Talk’s cheap, we’re learning from Europe, where they have claimed to be all for stemming global warming (although it hasn’t been warming for quite some time) by penalizing their national economies (which was fine as long as it was the other guy’s national economy).
Now it seems the global warming buck has been passed and the folks stuck with the bill aren’t nearly as willing as they were before they realized just how much it will cost them.
EurActiv reports:
“The French EU Presidency is ‘putting everything on the table’ in a ‘desperate’ bid to agree on the climate and energy package before the end of the year, sources close to the negotiations told EurActiv. As part of its push to reach an agreement, France is putting forward a compromise that includes free emission rights for coal plants, financial compensation for energy-intensive industries and extensive use of third country emissions reductions to meet CO2 ‘effort sharing’ targets. If adopted, coal plants in most EU member states would benefit from the scheme. Only Ireland, the UK and France would be excluded from the scheme due to their relatively low use of coal for power generation.”
Why the concessions? Because folks are realizing how much damage the feel-goodism will cost. It’s always good to see people come to their senses. And now the good news just may be spreading, according to the U.K.’s Guardian:
“Barack Obama, who promised last week to write a ‘new chapter in America’s leadership’ on the environment, could find his hands tied by the economic crisis, a leading figure in global climate change negotiations said yesterday. John Kerry, who will lead the US Senate’s delegation to the UN’s climate meeting in Poznan, Poland, next month, said his country was now in a position to play a leading role on global climate change negotiations. But he also said Obama’s administration would be constrained by the economic crisis in offering incentives to countries such as India and China to commit themselves to lower greenhouse gas emissions.”
It’s a report we’re pleased to see gaining momentum. This from the Associated Press:
“Despite widespread optimism that President-elect Barack Obama will adopt policies more to their liking, some European officials are preparing to be disappointed on global warming. European leaders have expressed hopes Obama would quickly break from the Bush administration and support a global agreement to limit greenhouse emissions blamed for global warming. But some are tempering their expectations that the United States can shift quickly enough to sign a deal by the end of next year. Though Obama has supported the kind of limits on emissions envisioned by international negotiators and spurned by President George W. Bush, it appears that Congress may not be ready to back him immediately. The top European Union official in Washington, John Bruton, says there is growing concern that Congress could upend a global deal to succeed the Kyoto Protocol that they hope to sign at a meeting in Copenhagen at the end of 2009.”
Brrrr. Is it possible all the global warming hype is getting the cold shoulder?
RELATED POSTS:
Economic crises, jobs being lost, credit markets frozen - and Mr. Landsbaum does a little victory dance amid the ruins because, in the midst of this financial meltdown, governments may allocate finite resources to priorities other than climate change issues. Not that they dismiss the need to address those issues, mind you, but that they feel they have more urgent things on their plates.
Yeah, that’s a real achievement.
Mr. Landsbaum’s beady eyed take on this issue is well documented, so no more need be said there. As for the choices facing many of the world’s major economies, it’s obvious that both climate change and economic recovery are issues of importance to them. The notion Mr. Landsbaum posits(at least implicitly) that everyone thought they could do everything at once, especially in a distressed financial climate, is one of his classic straw man fictions, which the materials he quotes themselves bely.
On a larger level, the temptation to put environmental issues on the back burner because of a supposedly more immediate need is a classic failure of human foresight. We address the immediate problem without regard to (or at least with a resigned shrug over) longer term damage we might cause in addressing that imediate need. If the winter’s cold, you cut down trees for firewood - never mind that those trees supply you with the food you’ll need to get through next winter. I don’t think any government is jettisioning its commitment to addressing climate change issues, however Mr. Landsbaum may hype the temporary problems that our economic woes might cause those efforts.
And note, please, that no one in any of the pieces Mr. Landsbaum cites is saying that addressing climate change has caused any of the economic difficulties we’re facing. In this sense, climate change issues (if lessened at all, and as i noted it’s not at all clear they will be) are no different from the hours at the local library - we want to keep them intact, but immediate circumstances dictate that we pull back for now.
Perhaps Mr. Landsbaum should root for a complete economic collapse - then people would be sure not to worry about climate change. That would be because they’d all be starving in Third World conditions, but what the heck. You have to break some eggs to make an omelet.
What wonderful nonsense.
Despite my husband’s recent layoff from work, I find it laudable that someone in government has finally seen the Global Warming industry for what it is, another frill that would amount into a huge burden on the middle class. We can’t afford carbon offsets, nor can we afford a new “green” car. It’s like organic food in a way-the idea is nice, but when it costs as much to buy one organic apple as to buy five regular ones, what are you going to do with limited resources?
And Landsbaum contiues to lie about warming. ” it hasn’t been warming for quite some time”? Oh really?
According to NOAA:
For 2007, the global land and ocean surface temperature was the fifth warmest on record. Separately, the global land surface temperature was warmest on record while the global ocean temperature was 9th warmest since records began in 1880. Some of the largest and most widespread warm anomalies occurred from eastern Europe to central Asia.
Including 2007, seven of the eight warmest years on record have occurred since 2001 and the 10 warmest years have all occurred since 1995. The global average surface temperature has risen between 0.6°C and 0.7°C since the start of the twentieth century, and the rate of increase since 1976 has been approximately three times faster than the century-scale trend.
Professor W,
Even though the last decade has had high temps, they are still lower than the MWP. They have also been trending downward since 1998.