The EU Turns Its Back on Bush

Poor little Georgie Bush can’t get no respect anymore. Folks just aren’t at the Clown Prince’s beck and call today.

Shrub got bitchslapped in Bali today by the European Union whose reps sent a message to the little peckerhead that they won’t be showing up for his “Major Economies Meeting” in Hawaii next month unless the US gets with the programme at the Bali climate summit.

Germany’s enviromin, Sigmar Gabriel, put the EU position bluntly, “No result in Bali means no Major Economies Meeting.”

“The best we hoped for was that the U.S. would not hobble the rest of the world from moving forward,” said Kevin Knobloch, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a non-profit American organization. “Our delegation here from the States has not been able to meet that low level of expectation.”

The head of the American delegation, levitating over the facts, said America is working very hard to achieve consensus – there’s no question there. Unfortunately by consensus she means capitulation and by climate plan she means stay the course.

 

No Caps for Washington/Ottawa

The United States has said it will not accept mandatory carbon caps at the Bali summit. It says it will come up with its own plan instead, some time around mid-2008. Yeah, right. Our sunken eyed, knuckle-dragging Enviromin, John Baird, then jumped in on cue to say that Canada wouldn’t sign any pact that didn’t include the US. Baird compared a binding carbon deal without the US to unilateral nuclear disarmament. He said it would amount to “environmental Armageddon” to ink a deal that didn’t impose binding targets on China and India.

My question. The intransigence of Washington and Ottawa is so transparent and disingenuous why did Baird and his American counterpart, Harlan Watson, even go to Bali at all? Oh yeah, I forgot, they needed to be there to torpedo any chance that the rest of the world might reach a deal without them.

Scumbags. They really are scumbags.

 

Another Hollow Argument

The anti-Kyoto crowd like to mock Canadian action to cut GHG emissions as meaningless. They point out that we’re so small that a significant cut here would make no noticeable difference globally. It’s not that they don’t get it, these clowns choose not to get it.

There are times when the community of nations must act collectively. We sent squadrons upon squadrons of fighters and bombers to England in the Second World War and yet we were never threatened by German bombs. For decades Canada led the international peacekeeping effort in places like the Gaza Strip and Cyprus and yet they weren’t particularly significant to Canada.

What was significant to Canada was the peace and health of the world. That’s why we’ve sent our soldiers in harm’s way so often and why we’ve contributed to global foreign aid. We recognize that everyone wins, Canada very much included, from a healthy, stable world.

There are other ways to look at this situation. If we can lower our per capita GHG emissions by 20 per cent it will be equal to ten times as many Africans eliminating their GHG emissions completely.

When it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, Canadians are pigs at the trough. We’re second only to Americans. You cannot imagine what global warming would be like if the Indians and the Chinese reached per capita GHG emission levels a quarter of our own.

Let’s see, we want to lecture them about what they must do. The problem is, when we have our snouts buried deep in the slops, it’s hard to make out what we’re saying.

 

Another Global Warming Problem – Shipping

Like it or not, our global economy relies on shipping to transport goods and materials around the planet. There has been a lot of attention lately to the greenhouse gas emissions of the airline industry but now we’re learning that shipping produces twice as much GHG as air traffic. It’s not covered under the Kyoto protocol or any other legislation either and it’s expected to increase by as much as 75% in the coming 15 years.

Researchers from the Institute for Physics and Atmosphere in Germany used data from the oil company, BP, which owns 50 tankers. They found that annual GHG emissions from shipping currently reach upward of 800 million tonnes.

The global shipping fleet now has about 70,000 ships with orders outstanding for an additional 20,000 vessels.