Comments on: Stop blaming Bush

By: Chicken Little

Chicken Little — Mon, 21 Feb 2005 00:35:00 +0000

The sky is falling.

By: Meaders

Meaders — Thu, 17 Feb 2005 12:42:00 +0000

Depends who foots the bill - ExxonMobil shareholders, or your average Joe (who, admittedly, has had to foot every other bill for the last twenty-five years or so). That's the key bit.

The other thing to note is that support for Kyoto has actually risen under Bush. They're not winning this one, despite all the official hoo-ha about everyone having to abandon their SUVs, live in mud-huts, etc, if the environmental whackjobs get their way.

By: Mat

Mat — Wed, 16 Feb 2005 10:18:00 +0000

Yes Meaders, but how many of this 60+% would still say yes if you told them that it meant they have to give up a lot of their greedy lifestyle? It’s very easy to say you’re for the environment when it’s a fuzzy abstract, less so when you’re presented with the bill for your negative externalities.

By: Meaders

Meaders — Wed, 16 Feb 2005 08:28:00 +0000

…and, whilst I’m here, there is quite a distinction between what ordinary Americans think, and what their purported leaders in Washington think and do. This survey (PDF format, I’m afraid) suggests (Table 3) that 2/3 of the US public in 2002 thought improving the global environment should be a "very important" foreign policy goal for the US – up from 43% in 1998.

By: Meaders

Meaders — Wed, 16 Feb 2005 07:53:00 +0000

Yep, Blair's utterly crap on this: see this report.

Though pretty measly compared to the scale of the problem, the major achievement of Kyoto was to force the recognition on the world that political action can be taken against climate change. That's why the US government won't sign up to it, as much as anything the Protocol actually provides for.

On Republicans going green, people should have a look at this article on a peculiar neo-con/green convergence:

'The alliance of hawks and environmentalists is new but not entirely surprising. The environmentalists are worried about global warming and air pollution. But Woolsey and Gaffney—both members of the Project for the New American Century, which began advocating military action against Saddam Hussein back in 1998—are going green for geopolitical reasons, not environmental ones. They seek to reduce the flow of American dollars to oil-rich Islamic theocracies, Saudi Arabia in particular. Petrodollars have made Saudi Arabia too rich a source of terrorist funding and Islamic radicals. Last month, Gaffney told a conference in Washington that America has become dependent on oil that is imported from countries that, "by and large, are hostile to us." This fact, he said, makes reducing oil imports "a national security imperative."'

By: Matt Daws

Matt Daws — Wed, 16 Feb 2005 07:37:00 +0000

I think the idea of exempting China and India is that we can develop technology and policy from the position of being, frankly, able to pay for it, and then export these ideas (yes, probably at profit!) to the developing world. As an example, China actually *reduced* it’s emissions of Greenhouse gases during 1995-2000, even while it’s economy was growing massively. So the developed world can have an positive influence, even while China isn’t signed up to Kyoto.

A few points about John’s comments. Certainly Kyoto was shot down by the Senate, but my (vague) understanding is that Bush has pretty personally been involved in other "lets pollute as much as we like" policies. Also, we cannot just blame the US here: despite all the macho posturing, Tony Blair has done basically bugger all to seriously change the UK’s emissions: we’re going to miss our self-imposed targets, and no-one seems to care. Obviously this "we care, but we’re fucked if we’re going to do much" attitude is better than the US attitude of "who cares?", but not by much…

By: Rob Huxtable

Rob Huxtable — Wed, 16 Feb 2005 07:34:00 +0000

Let's look on the good side here. The absence of US and Australian agreement to Kyoto has further pressured them into taking action on the world stage. This is something far more powerful than letting them both enter Blair's proposed "Kyoto Lite". Now the world knows that they're not prepared to sacrifice indulgent lifestyles for the sake of the greater good.

And whilst John's point about how the rest of the world can no longer solely blame Bush, but also those people who put him in power, let's not forget how easily they were lied to...they were scared and he offered them comfort.

Now the environment is climbing up the world agenda. Who knows, perhaps the recent events such as the tsunami represent a timely reminder that a WMD is not and should not be our worst fear.

Even Republicans are now starting to take serious action with CO2 emmission reduction. There was a report on the Beeb site yesterday (would post a link but it appears down at the moment) showing how even if the US hasn't signed up to the "top down" Kyoto, there are signs that its happening "bottom up" at state level. Enough traction from the grass roots and Washington will soon have to create federal policy.

I'm know I'm painting a rosy picture here, but it really is not fair to say just because American's are out of Kyoto, it's all over. And Kyoto won't even save us anyway.

By: Carolyn

Carolyn — Wed, 16 Feb 2005 06:38:00 +0000

While I welcome the immensely overdue enforcement of the Kyoto protocol, in my eyes it seems little more than a token gesture: it is unlikely to have much of an impact on Greenhouse emmissions, seeing as the biggest culprit, the US, is not involved, and neither is Australia. But perhaps more significantly, developing countries such as China and India are also exempt.. the greenhouse emmissions in these countries are set to increase phenomenally over the next few decades as the process of industrialisation continues, which will surely eclipse any good arising from kyoto. Perhaps the protocol should be combined with encouraging such countried to embrace new environmentally friendly technologies in an effort to prevent future environmental contamination instead of merely reducing it through such schemes as kyoto. In my view, we need to be more proactive as opposed to reactionary: if we avoid future problems, we won’t have to devise protocols that take ages to enforce, and enforce incompletely at that, to rectify them. And I wish people would stop contesting the fact that global warming is a threat: look at the evidence and stop burying your heads in the sand! Humans are greedy and selfish and tend to view things in the short term: it’s about time we all opened our eyes and started rectifying the damage we have done before it destroys us. K, rant over ;)