Re:America is full of itself

[Attila Dimedici]

How many of those countries are actually fulfilling their obligations under Kyoto? Based on the last I heard, none of the countries that signed the protocol that the protocol actually called for any action from have come anywhere close to fulfilling their obligations under the treaty.

Re:America is full of itself

[T Murphy]

Kyoto is not intended to solve global warming. It is meant to solve poverty. By putting pressure on developed nations, jobs will get exported to developing countries that have unused carbon credits or emissions allowances, thereby spreading the wealth. It is not broken.

Name Change ?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."

  -- Benito Mussolini

The US should change its name to The Fascist States of America

Re:America is full of itself

[He who knows]

I'm sorry im from the UK and i know we have not reduced our emissions and are going to fail the Kyoto protocol badly and the politicians don't care.

Re:America is full of itself

[He who knows]

true but signing it and knowing you will ignore it is worse.

Re:America is full of itself

[Martin Blank]

Actually, the chart in the article shows that the UK decreased emissions by 14% from 1990 to 2004 excluding land use and forestry, and by 58% when those are included. This makes me wonder who is correct, the chart or the politicians, many of whom seem to be local councils clamoring for more power to reduce emissions.

Re:Democrats are just looking out for the envionme

[cdrguru]

Since in the 1970's I have been hearing about how both abortion and letting people "die with dignity" is just pushing things closer and closer to euthanaisa. Sometimes of the unwilling.

The problem is the whole "value of life" question. Quality of life is a measure of this as well. The idea is that if there isn't a real quality of life, then it no longer needs to be lived. Similarly, if your life isn't valuable, then maybe it would be better in someone else's hands. Of course this is all related to the concept of "useless mouths", where people without much value or quality of life are consuming resources that could be better utilized.

Obviously, Terry Schiavo didn't have much quality of life. There seemed to be little argument that she wasn't going to recover. So, obviously she would be better off dead. Certainly her husband and his new wife-to-be couldn't really move on with their lives without taking care of this little problem. So it seems perfectly justified to kill her so everone else could move on.

Except, the more we do this publicly with lots of attention the closer and closer we get to real precedents for the question of what to do with Grandpa? See, Grandpa doesn't seem to have much quality of life anymore and it is really inconvenient to have to consider Grandpa when we would rather be doing something else. And between feeding him and his medications there is a lot of money being spent there that would be better spent on other things. So why can't we just carefully dispose of Grandpa? After all, there isn't much quality of life left, especially since Grandma died.

The justifications just get easier and easier with each and every case. I've seen things progress quite a bit from the 1970's and the trend is disturbing. Clearly the idea of "partial birth abortion" wasn't even throught of in 1970 and the difference between that and just plain infanticide would have been clearly zero. So really, how far are we from Grandpa being more trouble than he's worth?

Terry Schiavo was absolutely not just some meaningless person that needed to be killed off. She was a symbol that most people in the US utterly failed to recognize.

Re:Democrats are just looking out for the envionme

[Anonymous Coward]

People like you are the reason politics are so fucked in this country.

Sorry, but you have not been told the truth

[joebob2000]

We did not go to a fiat system to stabilize the money supply, we went to this system because it benefits banks, financiers, and spendthrift governments. Sure, if correctly managed, fiat money could be destroyed as easily as created, but that has never been the case. Just look around. Do you see a stable money supply?

Banks benefit because, under our system, all money is created by debt so money and debt are fungible. Using fractional reserve banking, banks can lend over 9 dollars for every 1 that is deposited. In other words, they collect interest on money that they created at the time they loaned the money. You cannot do this because you do not have a banking charter.

Financiers benefit because most of this money enters the financial markets where it can be traded around for commissions and to enter into "undertakings of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is".

Spendthrift government benefit because instead of having to print money visibly through the treasury, they can sell treasury bonds into accounts at the Fed to create the money. Politically, this does not look like inflation to the uneducated public, who is happy to take all the freebies.

Throughout history, the favored way to tax has been inflation because it is easier to accomplish, harder to detect, and because there is a delay between when the inflation is perpetrated and when it shows up in higher prices. In the end, however, all such schemes meet their doom due to exponential growth meeting human timescales. In our case, we made it just shy of 100 years before the wheels came off.

Love the passive voice

[snowwrestler]

I think your use of the passive voice is cowardly. "There are strong suspicions Bernanke and Paulson intentionally froze up the credit markets" seems like bullshit to me. Either YOU have those suspicions, in which case I would be interested to hear on what evidence they are based. Or, perhaps someone else has those suspicions, and you are just passing them along--in which case please share your source. Otherwise you're just playing a really fun game of strawman.

"Fear the Fed" is just another conspiracy cottage industry that feeds on ignorance. The idea that anyone in the financial markets would want to freeze things up just to get a few hundred billion dollars out of the government is hilarious. The entire TARP kitty is a small fraction of the total assets under management by Wall Street firms in the first half of 2008. It would be like using your life savings to set your house on fire so you can collect the insurance. Totally stupid!

The Fed has been printing money because the economy has needed more of it. When everyone sold out of the stock market and began hoarding cash there was a tremendous shift of wealth from equity assets to money (i.e. currency). The money had to come somewhere to fulfill that shift. If the Fed had not printed money there would have been massive deflation as the value of a dollar soared.

At the end of the day few people understand macroeconomic concepts and so do not understand what the Fed is or why it is needed. For instance I bet some people read the above paragraph and thought that it would actually be great if the value of a dollar would soar. (It's not great, because rising currency values discourage all forms of economic activity...why spend or invest a dollar today when it might be worth more tomorrow?) A bill in Congress is not going to change that. Only better education in this country is going to change that.

Actually you're the one who is mistaken

[snowwrestler]

Banks benefit because, under our system, all money is created by debt so money and debt are fungible. Using fractional reserve banking, banks can lend over 9 dollars for every 1 that is deposited. In other words, they collect interest on money that they created at the time they loaned the money. You cannot do this because you do not have a banking charter.

This is one of those memes that just refuses to die. It's totally backward. Banks are only allowed (by federal law) to lend out a portion of their deposits. (Hence the term fractional reserve.)

If I deposit $100 into my bank, how much can they lend out? In the post above you make it sound like they could lend $900 out. When in fact the truth is that they can only lend out $90, keeping $10 as a capital reserve.

Banks cannot create money. Only the Federal Reserve--which is an agency of the federal government--can create money. And yes, they destroy money all the time. Please review the tenure of Paul Volcker for instance.

Re:Actually you're the one who is mistaken

[SteelFist]

Actually, the parent is correct. Fractional reserve banking means that the banks keep a fraction of what they loan out as a reserve. A bank will have 10 dollars and loan out 100 or more dollars. This is OK as long as too many people don't want their money at once (a run on the bank); the bank simply cannot repay all of the people who deposited money with the bank because they only keep a small fraction of what is actually deposited.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking

Re:Actually you're the one who is mistaken

[SteelFist]

So I hate to reply to myself, but I guess I misunderstood the source I linked to and got it backwards myself... Guess that means it is really time to call it a day.

Our position

[fugue]

We'd like to save the world and all that, but honestly we'd rather ensure that when everyone dies, we're the richest.

.

Actually, it seems to me that our national policy should keep in mind that education in the USA is subpar, as is the scale of cleaner energy. Therefore we're likely to continue to steadily fall behind in the era of clean energy research. I would think that it makes sense for us to try to anticipate needing to borrow IP from more advanced countries. More financial incentive is wonderful if you have the tools.

Re:Our position

[Anonymous Coward]

CLEAN = ENERGY = NOT

      Think again fool. The world if not the universe is on fire, combusting in violent reactions and if its clean up front, its dirty in the back. Secondly Education? The US student ranking is pulled down by the underperforming demographics and they need not be mentioned. The longer you are in denial, the longer your mental anguish trying to reason your declining world which is not really declining at all, your just being told that by the charlatans who work on wall street. levy new climate change taxation schemes and vote for hope and change. Enjoy your misery

Re:America is full of itself

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you do have a lower standard of living because you consume less oil -- unless you live in Norway. You see, european countries (besides norway) produce less GDP per person than the USA. That's probably because they use less oil ;)

No, I am not mistaken.

[joebob2000]

Banks are only allowed (by federal law) to lend out a portion of their deposits. (Hence the term fractional reserve.)

No. Banks are supposed to keep a fraction of deposits on hand, hence the term fractional reserve.

If I deposit $100 into my bank, how much can they lend out?

account 1 lend 90 and hold back 10
account 2 lend 81 and hold back 9
account 3 lend 72 and hold back 7
etc..
this infinite sum terminates at 900 loaned, 100 on reserve. 30-40 iterations gets most of the value. Since banks earn interest on every dollar loaned, they have every incentive to do this. To make you feel more comfortable, you can imagine a scenario where there are two banks each lending back and forth to create the chain, although it is not necessary. It might make it easier for you to digest if you consider that banks are not lending THEIR money, they are lending DEPOSITORS money, so each of these accounts may be owned by a different person. Exactly who's money do you think that banks loan out?

Private banks do create money whenever they create loans. If the loan is retired or defaulted, the money is destroyed, otherwise it stays in the system.

Re:America is full of itself

[Anonymous Coward]

Ya, I'm going to get modded offtopic or troll or something, ---but---

Canada's hydro power (Yes, I'm here too! Hi PP!) is exactly what drives me NUTS about Kyoto (note to mods, using the secret ingredient here). Why is everyone so concentrated on reducing the co2 we dump into the air. What about all the other horrible things? Why are we not worrying about sulfides or florocarbons (remember the 80s?! I miss Voltron) or heat or various heavy metals, PCBs, etc?

It's all a marketing campaign and you (and ME!) have bought into it. I'm sure that the way to 'save the planet' (save? srsly we think we can change -the climate- in predictable ways? we can't even predict tomorrow's weather) is to buy more small plastic things because then summer wont turn into winter and all the birds won't die. If we really want to have an effect, we need to look at overall output of harmful pollutants and stop focusing on the demonized co2 crowd.

rant

And yes, WE. Because if you're reading this (if you actually made it this far?), you're one of the top 0.1% of the world's stock and if you're not solving this sanely without buying party lines, no one ever will be able to. You're it. That's as far as humanity has come. Pick up the baton or we might as well walk away. /rant

So that bring me to hydroelectric power. This is exactly the kind of problem we come across. Hydro has -major- effects on the local environments (it just doesn't produce loads of co2). "Yes! Local!" you say. But I say that major rivers are extremely important to the global biosphere and if everyone goes hydro-nuts we're fscked (and you'll have huge problems getting salmon sashimi (wow Slashdot spell check doesn't recognize sashimi, shame) (also, I'm not really a LISP programmer, I just have A.D.D)).

So what's this all getting at (you're still reading?), it's about a variety of power sources tied together. Solar is fine in the desert, hydro is fine in moderation as with tidal and wind, nuclear is going to be necessary and even things like oil and coil have their place.

Saving the world:
1. Let's do some real climate modeling; we have huge gaps in our knowledge and I have 8 cores doing nothing. We need earth-at-home!
2. Figure out the other crap we're dumping and how to deal with that as well
3. If you're really concerned about co2 by itself still, co2 scrubbers are -far- better than reduction. They create jobs, technology, competition,etc. My guess is that production will do more of this than reduction. I could be wrong here, but I may also be lucky.
4. Actively do stuff. I don't mean smoking pot outside of the art gallery cheering at geese. I mean create some of your own power. You can do this almost anywhere. Build a carbon scrubber (plans? google? (also there are time machine plans)), run it off solar power. You know what I mean.
5. Re-use; everyone forgets about this part of the hippy triangle. Give to freegeek (if you don't know, you probably should).
6. Invent something amazing. It's on your head, do something about it. (You may feel differently about patent laws then (mods, more secret ingredient)

And really stop bitching. So sick of the bitching. Step away from your macbook, take of the rimmed glasses and ironic trucker hat and fix the problem.

--
Mike

Yeah, you are

[snowwrestler]

That series is over several successive banks. But each individual bank always has less money out on loan than the total value of its deposits.

Your series works just as well with people as it does with banks. You give me $100...

I lend $90 to Bob and keep $10.
Bob lends $81 to Jack and keeps $9.
Jack lends $72 to Jill and keeps $7.
etc.

The effect is exactly the same. Private banks hold no special position as money creators.

The point people have trouble with is that the series must have a beginning. In our system, that beginning is the Federal Reserve, which alone among banks can create the money it places on deposit. Every other bank must have a deposit first before it can issue a loan, and then the loan must be less than the value of the deposit. Thus no individual bank is empowered to create money.

Your example is incorrect.

[joebob2000]

You have not done the example right. Depositors have full claim on their deposits, even though the bank has lent out most of the money. The bank handles this by creating an IOU entry in its books for the amount loaned. These IOUs are known as Commercial Bank Money and are honored by the Fed and other banks.

Since the Fed won't honor IOUs that I make, I think it is clear that there is a difference between me and a chartered bank.

If only the Fed can create money, then why is M0, the monetary base, only 1.8 trillion when the M2 is 8.3 trillion and M3 is 14.5 trillion? The fed is not the only one creating money.

Consider the implications of what you wrote

[snowwrestler]

You have not done the example right. Depositors have full claim on their deposits, even though the bank has lent out most of the money. The bank handles this by creating an IOU entry in its books for the amount loaned. These IOUs are known as Commercial Bank Money and are honored by the Fed and other banks.

Since the Fed won't honor IOUs that I make, I think it is clear that there is a difference between me and a chartered bank.

My example works just fine even if you and Bob and Jack and Jill maintain full claim on the funds you've deposited. It's just very prone to a catastrophic bank run.

Why is it important that the Fed honors some IOUs but not others? Ask yourself what is special about the Fed that you would want them to honor your IOUs?

Put another way--if private banks can create money, how can there ever be a run on a bank? Why can't the bank just create enough money to cover the run?

The answer is that the Fed is the only bank who can create money from thin air, and thus is the "lender of last resort" for banks facing a run.

The irony is that until the Federal Reserve Act, banking in this country worked exactly like my example, which is why bank runs were such a problem. I think you don't even realize the degree to which you take the money creation role of the Fed for granted.

Re:Consider the implications of what you wrote

[joebob2000]

Money is any universally accepted medium of exchange. In our system much of the things people use as money every day, such as credit card transactions or checking accounts are not considered money by you but are considered money by everyone else, including the Federal reserve, which you can easily verify by acquainting yourself with the m0-m3 money series available at their website.

My example works just fine even if you and Bob and Jack and Jill maintain full claim on the funds you've deposited.

No. Your IOU is not universally accepted. It is considered a non-negotiable liability. Bank IOUs are counted as assets on their balance sheet.

if private banks can create money, how can there ever be a run on a bank?

Because they created too much money. At that point, other banks stop honoring that bank's notes, they are no longer universally accepted. Recent history shows that the Fed and Treasury will act as the lender of last resort to bail them out.

Since you dodged my last question, I will repeat it: If only the Fed can create money, then why is M0, the monetary base, only 1.8 trillion when the M2 is 8.3 trillion and M3 is 14.5 trillion? The answer is that private banks create money too.

In our system, ALL money is created by debt. money and commercial debt are fungible. The very fact that a year ago, the M0 was only $800 billion and is now more than doubled to $1800 billion due to bailouts should be all the evidence that anyone needs to see that the federal government considers commercial bank obligations to be money. They are backstopping the banks.

If you write me an IOU (ie a note) because you owe me money, It is redeemable at only one place: the "bank of you". If you give me a note written from a bank (cashiers check), that note is redeemable at any bank for Federal Reserve Notes. If there is a banking crisis, the FDIC will honor a cashier's check from a failed bank. So there is a big difference between you promising me money, and a bank promising me money.

Yes, the Fed is backstopping the rest of the banking system, which demonstrates that it is not the only entity creating money. Other banks create money that the Fed will honor as they see fit.

What about global cooling?

[JBaustian]

Has anyone noticed how cold it's been this June? Snow in North Dakota, Ontario, Scotland, and elsewhere.

Has anyone noticed the shortage of sunspots? And when the climate was warming, there were lots of them? Hint: global warming, whether the globe is Earth or Mars or some other planet, is caused by the Sun.

Why is solar management not included in the legislative proposals?

just typical

[Anonymous Coward]

Rudy manky wankey yankie attitude screw the rest of the world we are the only ones that matter well screw you too !