Bye-bye Kyoto treaty. True the Senate had not yet ratified it, but now it’s completely dead thanks to Bush.
Now that it no longer matters, Japan has decided to scrap the treaty and I’m sure it won’t be long until the Europeans follow suite.
I guess Bush does not care about the place our children and grand children will have to live in. Sort of selfish if you ask me. Of course, people of the future have no say in this matter although it will affect them the most. Sad isn’t it?
There is no cleaning service between occupants of this house. If Bush is happy to leave the house looking like a pigsty, our grand children will have to live in it or clean it up.
Perhaps Bush is happy to have his grand kids live like pigs?
Bush’s motivation is in no doubt. He is and always has been a creature of the mining and industrial establishment. What is good for that establishment is good for him. Greenhouse gas reduction is bad for them and therefore bad for him. Through extraction industries he made his money, and through campaign donations from those and other industries, he got elected.
Presumably those that voted for him (approximately half of all voting Americans) wanted a president with that background and involvement. You could hardly have expected Bush, upon becoming president, to do anything other than exactly what he has done upon coming to power, on any issue you care to name.
Oh, wait, don’t tell me you listen to campaign speeches and believe them? (collapses onto floor in paroxysms of cruel laughter).
Does Bush just not care that the planet gets fucked up, as long as he gets the power and money that his policies facilitate? Perhaps. I suspect rather that the extreme inconvenience to him (in terms of money and power) of admitting to himself that global warming is a problem will have (in the usual human fashion) ensured that he genuinely believes that GW is a myth.
What Kyoto would do is mandate the US lower its emissions of CO2. The only way to do this with a growing population such as the US has would be to mandate higher prices for energy. Higher energy prices would severely damage the economy. A severely damaged economy is not in the best interest of the US. Bush is doing what he was elected to do, to look out for the best interests of the US. If there is anyone to blame it is the peopel who negotiated the treaty in the first place. It was never a viable option for the US to ratify.
Yes, all Bush did was slam the door on 10 years of effort to build a consensus on what should be done about the threat of global warming. What better way to solve the problems of the future than to preclude serious discussion of them ?
As I said in other Bush/environment threads, I’m doing research on this for my macroeconomics class. So far the numbers say that if Bush would get his head out his ass, oh wait, he can’t do that, he’ll have to consult an advisor on how to do that. Anyways, I think that if Bush looked at the numbers, even HE would realize that it would be in the best interest of the economy to clean this place up. I didn’t vote for that shmuck because look what he did to Houston. We spend 2.5 billion dollars on pre-mature deaths caused by VOC’s (volatile organic compounds) in Houston alone! Not only is that a lot of money, people are dying because of this. It’s gotten to the point where the ozone levels are being reported with the daily weather in Texas, advising people with asthma and allergies whether or not they should go outside.
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I knew that if that oil whore got into the oval office my kids will be the ones to clean this place up. And it’s going to take a long time to clean up all this shit because face it, Bush and his administration have it flowing from their ears.
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[sub]Don’t worry, I wont express my opinions in my paper, I’ll just let the facts do the talking for me![/sub]
In everything there are trade offs. The Kyoto treaty is asking the US to trade a higher energy costs and subsequent less productive economy for a supposed reduction in the temperature a hundred years from now. If this treaty passed and the US economy sank you would have millions more people living in poverty which is a much greater risk to their health than carbon dioxide.
Bush is doing the smart and responsible thing.
He is looking out for the interests of his country and its citizens, which is what he was elected to do.
Concerned about making the planet/environment worse for future generations? Here is what you do. Remove yourself from it. What more unselfish statement could be made than ending your life to provide for future generations?
This isn’t a valid rebuttal. Who would bear the cost of developing these engines? It will get passed on to the consumer and will have the same effect as higher energy costs.
Damn- brilliant argument- blinding in its clarity- makes me want to run right out and fire up the Hummer
This isn’t a valid rebuttal. Who would bear the cost of developing these engines? It will get passed on to the consumer and will have the same effect as higher energy costs.
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It’s called investment- paying more now for a greater return in the future.
And “cost” is a slippery concept- someone is going to have to clean up our messes, and that also “costs.” JDM
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Well of course Bush is screwing up…if you disagree with him.
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As does most of the industrialized world. This kind of “the lefties are out to get us” defense smacks of situational ethics. Is there really no absolute standard by which a mans actions can be judged ?
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*Originally posted by Hibbins *
**Concerned about making the planet/environment worse for future generations? Here is what you do. Remove yourself from it. What more unselfish statement could be made than ending your life to provide for future generations?
This isn’t a valid rebuttal. Who would bear the cost of developing these engines? It will get passed on to the consumer and will have the same effect as higher energy costs.
Pollution is a real problem and it’s one that is going to have to be dealt with adventually. The longer you put it off, the worse it’s going to get as well.
Industries are under a command and control system right now
which does not seem to be working to well. Since the free market system is one of the most efficient economic systems we have, we should allow that to control our pollution levels as well. The system that I’m writing about in my macroeconomics class is a credit system.
Here is a link with detailed information: http://www.epa.gov/airmarkets/trading/basics/index.html#where
Here is an example of how it works though:
Right now, in places like Houston, a state will set an amount of emmisions that an industry can produce. So, to make things easy, let’s say 100 tons of emmissions. Now, companies can produce all the pollution they want all day as long as the industry doesn’t go over that 100 tons. This is called the “command and control” way.
Here is the credit system:
The state still says the whole industry can only produce 100 tons of pollution. But they have to buy credits to produce the emmissions. So say the state gives each company 20 credits to start with and a company produces 15 tons of pollution. Then they have 5 extra credits that they can trade, or sell to another company that is producing 25 tons of pollution. But the industry as a whole still can’t go over the 100 ton limit. Economics states the most efficient companies will thrive, while the others die out. So the companies that invest in capital that reduces emmission output will not help the environment, but will profit from it because they will have extra credits to sell.
Urgh!!! Maybe if you just keep on repeating these fallacies over and over again, people will start to believe them. Here is what I had to say about all this in the “Environment vs. Economics” thread. Most of it is appicable here as well:
I always love when people argue that we can’t do anything on the environmental front in regard to energy because it might result in, say, higher gasoline prices. Well, hello!?! I might want to be able to buy a new 1.5 GHz computer for only $5.50 but that doesn’t mean I am justified in demanding that my computer manufacturing or purchasing be subsidized to the point where I could do so. Apparently, people do not have similar qualms when it comes to their fossil fuel use.
As for Kyoto, well, it is true that very few countries had actually ratified it yet, but it was far from dead. And, in fact, considerable progress had been made toward an agreement on how to implement it. The main thing holding it up was a certain lack of leadership on the U.S. side, which has now turned into leadership in absolutely the wrong direction!
And, Collounsbury is right that higher fuel efficiency is good for the economy and can actually result in savings to the economy that are higher than the costs. Where he gets derailed, I think, is in believing that Kyoto was so seriously flawed and that most economists thought so. In fact, its mechanisms were quite flexible and there was a letter signed by hundred of economists, including several Nobel prize winners, that endorsed it. There are also various studies showing that the U.S. could meet the Kyoto protocal at little cost: http://www.ornl.gov/ORNL/Energy_Eff/CEF.htmhttp://www.ucsusa.org/publications/pubs-home.html#environment (see the publication “A Small Price to Pay”).
Finally, there is an interesting article showing that historically the costs of complying with environmental regs, bans, etc. has consistently been overstated, not only by industry, but even by government agencies such as the EPA! http://www.prospect.org/print/V8/35/goodstein-e.html
More efficient engines have to be developed eventually. The government has a program for subsidizing research into them. Currently, the Japanese are building cars that get higher mileage than ours do, as their cars don’t consistently cost more than ours. Wouldn’t it be a good thing for our companies to be able to match foreign competitors in this important category? Furthermore, the issue of cleaner and more efficient energy is also a health matter for some Americans. The number of cars in Southern California will increase by around 20% in the next 20 years, and those of us who live in Claremont and nearby areas are not going to like it if smog also increases at a corresponding pace.
The assumption that meeting the Kyoto protocols would be a big cost is just not true.
Cars with fuel cells will be commercialized in about a decade. Honda already is selling a gas/electric hybrid that gets something like 60 mpg. Lots more of these will be coming in the next few years. They will go a very long way towards solving the problem, if they make a major dent in the car market. (Big if, I realize.)
Every year the efficiency of central A/C systems increases. As old ones are replaced with new ones, the overall amount of energy needed to do the same cooling job decreases.
There are incredibly simple things you can do at home: like planting a tree on your southern exposure, which will cut down on the amount of Sun your house receives. A full grown tree planted in the right spot can have the same cooling effect as a 5500 btu air conditioner. You can buy a tree mail order for, literally, a buck. Not much of a payback period on that investment, eh?
And if we had a prez who had a clue, he’d be saying and doing common-sense things like this rather than trying to open up ANWR, or going back on campaign promises re CO[sup]2[/sup].
No, that’s not the case, Kyoto restrictions are based on 1990 (as I recall) emmissions levels. Simply slowing the rate of increase will be difficult. Reduction below the stated targets, given present capital in place, would be horrendously expensive. Above all if carbon fixing, e.g. tree planting, were excluded. Of course there are legit measurement problems there…
I said it once, I’ll say it again. Kyoto was very poorly concieved around the Montreal model for CFCs, another game scientifically and structurally.
Kyoto was broke from the get go.
However, this manner of repudiation was stunningly stupid. I do mean stunningly so.
Squandered our already thin political capital in this realm. Further, Bushbaby’s current FP approach --non-Colin wise-- has given rise to some very ruffled feathers. This can be overcome, but so far the modus operendi has needlessly squandered good will. Any number of decisions, e.g. Kyoto, could have been taken with more finesse in order not to create ill-will.
So, in re Bushbaby, my issue is not 100% with policy content, but execution leaves much to be desired. Wanna play hardball, good. Just do it smart.
The above makes me think that the case against Kyoto may amount to more hot air (pun intended) than you think, Collounsbury. It may be difficult, but I don’t see it as impossible.
The Japanese automakers have (once again) gotten the jump on everyone else by being savvy enough to know that the pressure on automakers to produce more efficient cars is getting stronger every year, so they’ve been racing like mad to get high-tech vehicles on the road. Their initiative has put even more pressure on U.S. and European automakers to get off the dime.
The price of oil is now in a rising trend again, and natural gas has also spiked upwards. Both of these markups provide powerful incentives towards conservation and substitution of new energy sources for these old ones.
Combine this with some reasonable government and market initiatives elsewhere, and you could get there far more quickly than anyone thinks.
The opposition is relying on projections of current trends into the future. This never works. 10 years ago we were supposed to have budget deficits as far as the eye could see. 20 years ago the price of a barrel of oil was supposed to hit $50 by 1990 and keep going from there. Both of these predictions were based on simply taking a current trend and extrapolating it into the future, the old Malthusian fallacy. Neither took account of one simple fact: human adaptability.
Thanks for that quotation…I’m glad to see that a few of my links get read! As for my memory on that statement that I referred to signed by economists…I just looked into it on the web and there are a couple of corrections on that. The good news is that it was signed not just by hundreds, but by over 2000 (apparently now, over 2500) economists. On the other hand, I should note that the statement actually pre-dates Kyoto by a bit, so I can’t say that it is a direct endorsement of the Kyoto Protocol. You can find info on that letter at http://www.globalchange.org/econall/97may6g.htm or http://www.rprogress.org/pubs/ecstat.html
The studies that I linked to above deal more directly with economic consequences in light of the specifics of Kyoto.
