"... a snowflake in hell's chance of meeting their own Kyoto targets."

The BBQ Pit
1

A link to establish the rant.

Perhaps surprisingly, I’m not ranting about the hypocrisy inherent in the unattainable goals of the Kyoto agreement. I’m using this as an example of hypocrisy in general.

I distinctly recall the U.S. getting trashed in the international community for refusing to sign the Kyoto agreement. The implication was that the U.S. (or at least the U.S. government) didn’t give a tinker’s damn about the environment.

Now, that may very well be true; I don’t know. Every man-jack and woman-jill in the U.S. government might believe that the environment is a great place to store radioactive waste, for all I know. But if you (in the generic sense) are going to lambast a person/group of people/country/whatever for not adhering to a standard you helped create, then you damn well better make sure you adhere to the standard. Otherwise, whatever ambiguous moral high ground you once claimed just turned to sand and shit underneath you.

A similar example is William Bennett, who has his own thread in the Pit right now. He crusaded for morals and preached his brand of conservativism for years. Now it’s revealed that he lost massive amount of money gambling – a vice that his organization abhors.

If you’re gonna commit to something, and vilify someone else for not committing to the same thing, you better make sure you fulfill your commitment. Otherwise, you’re liable to break the hypocrisy meter. And in doing so, you just might do more harm to your cause than good.

2

I agree. If every nation that signed the Kyoto agreement and ratified/followed it to the letter, perhaps there would be more logical pressure for the US to make some attempts. But as it stands, it seems like the US is getting yelled at by other countries who don’t seem to want to get their feet wet about this. :mad:

Its like a group of smokers who make a pact to quit, and even though none of them have even bothered to start, one guy is getting the third degree from everyone else about not quitting :mad:

3

Oh ho ho, that is fucking rich. Yeah, the U.S. caught all kinds of flak about emissions reduction from European pols. Somehow I think this won’t get as much coverage.

4

It is in the UK, but that’s because we’re feeling smug about it, se mentioned in the OP’s link:

But I do agree with the OP, and I really hope that the US will start to get some real revenge on this one. Are the media over there running with it, or any politicians commenting on it?

5

Um, Kyoto was an election topic here in Canada. Every few months a reference is made to it in the local media. We’re well aware that we are not going to meet most targets, and indeed have not even reduced several important ones. The rates of increase of some have slowed, however, even if they have gone up in total. I’m convinced that overall its better to have given it a shot, even if the US (producing 1/4 of greenhouse gasses) isn’t onboard. I also think it’s better to drop a cig or two from your pack if you can, given the above analogy.

And I always figured the BBC and CBC counted as “coverage”. There’s plenty of past stories if you search.

6

Well, let’s separate a few things here.

The Kyoto treaty is, on the whole, not a bad thing. Whether the targets it sets are realistic is something time will only tell: judging by the article, the first signs aren’t looking good. However, it obviously can be done in some cases, judging by Luxembug’s decrease of 44%. Of course, Luxemburg is a country predominantly relying on services rather than industry, and isn’t easily compared to, say, Germany. But the Netherlands has an economy dominated by services as well, and they failed fo achieve a decrease. I can tell you why: increasing traffic jams.

At the time, criticism towards the US seemed to focus around the fact that whilst Clinton had promised to have the treaty ratified, Bush rejected it outright when he took office. Now, we can debate whether this was because Clinton made an empty promise he knew he didn’t have to follow up on, or because Bush has the oil industry to please (probably a bit of both), but to the outside world, it looked like the US was breaking a promise. So the criticism was at least somewhat understandable.

Now, many of those criticasters appear to be in violation of the treaty’s goals themselves. Does this make them hypocrites?

In some cases, I submit it doesn’t. The article hints at possible reasons of an increase despite valiant policy efforts: an unusually cold winter, a dry summer. Some thing are beyond the realm of politicians, and you can’t expect people to freeze their behinds off just because the state has to meet a greenhouse deadline.

Other nations can certainly be classified as hypocrites, or at least can be accused of not living up to their end of the deal. Ineffective traffic policy in the Netherlands, combined with the failed privatisation of Dutch Rail, has led to an increase in traffic jams, and hence CO2-output. I guess it’s easy signing a treaty when the deadlines are a decade away.

So yeah, even though I’m a pretty fervent Kyoto proponent, I’d say the OP has a bit of a point here. Europe’d better shape up here, if they want to be able to exercise any pressure on the US to sign the Kyoto treaty. Not that I expect the current US administration to ever do so, mind you.

7

So when are “enough signatories” going to ratify the protocol to allow it to enter into force?

8

I think 51 industrialized countries need to sign, but I’m not too sure.
Incidentally, while we’re on the sunject, is the US doing anything to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions?
The US is responsible for 25% of those gases, while it only has 5% of the world’s population.
Should it not be a matter of conscience to try and help the environment back the way it was before us humans started messing it up?

9

Other then killing all the humans, that will never happen.

10

I submit respectfully that a treaty which does not have realistic targets, or a very high probability of achieving those targets, is not a good thing. Reducing CO[sub]2[/sub] emissions and energy use is a good thing; this does not by definition mean that Kyoto is a good thing.

It’s only understandable if the outside world has never heard of a change of political power in a nation reversing a course of policy.

Clinton knew that the Senate would not pass it during his term, so it was easy and painless for him to champion it and to use it as an election issue. Whether or not he actually believed in the goal is entirely unknown. And as far as Bush and the oil industry - this has been discussed before. I submit that regardless of the energy strategy of the US, the big energy companies will still make just as much money as before, if not more.

If alternate fuels are developed (natural gas cars, bio-diesels, hydrogen) which are less CO[sub]2[/sub]-producing, who is going to control their production? Distribution? Marketing? Who has the infrastructure in place? The big energy companies do. They are in no danger of losing money if the US cuts CO[sub]2[/sub] emissions by 50%, as they will be the ones controlling the higher-priced energy alternatives, for the most part. The people I know who actually are very high up in energy companies don’t fear competition from the “new innovators” for the same reason that Ford and Daimler don’t fear a group of people forming a new car company - there’s too much infrastructure in-place to upset the market.

They’re not hypocrites for trying and failing - trying hard and failing is not dishonorable. They are hypocrites for saying how easy and achievable the goals were, and for lambasted the US in statement after statement about how easy it would be for the US to meet said goals. However, just like some shithead Members here who commonly use Kyoto as a prop to lambast the US every single chance they get, I know that no one is going to really call them on their hypocracy - certainly not the hypocrites themselves.

My understanding, despite what the BBC article says, is that the UK is likely to miss its goal unless some serious changes occur - and the recent move to try shifting of funds towards more roads and away from the rails is not a good trend. Germany may make its goal in large part because it’s going to be buying large amounts of coal-generated power from Poland, thus “shifting the CO[sub]2[/sub] blame” like California does, when it buys oodles of coal-generated power from Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah, and claims “Oh, we’re the Environmental State[sup]TM[/sup]. We don’t use that dirty, evil, sinful CO[sub]2[/sub]-producing coal!”

elfje - think about what you are saying. It’s simply not possible to clean up the environment to where it was “before we started messing it up” without de-industrializing and moving back to an agrarian society. What is you actual scientific background for making the statement you did? :confused:

11

Err…sorry about a couple of the typos. I’m blind in one eye this morning. :frowning:

Una

12

Merely trying isn’t enough. Kyoto isn’t going to work. It may feel good to support it, but that’s feelings rather than science and politics. If global warming is really a problem (and I believe it is), then we have to find ways to deal with it that will actually work. An achievable, less-than-ideal goal is better than aiming for perfection, but getting nothing. Unfortunately, there is no known realistic means to prevent global warming.

Global warming will help some areas (e.g., the cold ones) but, it will harm some areas. The ones at especial risk are low-lying countries and islands. Rather than spend hundreds of billions of dollars on Kyoto, which won’t work, we should to spend those resources directly helping countries that will be devastated by rising ocean levels.

BTW while there is wide agreement that global warming is occurring, there is less certainty that human activity is the cause. Helping low-lying areas is a way to deal with global warming no matter what its cause is.

13

But what is the cost of protecting all of the major cities and important regions of the world that are threatened by being underwater? Trillions of US$? Tens of trillions? How much would it cost to protect the low-lying areas of Northern Europe from a 10-foot rise in sea level? Or the Eastern seaboard of the US? And how much lower can New Orleans go before it has to be abandoned?

14

I fully agree. It’s just that I’m not sure whether Kyoto’s goals are just set too amtitiously, or maybe the governments of the participating countries are neglecting their duties. This particular article doesn’t exactly clarify that, either. Like I said, time will tell. I’m a skeptic in this regard, but I also feel global warming should be addressed. Maybe Kyoto will prove to be too ambitious a step, but if it means that more countries tried to attain the standards set in the treaty than there would have been aiming for such goals without such a treaty, it’s still a step up.

15

mm, I don’t think so.
I think human activities started having a serious impact on the climate (world climate) after the explosive growth in the 20th century. Please people, not the I think, i’ve no cites for this, but then again, this isn’t GD. So if we would all switch to lesser or non polluting energy sources (I believe a household, i.e. all the energy being used by all people in one house, and that includes waste disposal and water and all such, is the biggest polluter. Even more so than cars. I will look for a cite for this statement, please be patient), that would go a whole long way to cleaning up the air, closing the hole in the ozon layer, and just get a “cleaner” world

Anthracite: please read answer above, I think this answers your question, too. I don’t think we all need to go back to an agrarian society (I think car exhausts are only responsible for 2 to 3% of aal CO2 emissions, again, yes, I’ll try and get a cite for this statement), i just think we need to switch to renewable and non polluting energy sources.

16

December - I think you may be oversimplifying a little here. Global warming does not just mena that sea levels rise and flood low lying areas. Weather patterns across the globe are affected - droughts, forest fires, heatwaves, floods can all be attributed to the recent dramatic climate change.
Globally 1998 was the warmest year ever recorded and eight of the ten warmest years recorded fell in the last decade. Global ice sheets have decreased, so has global snow cover.
The debate is how much of this can be attributed to artificial factors. There is compelling data that suggests we are at least playing a part. Here’s some:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1225064.stm
You may feel comfortable dealing with the problem when it occurs - I’d feel more comfortable looking to at least partly address the cause.

17

I agree with this, but I don’t understand why you’re so quick to then conclude we could not find a realistic means to prevent climate change?

18

It’s not a question of comfort; it’s a question of reality. “Partly addressing the cause” = Not solving the problem. The models supporting Kyoto show that even if there were full compliance, all it would do would be to delay 100 years of warming by a few years. So, full compliance would mean continued global warming (if the models are correct, and they are controversial.) As this thread points out, the world is not going to see anything like full compliance, inadequate as that would be.

I agree with you that global warming will have other adverse consequences beyond rising sea levels. Too bad. We can’t do anything about them, as of today’s state of knowledge. I’m all for doing research to find methods that could work, but there’s no point in embarking on one that’s sure to fail.

19

oops, I was wrong: according to this site: cars are included in the "household figure, and make up 1/3 of it. The overall for households is 38% of the grand total, so cars are responsible for 13%. Or thereabouts

"Households account for almost one fifth of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. Each home produces about 15 tonnes each year - mostly carbon dioxide. Over one third of this comes from cars:
http://www.everytripcounts.net.au/greening/3201.shtml

and thois link for december (and other interested parties):

and here’s the actual lecture:

and at the bottom of the page there are numerous links to interesting sites and articles.

20

I’m not sure if Clinton did or did not promise to have Kyoto ‘ratified’ - that responsibility belongs to Congress and the Senate passed a unanimous resolution condemning the Kyoto treaty in 1997. It wasn’t even put to official vote. They rarely do anything in that manner unanimously, so that one was really, really dead on arrival. I’m not sure why Bush is even mentioned here, in light of that.