US Opposes G8 Climate Proposals 845
elrond writes "The US appears to have summarily rejected draft proposals for G8 members that would have agreed to tougher measures for controlling greenhouse gas emissions. The BBC reports that leaked documents have indicated the positions of the various world powers, from the timetable-setting of Germany to the US's intractable stance. Red ink comments on the documents hint at the US's irritation: 'The US still has serious, fundamental concerns about this draft statement. The treatment of climate change runs counter to our overall position and crosses 'multiple red lines' in terms of what we simply cannot agree to ... We have tried to tread lightly but there is only so far we can go given our fundamental opposition to the German position.'"
Please Remember (Score:4, Informative)
Error... (Score:5, Informative)
Correction: The US Government.
Investigation at DOI (Score:5, Informative)
An investigation at the Department of the Interior (Manages US wildlands) has resulted in numerous resignations and may result in real domestic reform.
Accusations from leading scientists include:
Elimination of data regarding imperiled species in resource rich areas
Rubber stamping of logging permits on public lands without due process
Improper contact between dept administrators and corporate interests including the allowance of corporate influence on impact assessments
All of the allegations center around administrators who were placed by the Bush administration. Several highly placed scientists have left for the private sector and there may be an expose published. The elimination of data was egregious. Apparently data was not only removed from official reports, but other data was *actually* changed and whistleblowers were railroaded out.
Bet you five bucks this becomes a campaign issue if Gore decides to run.
Re:Hope for the future (Score:4, Informative)
Democracy: government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.
Republic: a state in which the supreme power rests in the body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by representatives chosen directly or indirectly by them.
(source for both defs, dictionary.com)
The difference is what, precisely? Other than that "republic" is a more precise term than "democracy" which is somewhat vague about the exact mechanism, nothing relevant.
Re:The 'Fundamental' concern... (Score:3, Informative)
I'm afraid you're flat wrong here.
The transportation and residential sectors combined make up more than half [doe.gov] of our greenhouse gas emissions. I'm not talking about the switch from a Tahoe to a Prius, but from a Tahoe to something like a Chevy Volt (sized for real-world use, of course). Given most people's driving patterns, that could cut our CO2 emissions from transportation by more than half. Similarly, I'm thinking about houses that are grid-neutral most of the time (think solar roofs, on-site windmills, or whatever else can help power houses in x climate). These switches would have a *huge* impact on our CO2 emissions and none whatsoever on our lifestyle, if the policy framework were in place to support them.
Re:Hope for the future (Score:3, Informative)
A republic is loosely modeled on the Roman republic, even though the Roman system, like the Spartan constitution to which the ancients compared it, was only superficially similar to modern republics like the U.S. The founders nonetheless saw in Rome (and Sparta) many ideas worthy of imitation: separation of powers; aspects of monarchy (president), aristocracy (legislature), and democracy (the voting public); term limits.
The key distinction in the modern sense is this: while Americans do elect their representatives, presidents, some judges, and local officials, they do not do so directly. The process is made indirect through the party system and the electoral college. And once the representatives, senators, and president are in power they are not immediately subject to the whims of those who elected them. The idea, for better or worse, is to introduce a measure of stability and keep the government out of the hands of the unwashed masses.
Those who argue that the people's representatives must obey the volatile wishes of their constituencies once in office would do well to read more about Athens and learn where that road leads.
Re:What about China and India? (Score:2, Informative)
See bottom of this page:
http://www.footprintnetwork.org/gfn_sub.php?conte
Double standards? Double USAGE you mean!
Re:Bad USA! Bad! (Score:2, Informative)
Please, listen to the state governors (yes, that's Arnie) and not the muppets in DC. Things are changing here.
Re:sanctions are inevitable (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/economicim
http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=7850 [mackinac.org]
http://www.cei.org/gencon/003,05907.cfm [cei.org]
Re:sanctions are inevitable (Score:3, Informative)
And nothing has changed in the world since 1945, right? France was instrumental in securing USA as am independent country. I think that action is far more interesting and yet, Americans hate the French while you should be kissing their ass and thank them for USA.
Re:sanctions are inevitable (Score:3, Informative)
The monopoly problem is usually "semi-solved" by having virtual providers. Switching gas companies doesn't mean getting a new pipe laid between your home and the competitors refinery, instead you keep using the local utility provider's pipelines and pay the competitor who are then charged a wholesale rate by the utility provider
Re:sanctions are inevitable (Score:5, Informative)
I think that you yourself are being a little egotistical. While the EU is indeed a larger market, it has many of the same problems that the United States market has. I would like to point out that in the EU, you manufacture very little these days, as does the United States. On my visits to nations in the EU, I have found the label which says "Fabriqué en Chine" or "Hergestellt in China" or whatever language you choose on many many products.
As for our currency, while its value is decreasing slowly, you exaggerate. It is not "worth so little" today, and I will also point out that if the United States stops investment in the world, the resultant situation would not be pleasant.
Re:unfair standards (Score:3, Informative)
The Group of Eight (G8) is an international forum for the governments of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Together, these countries represent about 65% of the world economy.
The G8 is a group of the richest countries in the world and they get together to discuss matters between them. If they can't be arsed to cut emissions, what right do they have to impose them on other countries that aren't even in their little clique? The G8 should be deciding between them how to deal with issues that affect them, such as global warming, trade and such.
If Germany can reduce their emissions by 17%, the UK by 14% and France by 0.8% between 1990 and 2004 (Their targets were 8%), the US should be able to reduce their emissions too (They increased by 16%).
But to say:
i remember the last g8 thing demanded major reform from usa while ignoring third world countries. if this is still the case, i could understand not wanting anything to do with it.
Basically, "Why should i if they won't", what do you recon the 3rd world countries are going to say? "If the US is allowed to do as they please, why aren't we?". It's an incredibly selfish way of countering the fact the US isn't doing anything major to reduce emissions but you shouldn't blame them because other countries aren't either.
Re:sanctions are inevitable (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, in a completely artificial statistic (GDP per ton of CO2). If you look at tons of CO2 per capita, the US pollutes more per person than China.
Re:sanctions are inevitable (Score:5, Informative)
As to your point about currency, you need to read up on international finance, my friend. China has us completely by the balls in terms of foreign reserves, and if the constant rumors about the teetering dollar ever spook them into switching even a small portion of that into gold or euros, a major, painful readjustment in the exchange rate would result, and it would not be pleasant for the American economy.
Re:sanctions are inevitable (Score:3, Informative)
Is it really fair to count CO2 per capita when comparing countries where one still has a significant percentage of their population that are still mostly subsidence farmers? And have the lifespan and quality of life that hasn't changed much for the last thousand years?
Many of the plants China is building today aren't much cleaner than what was built in the USA 40 years ago. They're going through their industrial revolution much as we did, though I believe that it'll be quicker and easier for them because they have our example to go by. IE they can skip many steps.
I believe that this is also part of the reason for stagnant wages in the USA and the rest of the developed world. In a free market system things tend to even out, and our wages are very high compared to developing nations. Thus, business tends to shift there. I think that if we're lucky, we'll manage to stay about even, maybe even gain due to technology advances. But we won't be seeing leaps forward until the developing countries catch up to us, wage wise.
Re:Hope for the future (Score:2, Informative)
A Republic is a type of state, like a kingdom or an emirate."
You are so way off it's not even funny.
Re:Please Remember (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, since they consequently lacked anything to domesticate, they stayed at the hunter-gatherer tribal state for the next 20 000 years and were eventually driven off their land and killed into near-extinction by foreign invaders and their domestication-originated diseases.
You could had picked a better example for your case :).
Re:sanctions are inevitable (Score:3, Informative)
Considering the enormous amount of goods imported every day from China to us here in the US..
I'd say where responsible for a good chunk of that too.
Sarkozy already targeting China (Score:3, Informative)
--
US solar power: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Re:Trees are renewable (Score:5, Informative)
Trees are the ultimate renewable resource because the more you harvest, the more area you have to replant them. It's not like, say, fish, where the more you harvest, the less there are to reproduce and replenish their stocks. The reason the world is losing forested area is because sustenance farmers are able to grow food and cash crops on cleared land, while harvesting trees is not as economically attractive. So they burn the trees down to clear land.
The U.S. only accounts for 24% of the world's carbon emissions. The U.S. also accounts for 28% of the world's economic production. In other words, the rest of the world is less efficient than the U.S. at producing value per ton of CO2 released [wikipedia.org]. Europe is by far more efficient and the U.S. should try to learn from them, but these attempts to paint the U.S. as the sole bogeyman are horribly misguided. If the U.S. were to disappear overnight, by the time the world economy grew back to the level it's at today, there would be more CO2 emissions than before the U.S. disappeared!Also, trying to pin blame on a country by country basis makes no sense (aside from a policy perspective) because each nation has a different size and different population. On a per capita basis (CO2 emissions per person), the U.S. is not at the top [wikipedia.org], and there are several developed nations who are right up there with the U.S.
Finally, in terms of forest and protected forest, the U.S. has far more than all of Europe combined [unep-wcmc.org], nearly 1.7x as much in terms of area, and more than 3x as much per capita. In the above hypothetical scenario where the U.S. disappeared overnight, 7.6% of the world's forests and 9.6% of the world's protected forests would disappear as well.
What's needed to get us out of this mess is a systemic plan which address all aspects of the problem, not trying to single out sole nations for blame. If you do that, as we found out with Kyoto, the nation singled out will simply choose not to play ball. The developed nations need to set and meet energy efficiency goals (the U.S., Canada, and Australia especially). They also need to invest R&D money in non-carbon based energy sources. Environmentalists in these countries need to accept that nuclear is a much, much better option than spewing out millions of tons of carbon and other pollutants by burning fossil fuels. Developing nations need to restrict behaviors which are cheap in labor but expensive in carbon emissions (e.g. slash and burn). They will need economic and organizational aid from the developed world to help them establish economies which are not based on these behaviors.
Not my President (Score:3, Informative)
Re:sanctions are inevitable (Score:3, Informative)
All of them has a very healthy mix of the best from socialism and from capitalism. As a Norwegian, I should know, I made a fortune in the 70's and 80's on oil and computers and I'm now more or less retired here in Florida. Socialistic! LOL! You have no clue!
All the Scandinavian countries have a huge private business and some state run, but very few compared to what is owned by shareholders.
For your information, there are no socialistic European countries, none.
And I was in Berlin during the fall of the Berlin wall. I celebrated my birthday there with chipping away and I have a few bits of it. DDR no longer exists and they were not socialistic either, they were a dictatorship in case you don't know.
Re:It's fragile, and about to break (Score:5, Informative)
Recently a Canadian university release a study on the GHG and the proxy measurements. It seem that most of the early global warming studies cherry picks information in order to make the case for a rising Co2 level in the early 20th century.
In contrast, I can give you a good link that explains why the arguments you make about CO2 and other criticisms are wrong -- last week's New Scientist http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth
That's one of the reasons the global warming scientists are right and their critics are wrong -- the scientists cite sources, the critics don't. That's a good sign the scientists are right.
When you try to separate good science from pseudoscience, look for citations, folks. That's the lesson.
Re:A dangerous rogue nation (Score:3, Informative)
Man-made CO2 may NOT be the cause of global warmin (Score:4, Informative)
re: Link to the leaked document (Score:2, Informative)
http://weblog.greenpeace.org/makingwaves/G8%20Sum
The US stance is purely because the US government knows it would ruin its own fragile economy by doing something about our global ecology. The US government would rather make a buck, and screw the world, than save the world and lose economical face. Funny eh?
The world now needs to recognise the US stance and take full economic sanctions against the US government and US industry. Sadly, this will hurt the average American, but this is your own fault for allowing the type of government to lead your people. You've had one revolution in the past, it is time for another, so that true democracy is returned to the people of the United States of America. That's my honest appraisal.
Cheers,
Dave
Re:Greenpeace... (Score:2, Informative)
Note that Patrick Moore left Greenpeace because it's no longer dealing with the environment: "See, I don't even like to call it the environmental movement any more, because really it is a political activist movement, and they have become hugely influential at a global level" [wikipedia.org]. Greenpeace isn't about the environment, it's about a social movement aimed at establishing a particular political view.
I'd encourage you to read his Wikipedia entry - quite enlightening about what a true environmentalist - one who believes in it so strongly he founded Greenpeace and Greenpeace International - thinks about the modern Greenpeace and other "environmental" organizations.
Re:China, Brasil, India, Indonesia (Score:5, Informative)
For some other sources, check this graphic [grida.no] for per-capita emissions in 2002. For the US, we have about 19.8 tons, while for China it's about 2.2 tons. Using the CIA World Factbook [cia.gov] for current population numbers, we get:
Of course, there is also Wikipedia:
Al Gore himself made it clear in 97 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:China, Brasil, India, Indonesia (Score:3, Informative)
FYI, according to the Washington Post [washingtonpost.com], the US is reducing its carbon emissions -- at least when the weather cooperates.
What I would like to know is this: what evidence is there that reducing our carbon emissions now will affect global warming?
Re:China, Brasil, India, Indonesia (Score:2, Informative)
How come that isn't a problem here ? I'm not talking about raising the price of crude oil, just increasing the tax on gasoline at the pump.
Over here (the netherlands) most transportation is done by trucks, running on diesel, not gasoline. Diesel is a lot cheaper (per liter) over here than gasoline the difference is in the road tax (diesel cars pay more yearly road tax but less per liter). And anyways, the road tax for companies is a lot less than for private citizens. So this all doesn't affect transportation costs as much as you'd think.
I thought the US didn't care about the poor ? Besides, you don't actually need a car, it's a luxury item.
But if doom and gloom will result from raising tax on gasoline, how come it isn't a problem in Europe. (I pay $7,50 / gallon for gas b.t.w. and according to the CIA world factbook the Netherlands had 1.4% inflation in 2006 compared to 2.5% in the US )