The World At War
Economic war that is. The NY Times says, “France Tells U.S. to Sign Climate Pacts or Face Tax“. As usual the ostensive reason is the environment (or the current cause celeb) but the underlying reason is money. Countries spend a lot of money protecting their companies. We protected ours by not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. We signed the thing but never ratified it, odd, no?
That’s not to say we are not doing anything about GHGs. Solar cells are being installed about as fast as they are being made, wind farms are popping up like weeds, and we are even retrofitting existing hydro-plants to get more power out of existing dams. We have made some excellent progress in developing biofuel generators and are even exporting that technology to other countries. However, we did not ratify it because we felt it is harmful to us economically and do not want to lie about implementing it. Less moral people would say sign the thing then do whatever we want anyway. We chose not to take that path.
Here is a chart showing our PV installs alone.
This is old data but it shows how renewable energy is taking up a larger piece of the nation’s energy pie chart. I wonder if it has passed nuclear by now – this was done in 2004.
There is a serious financial impact when making large changes in short periods of time and the general consensus is to make someone else pay for it. In stead of NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) it’s NWMM (Not With My Money). France decided to pick us as a target. I presume Chirac figures he has a chance of getting money from us as opposed to other countries who have not ratified the treaty like Autrailia or China and India who got out of having any obligation at all (even though they signed).
China is about to pass us as the largest GHG producer because they are being successful. When their economic program was a bust (thank you Chairman Mao) they didn’t have much, including food, and did not contribute much to global polluton or the global economy. Now they contribute significantly to both.
The Chinese are no longer simply destroying their own environment. Just as trade is global these days, so too is the threat against nature.
So you see, we now have the same “I’m not going to do anything to hurt my competitiveness unless you do too” dance. This is why there are still large agricultural subsidies. Nero may not have fiddled while Rome burned but there was a lot of finger pointing afterward. Fortunately there are people effecting solutions while others talk. Did I mention conservation?
- Posted in : Environment, In the News, Politics, Renewable Energy
- Author :Rt
Comments»
My view on Kyoto was that America didn’t sign it, because our administration is made up of old energy sector bigwigs. They wanted to suckle a little longer at the carbon rich energy money teat, and the world be damned.
That being said, Kyoto was a watered down and pathetic attempt at solving the problems of global warming, everyone knew that when they signed it. We needed Kyoto in the 70’s, now we are faced with some serious questions, do we spend a lot of money, potentially slow down the economy (although there is no reason we cant have a healthy growing economy based on renewables), or do we let things go on the way they are and end up with millions of people dead?
Money or death, both will solve a lot of the problems of global warming, but one is better than the other.
Oh we go one better than that – we have plenty of money FOR death. It’s one thing to have an excellent military but it’s another thing entirely to use it for personal vendetta’s / wealth (the wealth may have just been icing on the cake, but I’m not certain which one was the real primary motive).
“They wanted to suckle a little longer at the carbon rich energy money teat…” LOL, you’re killin’ me here. Man, did you make that up on your own? I gotta find a way to use that. I’m still laughing.
You are spot on about the need for Kyoto in the 70’s. Even then the antiwar protesters outnumbered the environmental protesters. A river had to catch on fire for the EPA to get any teeth.
So, who will you for for our next fearless leader? Please don’t answer that, it’s a rhetorical question.