"Gore was the US negotiator for the international Kyoto Protocol that set global goals on emission of so-called greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, produced by the burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal. The protocol was agreed in 1997 and took effect in February 2005, but Bush refused to ratify it, citing its high economic cost and the fact that China and India, the world's largest producers of greenhouse gases after the United States were, as developing nations, not bound by it. "
Hey, folks, hate to tell y'all, but it wasn't Bush who "refused to ratify it", it never came to a vote in the Senate for ratification (who's constitutional responsibility is treaty ratification, with the addition of a presidential signature). While Vice-President Gore was negotiating our economic surrender, the Senate passed the Byrd-Hagel Resolution refusing to participate in any scheme that doesn't include developing nations. Was the vote close? Was it just those nasty Republicans holding out? If you don't know the answers to those questions, then you've been believing everything you read (95-0 against Kyoto was the result, in case you don't remember).
Also, since 1997, the United States has done much better than Western Europe at reducing the rate of increase in carbon emissions, even while having a more robust economy. The only way the EU can claim meeting Kyoto as a whole is by pushing the origination dates for measurement back to 1990 and incorporating their formerly Eastern Bloc members in the calculations. Given the past polluting habits of Warsaw Pact nations, it was natural for those nations to see vast improvements over short time periods.
Not only is Kyoto dubious in its likely effect (given that any 'carbon' savings in the developed world would be dwarved by 'carbon' increases in China and India as they prosper), but the game was rigged from the very start to punish the United States and institute a new global bureaucracy (led by the Europeans, naturally) of 'carbon police' who would go about punishing anybody not meeting their rather arbitrary standards.
The United States has acted better on the environment than the various scolds hating on us. Furthermore, excluding the 2.4 billion folks in India and China who are playing catch-up in terms of energy consumption (again Canada and India have roughly energy use parity, while China's per capita access to kWh is miniscule).
Pres. Clinton did the right thing in ignoring this idiotic, ineffective, and hypocritical new push by Eurocrats to impose a new set of penalties on countries that don't jump through their hoops. Vice-President Gore did an awful job at pushing for a workable agreement and framework that would recognize the realities of the situation. His 'signature' on the Protocol is just an empty gesture from an empty headed politician (how many other Vice-Presidents went around signing Protocols/Treaties?).
Grrrrr, Arrgggggh.
This crap makes me pre-verbal. The wiki on this is surprisingly fair-minded, I guess the Kyoto Protocol is so ridiculous that they can't help but expose it's hypocrisy.
But, mainly I'm a little sick of wire services like the Agence France Press not only pushing their agenda through a purported 'hard news' story, but getting their facts wrong in the process.
You're entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.
If this was the greatest, most dire threat to mankind since we first rubbed sticks together and harnessed fire, you'd think that candidate Gore would have made it central to his 2000 presidential campaign. Instead he ran away from his self-created image of "Al Gore, Savior of the Planet, Great Gleaner of All That's Green, and Portentious Potentate of Pollution Preventing Policy".
At least the AFP admitted in the article that he was defeated in the 2000 election, that's progress.
No comments:
Post a Comment