The Galloping Beaver
l o w w h i s t l e
"Great Minds" and all that.
I had just finished reading David Sassoon's blog intro and sent this (edited) post out to my "peeps" here in the States when your post popped up.
Somehow I know that the video of this portion of the meeting would not be shown on the MSM here . . . .
Note that the US has not signed into the original Kyoto agreement. It was on the outside looking in.
The Bali framework will bring the US on board after 2009. Note the date, this makes it three years before the 2012 deadline of Kyoto.
And to think that people were saying Canada simply had to sign on without any of the real emitters signing on. Thanks to our constant and unwavering pressure and consistent and pragmatic approach (the while world has to do this, not just the few who aren't the problem anymore), we've made others realize the same.
Perhaps some like the US need a shaming. You know what? China and India do too.
No mealy words about how we polluted for years blah blah and so we have to ruin our economies for the benefit of developed nations like China.
Yes, developed. Any nation which is building coal and nuclear power plants at a rate which we can only dream, is well-armed both in a conventional and nuclear sense, has a space program, has weaponized space (to no screams of horror from the left, I might add), is building aircraft carriers (why, I wonder? For a strike on Japan? Canada? We'd stand no chance against China if they struck us, none whatsoever.) and manufactures most of the world's (shoddiest) products is not a developing nation. That is a cloud of smoke designed by secretive investors and considered fanciful by the left in order to continue investments in a nation where human rights don't apply, safety standards and manufacturing standards are something to ignore except when someone is looking and international scrutiny is all but impossible to achieve except in the most scripted sense.
So yes, I've extremely proud of our government for sticking to its guns, for withstanding intense international pressure to sign some paper to make a very few people feel good about themselves and continue the work to bring the major industrial polluters onside.
bubbzy:
Of course you waited until this thread had gone quiet before providing that nonsense. Everyone keeps talking about how economically devastating implementing such restrictions are among you Conservative Global Warming deniers, yet you never deal with the costs economically of simply letting things go on as they are. We know that there is major melting at the poles, which releases more water increasing the risk of flooding globally even of whole nations in the Pacific, and worse reduces our albedo causing less sunlight to be reflected away and more to be retained. There are already enough indications that if left unchecked we will see far more economically damaging costs than doing things like Kyoto.
Consider it like the difference in cost between paying attention to an engine warning light and taking it in for maintenance that costs you some money or ignoring it until the engine burns out and you are looking at far more costly repairs, indeed if repair is possible and you are forced to junk the car instead. In this case though junking the car is not an option unless you know of another planet we can live on at the moment or even in the near future. You are advocating trusting that the light is busted and not actually reading a real problem, which in the case of the car is bad enough but not a fatal mistake by its nature, in the case of significant rapid (in geological terms) climate shift which is what you are courting with your recommended approach it is highly probable to be fatal for civilization if not the entire species. The planet will survive, some life will and other forms will evolve but Homo sapiens won't be there to see any of it. Call me selfish, but I think that is too high a price just to satisfy this Conservative inability to make sacrifices before already being over the cliff. I think most of the opponents of the deniers like you would basically agree with that assessment.
BTW, your boy Baird failed in his agenda at the Conference in Bali. He prevented targets from being mentioned anywhere in the final product, while it may be a footnote that is more than he wanted and was applauded for when he finally didn't oppose it by the representative of the other nations after doing so for a fortnight, and he failed to make developing countries have to take deep cuts despite trying oh so hard. So you are proud of a failure, which shows both your pride in failure if it is your side failing and it shows your inability to understand the true costs economic and more to playing the obstructionist.
There are some bets where it is survivable to end up being wrong in reducing the risks of something being possible/happening, and there are times when that way risks more than any sane human being should, the survival of the entire species. Nice choosing the latter you git.
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