Sure Kyoto will work - India, China, and Russia show how... Just ignore it!
In compliance w/ Kyoto...
I'm for clean air, clean land, and clean water. Yet, there is that old truth of 80/20 - it takes 20% of the effort to get the job 80% done. Then the Law of Diminishing Returns kicks in and it then takes 80% of the effort (and cost) to get the rest of the 20% done. Please remember that as you climb that last 20% slope, the cost goes up very cost for that next incremental bit of "goodness".
Yes, there is the fact that I do not believe that Global Warming is largely due to mankind. Or even a substantial degree. Spending hundreds of billions of dollars trying to prevent something of the order of 0.0015 degree / year - kinda fruitless. For instance, for the possible rise in sea levels of a foot over the next 100 years (as has happened over the last 100 years without getting our knickers in a knot), I'd think that simply shoring up shorelines would be a heck of a lot less expensive. After all, we humans are quite the adaptable bunch...
And why do the "cap and trade" or "carbon tax" zealots want the rest of us Americans to live lifestyles (energy wise) of paupers for not much gain at all? Frankly, my only thoughts are "this is a huge tax posing as "saving the world" and "science as politics" (or is this politics as science)?
Especially when one sees this:
Got that? Not only do the Russians NOT want to clean up their mess (which normally would cost lots of money), but even if somebody else wants to pay, the attitude is "naw".Russians snub offer to help cut emissionsThe Russian owners of the Norilsk Nickel plant on the Kola Peninsula earned huge profits last year but haven't made any efforts to cut the plant's emissions. Nor have they taken up a Norwegian offer to fund a clean-up.
Never before has it released such high emissions, and never before has it earned so much money. It's part of the Norilsk Nickel concern, which in turn is part of holding company Interros, controlled by Russians Mikhail Prokhorov and Vladimir Potanin. Forbes Magazine estimated their wealth at about USD 45 billion.
"We are worried over the increased emissions, and we don't know the reason for them," Bente Christiansen, environmental chief for Finnmark County, told newspaper Aftenposten. "We'll be following the situation carefully."
Last year, Norwegian politicians vowed to withdraw the support unless some environmental improvements were made. The money remained, however, in the government's revised state budget that it released earlier this month.
"As long as they're earning money, they'll probably let the plant keep going," said researcher Margrethe Aanesen. "They'll probably never invest in it."
Right. So if we follow the GAIA religionists, we'd be handcuffing ourselves for not much reason at all. After all, if China, India, and this example from Russa holds true, it is nothing but talk. Why? If we only handcuff ourselves, what is the gain? If one Russian plant can issue more of a pollutant than an entire country and nothing is done, what is learned?
The short story - unless ALL go into lockstep, those countries pulling on their collective hair shirt will look rather silly in a few years. Besides, who is going to enforce emission controls on the worse large scale emitters in the world - volcanoes!
Remember:
- Kyoto signatory countries - emissions up 22%
- US - emissions up 6%
