So you can expect a great deal of climate change blogging this week, what with the UN meeting and all. Matt, Ezra, and Mr Brian Beutler are all in New York City, blogging about the elaborate kabuki going on there.
Ezra and Mr Beutler both ask why world leaders aren't putting genuine pressure on the American government (and to a lesser extent, the Chinese and Indian governments) to come to the table and negotiate.
The U.N. is not by design a political body, and it's not a lobby, and there may be no way to organize that kind of outcry. But what I tried to stress tonight, in conversations with both gentlemen, was that solving climate change will only be possible after solving the domestic political situation in America. There's a sense, I fear, that the world thinks it can just wait until George W. Bush is out of office and then everything will be fine. I think this mindset is disastrous. It involves waiting a year and a half (or, perhaps, five-to-ten percent of the time we have before us if we're going to forestall the worst of the crisis) and it fundamentally misunderstand key aspects of the American political system.Nuttall stressed to me repeatedly that climate change presents a plethora of economic opportunities and that, in an even longer-term sense, a carbon economy--based as it is on finite resources--simply won't be possible anymore. I agree. But I suspect very strongly that if he spoke with a representative sample of American congressmen, they would mostly agree as well. Then he'd sit back and watch as those same congressmen returned to their offices and continued to do almost nothing. Al Gore could become president next November, and there would still be high walls separating the status quo from meaningful change. What ultimately must be upset are the short term incentives politicians face when weighing the importance of associating themselves with a cause whose benefits (and blowbacks) won't be evident for many election cycles to come.
One way to do that would be for the Secretary General of the U.N. to lend his support to the forces that might make obstructing action on climate change as politically disastrous for American politicians as obstructing action on the Iraq war will likely prove to be next fall. To make sure that big, important people--foreign leaders well regarded in America--speak frankly and publicly about what America's role has been in creating and continuing the crisis, and what it must do mitigate it.
But Matt argues that the theater matters:
The basic shape of the issue goes back to Kyoto and the late 1990s. Everyone knew that that agreement wasn't nearly tough enough to take care of the problem. But the thinking was that if you could get everyone to commit to the principle "reduce carbon emissions to halt global warming" that when the initial measures agreed to proved inadequate, governments would be compelled to step things up. Then came George W. Bush and his decision to "un-sign" Kyoto. Not only did that prevent the USA from moving forward, but it essentially got all the other governments of the world off the hook. With Bush so intransigent of course nothing was going to work.Meanwhile, there's a need for a successor treaty to Kyoto to govern the world after 2012. The thinking is that it takes two years to negotiate a treaty, and then two years to get it ratified. Thus, we need to start next year at a scheduled meeting in Bali, Indonesia. But if the world's governments sit down in Bali next year cold after years of inactivity, then nothing's going to happen. So there's a kind of kabuki meeting happening this year to get things rolling. Since nothing's going to happen, Bush is willing to participate -- Condi Rice will be at the formal meeting, and Bush himself at an informal one with other heads of government this evening -- but that itself signifies that the process is getting rolling again. The idea, then, is that the next administration will be able to hit the ground running, stepping into a process that's already under way.
Both of these strike me as extraordinarily naive. America is not going to sign onto any sort of significant, comprehensive reduction strategy as part of a global treaty. Before my liberal readers freak out, this does not make me happy. I'm one of those crunchy cons (well, crunchy libertarians, anyway), you've been reading about. The odds are very good that I support stiffer carbon taxes, and live a lower-carbon, more environmentally friendly lifestyle, than you do. But politically, I don't see any way that this is going to happen.
Environmentalism isn't as powerful a movement in America as it is in Europe. Moreover, greenhouse reduction is costlier here than it is in Europe. And this is not because Europe is more virtuous. It is because Europe is denser. Which is not because Europe is more virtuous. Europe is denser because it has been agriculturally settled much longer than North America, where agriculture only really got going with the advent of corn ca 1000 AD. And of course, European epidemics killed off many of the local residents, allowing European immigrants to settle their sparsely populated lands.
Given the costs, it is politically much harder to get meaningful reduction. It is particularly politically hard because federalism gives power to sparsely populated states which will suffer disproportionately from meaningful reductions. In rural America, there is no good alternative to car travel, nor will there be one; and most rural Americans are unwilling to go back to a 19th century lifestyle where going to town was a major event, the festive highlight of a long and lonely week.
What is politically feasible are modest measures, such as a small carbon tax. That might be the camel's nose under the tent, allowing it to be ratcheted up over time. But any Kyoto-style agreement is doomed to fail, not least because America is a hated, envied and feared minority of one. The other countries at the table are going to push for structures, as in Kyoto, that are disproportionately costly to America. Morally, this is arguably correct; but politically, even if such a treaty secures the support of a Democratic administration's negotiators, it will be dead letter in the Senate. This being what happened to Kyoto. Despite what Matt says, I fail to see how Bush made any difference, given that the Senate had rejected the treaty 99-0 with one abstainer.
Matt: "Then came George W. Bush and his decision to "un-sign" Kyoto." Wasn't it the Senate's decision not to ratify Kyoto, made while Clinton was in office?
To make sure that big, important people--foreign leaders well regarded in America--speak frankly and publicly about what America's role has been in creating and continuing the crisis, and what it must do mitigate it.
I'm not sure where this myth came from that America is especially blameworthy. If you look a simple regression of energy use on GDP you will find that America is about average. Hungary, China and India are all much greater energy users and, hence, polluters, given their respective GDP's, than we are. Yet most environmentalists focus their anger chiefly on America. This just makes me supect all the more that--for most greens--environmentalism is just a cover for socialism and anti-Ameicanism.
That said, I agree with McArdle and Mankiw about the wisdom of carbon taxes. The United States is not especially blameworthy, but is blameworthy. By adopting carbon taxes and some offsetting tax cuts (on payroll taxes for example) we could at once reduce pollution, enhance national security and remove some economic inefficiencies. The leading politicians of both parties deserve censure for their failure to push for such a policy change.
On global warming, the likely result of the next presidential election will be to move the US from the Republican position, which is to admit we're not going to do anything, to the Democratic one, which is to express grave concern - and not do anything.
What I find extraordinarily bothersome about all of the kyoto issue, is how people spin the facts, rather than setting up a base and going from there. Bush didn't kill kyoto, CLINTON did. The signitories have not gotten their act together to reduce their carbon output, and Europe has actually increased their output, while the US has had a tiny drop.
Neither of which is the question. There are pollutants HUNDREDS of time more potent being released [methane anyone?] that no-one bothers to address, even though pound for pound they would be big wins.
Kyoto will never work because it is TOO NARROW, and doesn't address all forms of pollution. If you tried to do an agreement that would cut overall greenhouse gas emmision, where some horse trading could be done, I think many countries would be more willing to ACTUALLY do it. Not pay lip service. Not have to say no because it would hurt them economically.
You don;t have to have tons of science, or overall consensus from the scientific community to see that pollution in general=bad. If you work over all reductions, if you get people to move in the conservation way, well then you are moving.
You are also addressing many major issues AT ONCE, instead of the catastrophe of the month. In 20 years are we going to suddenly learn that something else we are doing will doom the planet? Probably. Maybe we will learn that the biodiesel craze was a problem... or that ethanol was a problem because it didn't work as advertized. Etc.
Betting on a one trick pony like carbon dioxide is STUPID, because people are going to believe that fixing that WILL fix everything, when we arent even sure about the mechanics of that. Personally, I'm thinking that air travel is disproportionately causing the problem, because you have huge greenhouse gas emmitters [jets] flying high in the atmo, where greenhouse happens. Seems likely that there is a DIRECT link there, but is anyone studying it?
NO. Lets waggle our fingers under the noses of individuals, with some stuff about their CO2 emmissions, and not bother to figure out what the ACTUAL problem is.
If we don't have a lot of consensus about the mechanisms of the actual problem, then just help people to make less of a problem overall.
Less pollution is LESS, in general. I think you could get everyone to agree to that. Agree that pollution is bad for people, and do something about it.
Saving the earth is an idea. Saving yourself is survival instinct. You WILL do that. [I know... soem people won't.]
If you save the planet while saving yourself? Win/Win.
I know people who are "true believers", as Megan seems to be, but I have not seen what it takes to convert me, as well. I have read about the models that would not be made available for scrutiny, and the articles in Tech Central Station by climatologists questioning the way that the data was culled for the hockey stick model. I also am old enough to remember James Schlesinger and global cooling. This leaves me still at best as a doubting Thomas. My basic instincts are that global temperatures are driven by solar cycles more than any other factor besides ocean currents. I am open to be persuaded, but I would trust climatologists more than economists and social scientists.
markm wrote: Matt: "Then came George W. Bush and his decision to "un-sign" Kyoto." Wasn't it the Senate's decision not to ratify Kyoto, made while Clinton was in office?
Matt is definitely rewriting history here, but this is just one example from the passage. Here's another:
Matt wrote: Everyone knew that that agreement wasn't nearly tough enough to take care of the problem. But the thinking was that if you could get everyone to commit to the principle "reduce carbon emissions to halt global warming" that when the initial measures agreed to proved inadequate, governments would be compelled to step things up.
Balderdash. What happened was that everyone was srill flushed from the success of the Montreal Protocol, and tried to recreat the momentum with global warming. But the wheels got tangled up in facts, notably first that different problems sometimes require different approaches, and second that politics came heavily into play -- especially in regard to the arbitrary base year for emissions targeting (which happened to favor or not incovenience many of the signatory European states, but landed very badly in terms of recent US economic history). Once it became clear that the Kyoto naysayers were not only correct, but that nobody else could come up with suitable fictions to deny it, the emphasis changed to "first step".
Then there's this:
Matt wrote: Then came George W. Bush and his decision to "un-sign" Kyoto. Not only did that prevent the USA from moving forward, but it essentially got all the other governments of the world off the hook. With Bush so intransigent of course nothing was going to work.
As noted, the swipe at Bush is flat-out wrong; Clinton signed on to Kyoto after Congress (those guys with the power to ratify treaties, doncha know) had fired a unanimous, bipartisan warning shot that it wasn't going to fly. Bush didn't "unsign" anything: he maintained the US position that ill-conceived, blunderbuss environmental treaties are not welcome here.
"Other governments of the world" may find Bush's skirt a convenient thing to hide behind, but the basic problem is they signed a check that had no hope of clearing, even with the comparatively modest growth rates in, e.g., western Europe. The only thing the US was going to be doing was buying massive carbon credits from Russia. The rest of Western Europe was not prevented from fulfilling their individual treaty obligations undertaken with Kyoto, and yet they couldn't do it.
It would be technologically easy to cut greenhouse emissions in the U.S. by a third, without any major impact on the standard of living as a whole. Just replace the U.S.'s coal power plants with nuclear ones, and you do as much to cut carbon emissions as magically converting all petroleum-consuming forms of transportation into zero emissions vehicles. And it would result in smaller increases in prices for electricity than a stiff carbon tax.
Of course, the greatest political obstacle to such a move is the soi-disant environmental movement, which would rather melt the icecaps than split atoms.
D wrote: [insert lots of spinning with CAPS for EMPHASIS]
D, I agree that Kyoto was fundamentally flawed from one end to the other, but let's not be spouting crap -- or CRAP, or whatever.
Carbon dioxide accounts for 80% of all greenhouse emissions, which DOES make it a significant gas even if it is not the most potent by volume. Further, it is also the easiest to track and measure. Any amount of hydrocarbon burned for fuel will produce a known and fairly predictable amount of carbone dioxide release. If you know the hydrocarbon types and quantities being consumed in a given region -- statistics for these are well-tracked and widely available, and surmisable by external observation when statistics are poor or unavailable -- then you know what to regulate without having to install and enforce monitoring gear on every car and smokestack.
The chief problem with Kyoto was not that it was too narrow, but too broad -- instead of focusing on one large, easily monitored GHG, it targeted several more, including methane (much harder to monitor -- for example, rice paddies give off a lot of it, but emissions can be notably reduced by strategically draining the field a couple times during the growing season) and sulfur hexafluoride (produced in limited quantities as a very important industrial gas), which are extraordiarily difficult to monitor and track internationally, and are a much smaller portion of the alleged problem in any case.
Kyoto was screwed up by overreach and politics. We don't need to go making up tangential points to show it.
Megan: "... given that the Senate had rejected the treaty 99-0 with one abstainer."
Nitpick 95–0. The abstainers were Bryan (D-NV), Feinstein (D-CA), Grams (R-MN), Harkin (D-IA), Reid (D-NV).
I'll concede that the science is accurate. But spell it out for me -- is this a moral problem or a practical one? Is the driving moral principle the loss of real property in Florida? Or that 'the way of life' of some developing nations may be forced to change? Or is it simply that mankind has an obligation not to change our environment? Or is it simply original sin -- something we need to feel guilty over for simply having been born here?
heh, anony-mouse... I'm just lazy about typing the emphisis tags... but I get your drift. I had actually heard that CO2 was more along the lines of 70% vs. ~ 18% methane ~12% everything else... So I was targeting that more becasue it is 21X more potent as a GHG than CO2... What I am not sure is if that potency is based on how fast it hits the upper atmo or not. In my mind that is the question. Sure, you can tell me how much CO2 can be made from a gallon of gasoline. What I want to know is how fast and under what conditions it gets into the upper atmo.
This is why my concern of jet travel is more than that. I haven't seen anything that doesn't make cars and jets the same when considered for CO2 output, relative to fuel consumption. The big however coems when you put that jet spewing CO2 at 39,000 feet, injecting it close to where it's a probelm, and you do this tens of thousands of times a day. My understanding is that a jet produces the amount of CO2 per passenger, that my car produces per passenger, in a month. Depending on trip length and so forth. The production is 34,000 feet higher in the atmosphere. Seems like that could make a difference.
As for the rest, I'll cop to the tangential points, but point out the most specific one of all to me.
With Kyoto are we looking at the right horse anyway? Even if it wasn't too broad, or too narrow or what ever. Kyoto looks to be a global response to a moving target, when there is no semblance to a global government to prosecute it. All the other signitories are moving the rules around, because they feel like it. In short is there a global treaty answer to the question? Or is this the sort of question that each country must deal with, individually?
I think it would be revealing if the author had listed who he thought were the “foreign leaders well regarded in America.” Somehow I doubt our lists would have many of the same names.
"And this is not because Europe is more virtuous. It is because Europe is denser."
Overlay all of Europe on America and you end up with roughly the amount of space in which most Americans live (ignoring the West Coast, which is similarly dense). IE, the Mississippi east, plus Texas.
This lack of density / "wide open spaces" bullshit has got to stop - we don't as a rule spend our time driving to or from Montana; we spend our time going to/from work in at least moderately dense metropolitan areas, just like they do. Theirs are just laid out smarter - which is something we could fix no matter how big or small the wide open spaces in between were.
Voice of Reason --
You might not spend much time, as a rule, driving across the wide open spaces. People shipping furniture from factories in North Carolina to furniture stores in California, however, do, whether the method is diesel-electric trains or diesel trucks. Commercial shipping does cross the wide open spaces, and that does result in a structural carbon disadvantage for the United States vs. Europe.
I live in Houston and the population density here is relatively low for a big city. We have some public transportation, but it has been very difficult to come up with a system that is practical and covers enough area to be worth while.
I also have spent a fair amount of time driving long distances.
I also wonder what foreign leaders are respected in America. I'm not sure that the UN could presuade Americans of much... it doesn't have a very good reputation right now. And if a respected foreign leader started trying to tell Americans to voluntarily reduce their standard of living, they probably wouldn't stay respected.
EI
You also have a population (in just the EU) which is about 60% higher than the United States and has about one-third the amount of land used for production agriculture. Which is probably why Megan made a point of saying “Europe is denser because it has been agriculturally settled much longer than North America.”
“The odds are very good that I support stiffer carbon taxes, and live a lower-carbon, more environmentally friendly lifestyle, than you do”.
Nothing beats speculating that you have a claim to legitimacy on a topic.
um, Voice of Reason? *waves from the great flyover of the US* As a rule? you don't know jack about population density. Those of us who DO live in that 2000 miles worth of area between the Missisippi and the West Coast... generally drive orders of magnitude more than people who live in the east. Sometimes it's a choice, sometimes necessity, but it is something that is there. Cosmically speaking, I'm guessing Megan and I balance each other in terms of fuel use, at least until I found someplace closer to work to live that was cheap.
The pop density of Cook County, IL [Chicago and near suburbs] is 5529 per sq/mi where Douglas County, CO. averages to 209 per sq/mi. This is deceiving, because the densities are more like 300/sq/mi on the north end in Denver metro, and trails off as you head out. The next county over, which is approx 50 miles away from Denver central... has a density of 11 per square mile.
Even in Denver city proper, the density is 3642 per sq/mi, and that is the highest pop density for 500 miles in every direction. Chicago proper has a density of 12,470/sq/mi. For Contrast, Denver METRO has a density of 286/sq/mi overall, so you can see how rapidly it falls off. Chicago Metro on the other hand... is 1318/sq/mi.
just some food for thought. density is not trivial. England is roughly the same size as Colorado... with roughly 10x the people.
Most greens assign utmost importance to signing treaties, setting goals, etc.
You can (or cannot) sign all the treaties you want, and set all the goals you want. The problem is how to actually reduce carbon emissions, treaties are just meaningless pieces of paper..
As I said, there is no practical, technically feasible way of reducing CO2 emissions in the near future.
There is no way to make people sit in the dark with no electricity, or prevent them from driving cars. There is no painless, costless way, unless, and until, some major technical inventions appear; and there is no way to make them materialize by decree.
I live in Houston, TX, the fourth largest city in the United States with a population of over 2 million and an area of about 600 square miles for a population density (as of Census 2000) of 3,371.7/sq. mile.
We don't walk anywhere. You can't, really. Everything is spread out. I suspect that the population is pretty evenly spread out, though there is higher density in the middle. Our idea of overdevelopment is three or four story condos/apartments. Very few apartment complexes are more than three stories and we have a relatively small number of high-rise condos.
My current job is almost 30 miles from my house and my previous job was 25 miles from my house (and they are probably 20 miles from each other). Before that, I worked downtown, which was probably 10 miles from my house. All of these places are in the city.
My wife works about a mile from our house and our kids go to school close by, too, so that helps. There's not really a way to make Houston pedestrian friendly or mass-transit friendly without a massive relocation effort. And you'd have to use force to move everyone around.
EI
Your lifestyle is low in carbon because you choose to work in a low-paying field and live in an expensive city where you can only afford a small apartment. Smug production in these places, however, is getting to be far above average.
As I said, there is no practical, technically feasible way of reducing CO2 emissions in the near future. - Jacob
The US gets about 11% of its electricity from nuclear. France gets 70%. I guess it all depends what you mean by "practical", "feasible" and "near future". This isn't counting the current estimate of the feasible percentage of an electricity grid that can be supplied by wind, which is 20%; Spain is planning to hit that, Denmark is already heading there. The US's electricity grid loses about 40% of its power to waste, which is significantly higher than countries with more advanced grids; recent wide-area blackouts in the US have pointed out how out-of-date our grid is. And what would the CO2 savings be if everyone in the US drove a Prius? Is that not "feasible" in the "near future"? Unsatisfactory to your consumer preferences, perhaps; but "feasible"?
Sitting around and praying for a technological breakthrough while you continue racing towards a cliff is not a strategy a rational animal would pursue. Though it does sound remarkably close to what Wile E. Coyote might do.
And, Kwyjibo, the "low-paying field" part of your snark is nonsense. Investment bankers and corporate lawyers live in NYC. They even take the subway.
I guess it all depends what you mean by "practical", "feasible" and "near future".
Nuclear is feasible and practical, but licensing and building nuclear plants (which hasn't started yet) will take some 30-50 years.
Wind is negligible, and the same for priuses, they help, maybe, a little, but quantitatively they aren't much.
Electrical cars will make a difference, and they might appear soon, depending of battery improvements. With no thanks to this cap-and-trade and "treaties and goals" nonsense.
Electrical cars will make a difference, and they might appear soon, depending of battery improvements. With no thanks to this cap-and-trade and "treaties and goals" nonsense.
But Jacob, come on -- that's flat-out wrong. Carbon taxes and the prospect of CO2 emissions limits ARE driving electric-car innovation, and if we raised carbon taxes, it'd happen even faster. That's obvious.
How do electric cars help? They just transfer the production of electricity to a power plant rather than a gas engine. While the power plant may be more efficient on a per kw basis there are significant transmission losses. Also, the power grid won't support very many all-electric cars without massive upgrades.
EI
EI, you know this perfectly well. Power plants can be nuclear-powered, hydro-powered, geothermal-powered, solar-powered, wind-powered, or, in the future, tidal-powered. You can put enough solar panels on your house to charge up for your daily commute, in sunnier parts of the country. And electric cars will have the same energy-waste-reduction features as a Prius does -- charging their own batteries while rolling downhill or from the heat generated by braking. Admittedly the "downhill" won't help much in Florida or the Midwest, but still.
Living in a city where everyone gets around on motor scooters, I find improvements in battery technology to be a pretty high priority. From my lungs' point of view.
"As a rule? you don't know jack about population density. "
Folks, almost everybody in this country lives in a major metropolitan area. Most of those are dense enough for rail transit of some form (matching cities elsewhere in the world which support rail transit).
The US is not a nation of farmers anymore. Even some Midwestern cities, as small as they are in comparison, could easily support rail transit.
And remember, it's a fallacy to assume that if you couldn't use it, that nobody could. Houston's light rail line is very successful by the commonly accepted metrics - and Minneapolis' and St. Louis' more still.
Don't be Pauline Kael with this stuff. Just don't.
Voice of Reason, let me explain my point... Because everything is more spread out in the middle 2/3 of the country we drive more. A Lot. Enough that we necessarily equal several other people's useage who live in denser areas. For that reason any CO2 scheme would negatively impact us at start-up and for a significant amount of time after.
You act as though you can wave a magic wand and change everything. It;s true that the percentage of people who live in metros is higher than those who are rural. Though I can't find figures, I have a suspicion that the people who are rural use a significant amount of fual and produce more CO2 because they have to drive farther to do everything. Some of the fastes growing areas in the US are in the front range of Colorado, but they are 50+ miles from Denver, and there are variable destinations for them to work.
The odds are pretty good that people who are willing to commute from those areas, DON'T commute to downtown Denver. There are many spread out large employers in the metro. At the time they spread out it was considered to be a help. Now? Not so much. In the Chicago areas too, there is a case study. Sears famously moved from their tower to suburban Hoffman Estates. Instead of having many people stacked vertically in a building 2 block from the metra station... They moved to a suburb with only negligable bus service, no direct north south highway connections, and a building almost half a mile long. The north/south highways have been built out since, but they are still stretched, and people going to work often sit in quite the treffic jam. That isn't trivial, it is thousands of people and cars.
You have spoken of "Most of those are dense enough for rail transit of some form "
well, except for two little issues. 1]who's going to pay. and 2]are you simply going to rip up a lot of houses to make it work?
Those 2 are in addition to the main 2. 1 is NO, the density doesn't support transit. Metro Denver for example [most western cities are similar] only has an AVERAGE density of ~280/sq/mi. That figures IN the high density central area. Most of the regular suburbs are closer to 200/sq/mi. Contrast that with metro Chicago, with ~1300/sq/mi. Metro Chicago, doesn't get to 200 until you are out in DuPage or McHenry county, 50+ Miles from downtown. Only Metra Heavy rail goes out that far, and many people drive 10+mi. just top get to the railhead...
2. Is that rail systems take a lot of time to make. It's upwards of 10 years just to do enviromental impact statement. That is IF there is a clear path to downtown. And Funding can be found. It took 20 years to get the first light rail segments here in denver, mostly because they were unwilling to do heavy rail. They are just now staring to build mixed housing close to the railheads on one line. On the line that has been completed the longest, it goes to suburbs with predominantly detached houses, and so they have to build massive parking lots to deal with people having to drive to get to the railheads. AND that only works for the peole who have jobs downtown. If they need to go anywhere else? They can spend hours on a bus. Or they drive.
Basically the pain of puting in rail is still too much higher that anything else currently to make it work. Until that changes it just won't be feasible.
That's the real problem, isn't it? Everybody is in favor of less pollution, more public transportation, etc., but nobody wants to foot the bill, have a railroad in their backyard, or accept the other non-monitary costs. It's much better that somebody else feel the pain and that's what all these schemes are about. Unfortunately for the schemers, we really are in a world economy. Remember this when the carbon tax raises fuel prices, forcing the farmers, truckers, and grocers to raise their prices, and you wind up paying more for food. No matter how you squirm and dance, tanstaafl always applies.
Houston's light rail line is very successful by the commonly accepted metrics - and Minneapolis' and St. Louis' more still.
I don't know what the "commonly accepted metrics" are, but I read after the bridge collapse that Minnesota spends 25 per cent of its transportation budget on a light rail system that two per cent of its population uses. Do you consider that a "successful" use of limited resources?
If "greens" were really so very concerned about the environment, they would demand an immediate full-court press for nuclear energy, something which currently they oppose. But, you see, they're not really so very concerned about the environment. They are quite concerned, however, with finally achieving their wet dream of a top-down, centrally planned collective requiring our submission to the wisdom of our betters regardless of what addle-brained plan they cook up. And then, of course, there are those who are in it simply for the money. Most of us aren't willing to turn topsy-turvy our public and private lives and the financial well-being of both for either group.
Kyoto was simply a way for the nations which have forced socialism to their own people to force socialism on Americans so that they can catch up with us.
For once the government (Senate and/or Bush) did the right thing. They minded their own business. Thank god for that.
We happened to come along when the world was in a strange state. It is normal for all the carbon which is underground today in the form of coal and oil to be floating around in the atmosphere as CO2. A cosmic accident, a meteor striking the earth, changed that normal condition. We are restoring the normal state of the Earth.
There is no reason to believe that any one state of the earth is any better or worse than any other state, except as it relates to the lives of humans. Some humans will suffer if the global warming alarmists are right. Others will benefit. Some wealth will be redistributed, as (for example) land at the equator loses value, and land at the poles gains value. Why is this the end of the world? It's as good a state for the world as any other.
The question is, are we going to grow economically so as many people as possible are as ready as possible to cope with the change predicted when it comes, or if it fails to appear, to cope with whatever changes do appear, since the one thing that we can be pretty sure about is that something will change ... throughout the history of the planet, something has always been changing.
brooksfoe, electric cars aren't the solution, then, it's the distributed power generation. However, we can't start converting to electric cars without simultaneously implementing some sort of change to our power distribution system.
Houston's light rail is a success? It doesn't reduce traffic on any of the major freeways. It doesn't reach any of the suburbs. It may transfer some traffic from one freeway to another as people drive to the parking lot that's only about a 15 minute drive from downtown (not on a freeway).
They even had a commercial for it where they described some downtown office worker being able to take the rail to the museum district for coffee. Oh boy... just the kind of transportation we need to be subsidizing.
Of course, any useful lines are blocked by all of the interests along the route. The line that did get built only got built because it was part of our bid for the Superbowl/Olympics.
EI
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