Then there was one: US now alone as Kyoto holdout

[rodeodance]

Source: afp


Then there was one: US now alone as Kyoto holdout

by Richard Ingham Sat Nov 24, 3:35 PM ET

PARIS (AFP) - Supporters of the Kyoto Protocol were gleeful on Saturday after Australian elections left the United States in the wilderness as the only major economy to boycott the UN's climate pact.


The ouster of Prime Minister John Howard stripped President George W. Bush of a key ally barely a week before a conference in Bali, Indonesia, on the world's response to climate change beyond 2012, they said.

"It's great news for the Kyoto Protocol," Shane Rattenburg, Greenpeace's political director, told AFP.

"It's a very important event in the international climate debate, and for Bali. It will leave Bush and the United States more isolated."

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071124/sc_afp/unclimatewarmingaustralia_071124203352;_ylt=An4zK6TiaGNgyLBVESsmjtSs0NUE

[aquart]

1. USA, rogue nation.

[rmgarrette64]

5. Intriguing Opinion

We're a rogue nation by not agreeing to sign a treaty? (Well, rather, we have signed it, but our currently Democratic Senate has not ratified it.) But those who have signed said treaty, and don't bother living up to its obligations, are acceptable?

No, sorry, but in this instance, we're quite safe from rogue status...

Oh, and in case it's not clear, the reason our Senate, even a Democratic one, will not ratify this treaty, is that we actually take treaties seriously. Our Consititution makes treaties immediately enforceable. If we could sign and ignore like most of the European countries, we'd probably have signed it too...

R. Garrett

[LynnTheDem]

12. "we actually take treaties seriously"

ROTFLMAO!!!

yeah sure we do. The invasion of Iraq is a stunning example of that.

:rofl:

[KansDem]

20. Geneva Convention?

Be sure to bring the party hats! :party:

:rofl::rofl:

[karynnj]

13. The treaty was NEVER submitted to the Senate

The Byrd/Hagel bill often referred to listed was a sense of the Senate resolution on what they wanted in Kyoto. I think that vote occurred before the treaty was signed. The treaty was not submitted because it was known that it would fail.

[Harper_is_Bush]

2. This is not really true, since Canada has essentially abandoned the Kyoto protocol.

Our new PM doesn't feel beholden to it at all. It was only 3 years ago when he called the science "tentative"s fer krissake.

[cboy4]

3. How does it feel to have a nut as PM?

Prolly the same way it feels for us having a nut for Prez.

[BobTheSubgenius]

4. Oh, it's peachy.

As an obvious and conscious echo of the British system, two of our "major" parties call themselves "Liberal" (they aren't - MOR, at best), and "Conservative" (they aren't - reactionary and regressive).

At least Harper seems to have given up the idea that there's still time for Canada to get in on the rave in Iraq. He would now rather drown the planet than set fire to it.

[Harper_is_Bush]

11. Feels frustrating because I know he's probably sucessfully playing most Canucks for fools

with his Luntz-like populist image control.

Stumbles like the Commonwealth behaviour and death penalty decision gives me hope.

So yeah, pretty much like Bush makes informed/intelligent Americans feel, I guess.

[Lisa]

27. cringe-making ...

Okay, so our guy hasn't fallen off a couch or a bicycle yet -- and since he's not doing as much meet-and-greet as Bush, he can sulk in his office all day, or snarl at the press, and the fact he's not a "people person" doesn't have as much of an impact on how the public perceives his job performance.

But he's picked some real winners for his cabinet. I've heard a string of ignorant, belligerent statements from the gems he's got in charge of Public Safety or Environment -- every bit as ugly as what comes out of Dubya. So we now have a whole bunch of free-range nuts running wild up here.

[Harper_is_Bush]

10. wrong spot n/t

[Xithras]

6. Kyoto is a joke

No regulations on the second largest GHG producer on the planet, a 1990 baseline "target" that is well above any kind of sustainable emissions level, a capitalist free market trading system that turns emissions into "stocks" and makes pollution valuable...it's an environmental deal only a fatcat corporate capitalist could love. The fact that every major study, including those done by the U.N. itself, suggests that Kyoto will do NOTHING to actually lower emissions should torpedo this treaty once and for all. Why it still has ANY support is beyond me.

Here's the fatal flaw with this treaty. For Kyoto to work, nations that refuse to curb their pollution (i.e., the United States) are supposed to buy carbon credits, thereby increasing the cost of pollution and encouraging conservation. In the United States, this would probably take the form of new federal taxes on gasoline, heating oil, and natural gas. Because it depends on capitalist principles (financial investors buying and trading emissions credits), any actual reduction in pollution would decrease demand for the credits and cause a decline in price. As prices drop, the impetus for conservation goes away and conservation ceases. Value is once again introduced into the system, prices spike again, and conservation once again picks up. Lather. Rinse. Repeat ad infinitum. An open market carbon trading system is not capable of reducing pollution because doing so would eliminate its own value, and since it is private investors hold a great number of Kyoto's purse strings, that's not going to happen. Even worse, it creates a situation where those with the most invested in the credits will actually ENCOURAGE MORE pollution, because doing so will increase the value of their credits and make them wealthier. The more pollution is generated, the more money they make.

The world needs a REAL answer to climate change, not some corporatist answer to the question, "Hey, we're f***ing up the environment, how can we make money on this?"

[humbled_opinion]

7. "how can we make money on this?"

Thats it in a nutshell. Corporate America will keep us on the Oil until we revolt after that they will gag us with some other overly polluting and costly energy source i.e., NUCLEAR... This is corporate Americas greatest strength playing on the fears and dependency of the population...

America is truly a facist state and we are slaves to the corporations.

[leaninglib]

16. A fascist state? Well, why are you still here?

If I thought that I was living in a fascist state, I would get the hell out of there as fast as I could.

[humbled_opinion]

22. Because its still America and that means that I have that freedom..

I didn't say it was a totalitarian run Facist state once Freedom is gone then your right I won't be here and probably neither will you. However, there is no denying that the corporations control the government for the most part and only our voices remain to speak out against their total domination.

[leaninglib]

23. That is true, but a corporation is a "special interest" and all special interests

have a certain amount of power. However, those that comprise 51% of the electorate are really the most powerful "special interest" of all.

Therefore, we have the government that we deserve.

[karynnj]

14. A similar system worked to lessen the problem of acid rain

It was easier as it dealt only with power plants. Your analysis ignores that the value of the carbon credits only goes away when the actual pollution approaches the goal. To get to the point you describe, the overall pollution would have been decreased. I think the goals continue to decrease over time.

There were huge problems in Kyoto, like the fact that it does nothing to limit China and other third world countries. But, conceptually an improved process similar to that one would be helpful. The reason it would help is that it assigns a cost to polluting and a benefit for being greener. This could make a cleaner process that is now too expensive economic. If you simultaneously fund more research in cleaner or more efficient technology, you could start into motion a wave of change to progressively declining pollution. As Senator Kerry, who was the point person behind the NE governors acceptance of a cap and trade program for acid rain when he was LT Governor, said the decrease in levels of acid rain was better than expected and teh cost less.

As both Al Gore and John Kerry have backed the idea of cap and trade, there may be some merit to it. (Gore also backs a carbon tax.) Among politicians, it is impossible to find anyone who has worked on this issue longer or harder than they have.

What is your REAL solution?

[Xithras]

19. Kyoto is not modeled on the U.S. acid rain C&T market.

The acid rain trading concept actually worked very well because it only involved direct trading between the emissions generators. It provided incentive for polluters to cut their emissions, because by doing so the direct emitters themselves were able to resell their own credits to other companies that couldn't reduce their pollution. It made pollution reduction directly valuable to the emitter.

The problem with Kyoto is that the credits are awarded at a national level, and not directly to the polluting companies. The U.S. gets X credits, France gets Y credits, and Australia gets Z credits (China, probably the largest GHG producer on the planet, gets to skip this part and pollute to their hearts content). The nations themselves then get to dole out credits from this fixed pool to their own industries, or initiate carbon taxation to bring national emissions levels within their "credit limit". Corporations that cannot lower their emissions to meet national goals can then either petition their governments to buy extra credits for them, or potentially buy credits from the trading market directly (this will be handled differently in every country). The problem with this model is that the companies involved in the emissions reductions do not "own" any credits directly, they are doled out by the government. A true "direct-trade" system might have actually worked, but the Kyoto protocol contains no provision for that. Under the acid rain treaty, Company X could justify spending $5 million on pollution scrubbers because doing so would free up 20 credits worth $50,000 a year each, because they could resell those credits and recoup that expense within 5 years, and make $5 million in profit off the upgrade 5 years after that. There was direct incentive. Under Kyoto, a steel company might reduce their emissions by 20% to free up some credits, at a $10 million dollar expense, only to see their excess allocations stripped from them the following year and handed to a power plant that cannot reduce its output. This not only undermines faith in the market, but keeps the prices artificially low. And if you DON'T think that will happen in the ever-so-politically connected energy markets, you don't read the paper much.

Your theory, basically an idealists view of the market, also ignores how real asset trading works. The value of trades aren't solely based on their current worth, but also projections of future market growth. Kyoto might cause an initial downward trend in GHG emissions, but once those numbers are published the investors will flee the market. That will cause the value of the credits to decrease substantially, undermining their value as a trading tool. Why would a company, or a nation, lower their carbon emissions if it will only gain them a handful of worthless trading credits? For Kyoto to work, those credits need to be worth a LOT, and that can only happen if emissions levels are sustained and the need for a permanent trading market exists. In laymans terms, that means that emissions can NEVER be permitted to return to 1990 levels (and to be sustainable, we really need to get them back to 1950 levels).

My solution is much simpler...Global Carbon Tax. No exceptions, no progressivity. Everyone pays a flat "$X per ton" on their emissions, and that money is routed to an international fund to clean up pollution and fund research into new non-polluting technologies. This still monetizes pollution and encourages companies (and individuals) to conserve, but it cuts out the BS middle men and MORE IMPORTANTLY redirects the fruits of that taxation back into work and technologies that will further promote the very purpose of that tax.

[ohio2007]

17. ..."trading system that turns emissions into "stocks" and makes pollution valuable " means

they found a way to tax air.

In the meantime, the world should take the initiative and move forward with out the U$A

[Psephos]

8. "Then there was one..." - if you ignore the world's largest CO2 emitter, China, of course

and toss India in there as well.

Meanwhile, the majority of signatories are not only failing to lower emissions, they're increasing them. Which makes them even worse than the U.S. from the hypocrisy standpoint.

And let's not forget that the mechanism of redress, a carbon credit market, turns pollution into a commodity that can be bought and sold for profit. No chance of anything going wrong there, unh-unh.

Finally, even if Kyoto's provisions were fully observed, not only by its signatories but also by the U.S., the total effect on warming after decades of observance would be barely distinguishable from background randomness (considerably less than 0.5 deg globally). Which means it wouldn't solve the problem.

Kyoto, in short, is an attempt to show that words speak louder than actions, and that feelings are more important than results.

My opinion, nothing more, nothing less.

[xxqqqzme]

9. We're number one!

[ohio2007]

15. Did China sign? nt

[leaninglib]

18. Better to be the lone holdout than to sign on and ignore the terms like other nations do.

[BeFree]

21. Global Warming is Clinton's fault!

The eight years Clinton sat in office poking his nose up blue dresses, he had a VP who tried to get a handle on GW. But he ignored the future Nobel Peace Prize winner!

Clinton could have triangulated a way to get people working together to solve the warming problem but the only warming he was concerned with was the heat between his legs.

Eight years, and all he did was allow the Kyoto agreement to be signed.

And it surely must be that Clinon's warming problem did indeed infect the government both past and future. Otherwise all administrations since Carter's would have been paying attention to what else was getting hotter and hotter, eh?

But what about the energy crisis, you ask? Glad you did because the two go hand in hand. By using up all our pollutive energy sources we have created global warming and the energy crisis.

Once again, Clinton must have infected everyone since Carter because they've all ignored these two world crises. For thirty years now their concentration has obviously been focused on what washot between their legs instead of what was happening worldwide.

Of course, if we'd had a woman president, the twin problems would not have been ignored because it is a fact that "heat between the thighs" is not something women pay much attention too.

[Hekate]

24. Well, Poppy told the world when he was veep: The US way of life is not up for negotiation.

Arrogant sonuvabitch that he was and is. It was all on display in that summit in South America for anyone who was paying attention during the Reagan administration.

Hekate

[Duffer29]

25. isn't this the same treaty

that sat on al gores desk for 4 years?

[LynnTheDem]

26. Have a wonderful day!