China, Russia, & Cuba Seem To Agree With Competitive Enterprise Institute
by John Laumer, Philadelphia on 04.19.07
Via Financial Times:- "China and an alliance of developing countries yesterday launched a concerted attack against the right of the United Nations Security Council to debate climate change. The move came at a landmark meeting at which the UK had sought to cast global warming as a threat to international peace." China and a list of other developing nations, including Cuba and Pakistan, insisted that climate change had nothing to do with security. The money quote:- "Vitaly Churkin [pictured], the Russian ambassador, dismissed the sense of urgency and issued an "appeal against panicking and over-dramatising the situation"." Not being adept UN watchers we're not sure what the developing nation strategy is, but this development does smack of the old "you got your's and now we're going to get our's and you can't stop us" approach. We wonder, also, if the news about the latest IPCC report is really making it to the developing world audience, whether citizens and leaders have even have full access to information. Inconveniently enough, Inconvenient Truth is English-only. As for our headline, here's what the Competitive Enterprise Institutes latest work product has to say on Mr Gore: "Nearly every significant statement Gore makes regarding climate science and climate policy is either one sided, misleading, exaggerated, speculative, or just plain wrong."
This is exactly the conundrum Paul M Kennedy wrote about 13 years ago in "Preparing for the Twenty-First Century". Why on earth (!) should the developing world not get what we already have? Unless we start dramatically diminishing our consumption (and our wealth, GDP, etc), developing nations will only laugh at our posturing.