Under the Kyoto Protocol, Poland and Russia were handed free carbon permits to allow their heavy industries to continue to operate. But when Eastern European industry collapsed, the permits - which have a financial value - were not needed. At this point they became "hot air", with the potential to be sold to other nations. This undermines the regime of cutting emissions overall.They'd get just as far moving towared a compromise which would restrict the future sale of snake oil, no?
Poland has refused to surrender its permits. The EU has been heavily criticized for allowing this loophole but it's also been trying to avoid any more internal diplomatic crises. So it looks to be moving towards a compromise which will restrict the future sale of "hot air".
Friday, December 7, 2012
Few Takers for Doha "Hot Air"
This bit, from a Beeb report about the Doha climate conference, gave me a chuckle:
The whole anthropogenic global warming hysteria has been a multi-level con-game (albeit with religious overtones) from its inception.
ReplyDeleteI write "multi-level" because, for the Western Leftist political and intellectual classes, it is a ploy to induce the sweaty, smelly masses to surrender fundamental freedoms to said classes, whereas for Third World kleptocrats it is the latest "development" scheme to funnel wealth from the pockets of Western taxpayers to the Swiss, Singaporean, etc. bank accounts of the kleptos.
The religious overtones--reminiscent of such overtly religious cons as "Father" Divine's International Peace Mission Movement--are necessary to create a critical mass of zealots who will go to the mat economically and politically for the dogmas of the faith, pulling in a much larger number of go-along-to-get-along types in the amen corner.
The good news, as your post notes, is that hard economic times make this sort of thing a harder sale than would otherwise be the case. (Although, unfortunately, much of the damage to the West's economy has already been done.)
Flogging hot air seems the height of lunacy. Thankfully, as you point out, it holds far less appeal when the economy's in the tank. At least Canada, like the proverbial cheese, stands alone, having opted out of the Kyoto flimflam.
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