God, this climate change shit just pisses me off more and more every day.
China and India should be spared the full burden of fighting climate change, the United Nations said on Tuesday in an agenda-setting report published just days ahead of an intergovernmental conference to agree to a successor to the Kyoto protocols.The report of the UN Development Programme recommends that countries such as China and India should be required to reduce their emissions by only 20 per cent by 2050, while the rich industrialised countries shoulder a cut of 80 per cent.
The report will provide ammunition for developing countries wishing to avoid adopting stringent targets on emissions. China, India and others have argued that rich countries should carry more responsibility for the climate because most of the stock of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere came from the growth of their industry. {...}
Did you get that? China and India would only have to reduce emissions by 20%, whereas the rest of the developed world should have to reduce their emissions by 80%. You know, because climate change is the result of our industrial growth, not theirs.
Saving India for another time, let's keep in mind that this is the same China with whom both the US and EU have trade deficits, not surpluses. The same China that's hosting the Olympic Games next summer and is doing so, partly, to show off how "developed" their country has become over the past twenty years or so. This is the same China that has a freakin' moon program. This is same China that is currently set to pass the US as the worst polluter in 2010. And, most importantly, this is the same China that's currently ruining my niece's Christmas whimsies because most of the toys on the shelves are produced there and her mother won't let her have any because of safety concerns.
Leaving aside the fact that man-made climate change has yet to be conclusively proven, why on earth is this country getting a pass? China's not developing. It's developed. If they've got a freakin' space program that should be a big fat honking clue that they're not hurting for cash. They can go on and on about how they're not to blame for this supposed round of climate change, but what will their excuse be for the next great environmental disaster to befall the world? Because at the rate they're sucking up natural resources, and the slip-shod manner they're using to do so, whatever comes down the pike will be their fault.
What will they say to get themselves off the hook then?
Posted by Kathy at November 28, 2007 11:32 AM | TrackBackThe Kyoto Protocol: The U.S. versus the World?
Using a variety of public opinion polls over a number of years and from a number of countries this paper revisits the questions of crossnational public concern for global warming first examined over a decade ago. Although the scientific community today speaks out on global climatic change in essentially a unified voice concerning its anthropogenic causes and potential devastating impacts at the global level, it remains the case that many citizens of a number of nations still seem to harbor considerable uncertainties about the problem itself. Although it could be argued that there has been a slight improvement over the last decade in the public’s understanding regarding the anthropogenic causes of global warming, the people of all the nations studied remain largely uniformed about the problem. In a recent international study on knowledge about global warming, the citizens of Mexico led all fifteen countries surveyed in 2001 with just twenty-six percent of the survey respondents correctly identifying burning fossil fuels as the primary cause of global warming. The citizens of the U.S., among the most educated in the world, where somewhere in the middle of the pack, tied with the citizens of Brazil at fifteen percent, but slightly lower than Cubans. In response to President Bush’s withdrawal of the Kyoto Protocol in 1991, the U.S. public appears to be far more supportive of the action than the citizens of a number of European countries where there was considerable outrage about the decision.
Carlos Menendez
http://www.segurosmagazine.es
And your point would be?
Posted by: Kathy at November 29, 2007 09:36 AM"...correctly identifying burning fossil fuels as the primary cause of global warming."
That's like saying that Americans are idiots because less than 3% of them believe in the Tooth Fairy. It's only relevant if the existence of the Tooth Fairy is an established fact.
This comment's gotta have the lowest fact/word ratio of anything I've ever seen on the interwebthingy.
Posted by: Russ from Winterset at November 29, 2007 10:10 AMPlus, it TOTALLY sucks balls.
Posted by: Eric Cartman from Winterset at November 29, 2007 10:11 AM