U.N. Climate Klatch Today, Bush Plays Hookey
by Jasmin Malik Chua, Jersey City, USA on 09.24.07
While heads of state and other top officials from more than 150 countries are meeting today at the United Nations to build momentum for end-of-year climate negotiations in Bali, one notable no-show rankles: President Bush will be skipping all of the day's events but the dinner.
The informal high-level event, which takes place in New York City the day before the opening of the U.N. General Assembly's annual General Debate, aims to "facilitate an exchange of views and to galvanize political will" for the Climate Change Conference to be held in Bali in December 2007. A follow-up to Kyoto summit in 1997, the Bali meeting is expected to advance a comprehensive global agenda on climate-change policy for the years following 2012.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Bush will instead be hosting his own gathering of world leaders in Washington later next week, a meeting with the same stated goal—to reduce the carbon emissions blamed for climate change—but an entirely different tack on how to achieve it.
According to his aides, Bush hopes to persuade the nations that produce 90 percent of the world's emissions to come to a consensus that will allow each, including the United States (natch), to have the latitude to determine its own policies, rather than having limits imposed by any pesky international treaties. This approach sets the stage for another hold-out by the United States to agree to any binding international agreement intended to slow or reverse the emissions linked to rising temperatures.
"It's our philosophy that each nation has the sovereign capacity to decide for itself what its own portfolio of policies should be," said James Connaughton, Bush's chief environmental adviser, tells the Chronicle. ::The San Francisco Chronicle
I want to say a lot, but there's nothing I can say now that I haven't said already. I'm shaking my head in disgust. Truly, truly, does this man have no shame at all?
Absolutely ridiculous...I don't know why I am surprised still to this day about news like this. I wonder if he actually believes the words he spews these days...as dumb as Bush is he must still know right from wrong, I just don't know how he lives with himself for all "his" decisions in the past...
You know UN sanctions work so well maybe a toothless agreement with foreign oversight will serve the environment well?! Get real! The governments of asia have ignored children/human rights and virtually everything that is sold in this country is made there. So what sanctions would be imposed on them for breaking Kyoto. None. And if Kyoto imposed sanctions they would be ignored. There are much better ways to support the greening of the planet. Growing bureacracy is expensive and kills trees (hat tip to our blog host). The time and money could be used more effectively finding funding/funding materials and other tech research (battery nodes, carbon fiber, motors, etc). Example, Cyclone Power, a Florida company, has refined 100 year old technology to create a viable engine more efficient than any ICE and with near zero emissions (running on Hydrogen, e85, or even diesel), give them .01% of what we spend on the UN every year and you'll do alot more for the planet and global stability than any international treaty could.
http://www.cyclonepower.com/
When I was nine I had a revelation; I was sure we could save the Earth if we could just invent fusion power source!
Then, when I was fourteen my global issues teacher said something even more ground breaking, she said that at some point we need to put aside the idea that technology can solve all of our problems.
If carbon emissons are the source of our problems, shouldn't we look first to limit their production, rather than put world on a time limit while we rush for a technological solution?
If International treaties are truely ineffective we does our country run so quickly from them? Governments want to look good in front of their citizens and allies.
Human rights in China are one thing, but carbon emissions can be scientifically measured, and their major sources pinpointed.
Not that wasteful spending isn't a shame though......
You make a good point, Redletter. Perhaps, the reason we run away from treaties is because politically there is much more heat internally/externally if Washington fails to comply with treaties we have signed. On the other hand, the governments of China and India are not subject to the same pressures. They have pressure though, the pressure to catch up economically. This pressure; will not allow them to abide by international agreements that curb their carbon emissions (relative to their growth).
Of course, the West can use their consumption as a weapon for a cleaner environment. If we design and buy clean tech it will make this same technology available to developing countries at costs that will allow them to leapfrog over some of the mistakes the west has made.
Environmental activism is fine, I guess. But, the French are building more nuclear power plants than the US (not counting military applications, activist couldn't slow that trend). And if we make nuclear power safer, cleaner, and cheaper so will the Chinese. Nuclear is cleaner than coal, n'est-ce pas?!
There was a woman at the TED conference last year who's figured out how to make cook fuel from corn waste (cheaper and cleaner than the wood used in most of the third world) . If she's successful she'll save over a million lives a year lost to smoke inhalation AND; clean up the environment. The person that gets the business model to work for this woman will do more for the world than Al Gore ever dreamed of doing. Okay, I'm starting to rant and I haven't even mentioned the outlaw of DDT and the millions of Africans who have been lost to Malaria.
If you really want to help the environment don't major in diplomacy major in business. If you understand the money the politics are easy enough to figure out.