BBC environmental correspondent Richard Black is reporting on a new environmental proposal “to rival Kyoto” to be promulgated by the US and Australia as early as Thursday. The proposal would focus on free technology transfer and includes rapidly-growing China and India as sponsors. At first glance this seems much more promising than Kyoto, which barely got any votes in Congress from either side of the aisle, despite the brouhaha.
Australia’s Enivronment Minister Ian Campbell said: “We’re going to have a 40% increase in emissions under the Kyoto Protocol, and the world needs a 50% reduction. We’ve got to find something that works better.”
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15 Comments
1. RBMN:At some point, as cleaner alternative-energy technology gets better and cheaper, the environmentally-friendly solution is going to be just a bit more expensive than the old way that created the unacceptable level of pollution. I’m sure there will be instances where wealthier countries will want to push poorer countries over that technology threshold, with subsidies of some kind, that make it easier for them to jump ahead. But beyond that, only the free market works to solve these problems. People need something in return for spending the extra money. When individuals decide that they don’t like breathing and sweeping soot from everything, that’s when they stop building coal furnaces. Not before.
Jul 27, 2005 - 9:21 am 2. quickrob:Quote from BBC: “Australia and the United States
are the two major industrialised countries which have not ratified the Kyoto Protocol, claiming it would damage their economies.”
China doesnt qualify as industrialized? What standard is there?
Jul 27, 2005 - 9:53 am 3. Foobarista:China actually has ratified, but – along with India – has the get-out-of-jail-free card that is the main reason Kyoto is a nonstarter.
Jul 27, 2005 - 9:58 am 4. Skookumchuk:RBMN:
Or start building clean coal powerplants. The US has the equivalent of three or four Saudi Arabias in its proven coal reserves, depending on who you ask and how you count. And the Australians in particular have made great strides in “clean coal” technology. In 20 years or less, we will be digging anthracite out of the East again like crazy and cleaning up all that dirty stuff coming out of Wyoming. A lot has to happen first to make that possible, but clean coal is probably the most practical and safest alternative to imported oil.
Jul 27, 2005 - 10:11 am 5. quickrob:Foobarista, thanks.
Jul 27, 2005 - 10:31 am 6. Skookumchuk:. . . the most practical and safest short term alternative to imported oil. While largely for power prodcution, you can turn it into gasoline also, as the Germans and apartheid-era South Africans did, only now much more efficiently.
Much of Project Independence was about this possibility, back in the energy crisis days. Time to dust that one off and have another look.
Jul 27, 2005 - 11:08 am 7. Terrye:I am glad to hear this. I hope they can come up with something useful.
Jul 27, 2005 - 5:36 pm 8. Macker:So what do we call this alternative proposal? Any suggestions?
Jul 27, 2005 - 10:32 pm 9. M. Simon:Recently global warming has been detected on Mars.
And yet I se no clamor to do anything about it. Doesn’t any one care about environmental problems on Mars? It is part of our neighborhood too.
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Seriously folks – current estimates are that increased solar output may account for 80 – 90% of global warming. And we haven’t yet recovered from the little ice age of the 1500s.
OTOH Scientific American did an article saying man’s increased introduction of CO2 into the environment may be preventing an ice age.
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Which is to say no one at this point knows what the hell is really going on or what to do about it.
And yet we have a consensus politically based on very weak science.
The Alternative View
So yeah. Let us spend tens or hundreds of trillions to fix this. Dampers on the sun is the answer. For sure. Or space reflectors if the sun’s output is declining. We have got to do something to prove we care.
The sky is definitely falling or heating up as you will.
Jul 27, 2005 - 10:54 pm 10. M. Simon:Why this? Why now?
The Ghobi Desert in China is expanding at an astounding rate due to poor Chinese environmental practices. In addition they are poisioning their citizens due to factory pollution.
So yeah they want some free help. Who wouldn’t?
I’d be willing to pay the price if the Communist Party quit running the place. Other wise: let them use the profits they have earned selling goods to the world to clean up their own mess.
Any one remember Oil for Palaces? Any one at all?
Jul 27, 2005 - 11:03 pm 11. M. Simon:This project amounts to a military subsidy to China. Is that a good idea? For a country that has threatened the USA with a nuking over Taiwan.
Swell. Just swell.
Jul 27, 2005 - 11:11 pm 12. M. Simon:Macker,
I propose we call it “Steal from the Americans” subtitle: “they are suckers”
Jul 27, 2005 - 11:14 pm 13. Sandy P:Instapundit has this via Rand Simburg(?) a couple of months ago, he went to the big South American conference and Kyoto was dead, dead, dead.
These tidbits are useful to bash the Europeans/”the world” with.
I keep such weird stuff in my head. I wish I knew where I put things in the house.
Jul 27, 2005 - 11:48 pm 14. Michael Hammer:testing
Aug 3, 2005 - 8:51 am 15. Michael Hammer:testing
Aug 3, 2005 - 8:52 am