The different nations act like they’re not living on the same planet with each other. They treat unilateral emissions reduction as if it’s unilateral disarmament, something that will leave them vulnerable and at a disadvantage to the other nations. Instead of each acting on their own to head off impending irreversible crisis. Not waiting for someone else to go first is what’s in everyone’s interest. Unless they really believe separate countries are on separate planets.
Meanwhile in the U.S., fanatical ideologues deny the science- i.e. deny reality. They are politically dominant in the U.S. Weak leader Obama just goes with the flow, while occasionally emitting an insincere verbal ejaculation about the issue, to keep chump liberals with environmental concerns on his political boat. (An example of a demented fanatic is U.S. Senator James Inhofe. He regards truth as a commie plot and is so full of hate he would kill environmental activists and climate scientists if he could.)
Fortunately some are behaving more rationally. Europe has mandated itself to both increase energy efficiency and continue to roll out more non-petroleum-based energy production such as windmill and solar. Europeans already use much less energy per capita than Americans.
The Chinese rulers are having it both ways, going whole hog building coal-fired power plants (and nuclear ones, which have the problem of radioactive waste and risk of accidents) on one hand, while investing in alternative energy production and technology, especially solar.
China now emits more warming gases than the U.S., although less in per capita terms, as China’s population is over four times the U.S.’ (1.3 billion people vs. 300 million in U.S.).
But China is playing a spoiler role at the latest international climate change conference. (You might have been deceived by their seeming offer at the conference, but that was just for show; the “offer” –actually a PR ploy- is filled with deal-killing fine print.)
Speaking of air pollution, maybe the “Communist” Party bosses should look out their palace windows in Beijing at the foul-colored, unbreatheable air. Smog, and microparticulates, which the Government refuses to measure, are the big problems. (Data from the 1980s shows that living in Beijing shaves 5 years off life expectancy versus living in southern Chinese cities. The air is worse now, but the differential in life expectancy may be the same or less depending on what happened to the air in the comparison cities since. Source- NPR Morning Edition, 12/7/11.)
India, like China, is whining that it’s “unfair” that the U.S. and Europe got to burn a lot of fossil fuels for the past century and a half and develop economically, so India and China, with two and a half billion people, have to develop in exactly the same way. Environmental consequences be damned. (Are these people detached from reality? We are biologically entities dependent on our environment.) Hey man, sometimes Life is Unfair. Get over it. Cut a deal for technology transfers or subsidy payments or whatever, develop alternate energy production, whatever you have to do.
Brazil is boasting that the loss of Amazon rain forest is the lowest in years. That still means the Amazon rain forest (a carbon sink that absorbs carbon from the atmosphere, offsetting carbon spewed into the sky by burning fossil fuels and other activities) is shrinking. Plus land barons and ranchers continue to murder pesky activists who get in their way, with impunity.
Two bright spots and one dark one:
Australia passed a law mandating emissions controls, over the howls of certain business interests.
California is moving ahead under state law mandating emission reductions or purchase of offsets, despite economic distress. (One propaganda trope of global warming deniers- who are mislabeled “skeptics” by the corporate media, as if they are thought, rational critics, not ideologues with a selfish and destructive economic agenda- is that any restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions is economic death. In fact it is economically stimulating as it creates new activity, new technology, new business. The usual technofetishists who hail new technology as economic manna from heaven have a weird double standard when it comes to green technology. Maybe iPods will save us, or empty chatter on Twitter & Facebook.)
Canada, under its current reactionary regime, has instituted highly destructive policies, tearing up its land to get at filthy oil shale deposits, contributing disproportionately to carbon emissions in the exploitation, refining, and burning of that inefficient fuel. More coal-burning power plants are on the way. In every way, the Harper regime is hostile to ameliorating global warming. (Among its other crimes.)
The U.S. likes to beat its chest and bray that it’s the Leader of the World, or at least of the so-called “Free World.” (Ask the persecuted 11 million “illegal aliens” cowering in the U.S. how “free” that world is. You can’t even live where you want to, unless you’re rich, of course. Then you have “rights,” i.e. privileges of wealth.) A nation that leads would be setting an example for the world by cutting greenhouse gas emission. Especially the richest nation, with the worst record of emissions and wasteful energy consumption.
12/11/11 6 am BBC news- Climate change conference “agrees” to agree in 2020 on binding limits.
So if all goes according to plan, in nine more years they’ll agree to limit emissions. Inexplicably, BBC calls this a “breakthrough.”
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