Why Copenhagen Will Achieve Nothing

The CO2 myth has only ever been one of a range of sociological levers used to nudge our huge backsides towards global utopia.
The Aussie Greens are there already and have rolled up the Southern Cross in favor of big brother.
http://greens.org.au/node/776

We could potentially stabilize CO2 levels if we cut our Carbon emissions to 3 or 4 GTs per year (assuming oceans and plants would continue to absorb about half the amount we are emitting right now).
But that would take converting the entire electricity industry to zero-emission or sequestration (and then more than that yet).
The 50,000 power plants that exist world-wide now would have to be converted to zero-emission versions and then we couldn’t build any new ones that were not zero-emission. That would take technology that we don’t have yet (but can probably develop) and it would take trillions of dollars in investment.
Forget CFL lightbulbs and turning off your lights. We can’t use any electricity at all or it all has to be zero-emission. And then, we have to stop using cement and minimize travel and the transportation of goods.
So all that sounds like too much change to put into a law or a treaty when we have no idea how to do it.

Frederick writes:
“However I do hate waste and I am appalled at the MASSIVE energy inefficiencies of the US. And don’t blame it on quality of life. I live in France and the quality of life is higher than in the US due to the excellent health service and the lower disparity in incomes and I know this first hand because I lived and worked in Colorado for a time.”
Ah, your socialist control tendencies are showing. You define quality of life in terms of government control of health care and egalitarian evaluation of income distribution. Very socialist measures indeed. I contend my quality of life in the US is far higher because quality of life include: freedom to make my own choices, freedom to travel where and when I can afford (using energy to get there and back), freedom to live some distance from my work rather than being crammed in high density population areas (using energy to get there and back), freedom to live in a larger apartment than average and having more space to enjoy (using more ebergy to heat and cool it), freedom (for a couple more years only unfortunately) to use warm incandescent lighting rather than cold, mercury-laden flourescents, freedom to drive a car that was heavy and solid enough to have saved my life and that of my family when it struck a guardrail head on at highway speeds due to the driver making a simple mistake reacting to a horn (using more energy than a ‘green-friendly’ car would have in which all three of us would have been killed), and the list can go on and on…
And the supply/demand based approach to assessing the question: if quality of life in the US is not as good as elsewhere, people wouldn’t still be flocking here from all over the world both legally and illegally.
I’ll take the freedom based quality of life here anytime, and will fight and die if necessary to preserve it, as will many other millions of Americans if the rest of the world ever tries to take it away, treaty or no treaty.

That graph only goes up to 2006. With all the coal fired plants China has built in the past few years, I wonder how that graph would look if it included data up to 2008. — John M Reynolds

Actually, it appears that the US and Europe still combine to account for about half of all emissions. It looks like the US and Europe combined add up to about 4, while the global figure is just over 8. This does not take away from the overall point, however, because the rest of the world is on a very steep trajectory. In fact, if a line were drawn showing the rest of the world without the US and Europe included, it would look even steeper than the red line on the graph. I would like to see a graph showing it that way.

As TA says considering CO2 ‘ the rest of the world is on a very steep trajectory’. That is energy use is rapidly increasing outside of Europe and USA.
It is the economic developement and increase in wealth that results from energy use that the West wants to limit and control.

Kate (02:29:10) :
Kate, do you have a copy or a download for the report you refer to?
Thanks in advance.

Bill Illis (06:12:55) :
According to the MoncKton calculation based on IPCC 2007 worst scenario we would need to shut down our entire industry for 33 years
30 BILLION TONS OF CO2 PER YEAR is the equivilent of 2 ppmv/year = 33 x 2 ppm = 66 ppm of reduction in CO2 which in this scenario would represent 1 degree Fahrenheit
However, according to Lindzen & Choi, 2009, the IPCC scenario is exaggerated by a factor 6 which means we would need almost 200 years (6 x 33) = 198 years or
396 ppm to reduce the temp by 1 degree Fahrenheit.
We all know that our current level of CO2 (388 ppmv) can’t go much lower because otherwise there is no plant life possible (200 ppmv is critical fo plant life)
This also proves that most of the Human Induced CO2 is absorbed by natural sinks.
Therefore the entire theory is BOGUS.

As it happens, as I will be 74 by the end of this year, I actually lived under the circumstances the eco-whackos and warmmongers want all of us to live with. I lived on a farm in Iowa before the Rural Electrification Administration brought power lines into our area.
Outhouse. Hand pumped water. The kitchen the only warm room in the farmhouse in winter, heated by the same wood stove food was cooked on. High temperatures and humidity in summer, without letup, day and night. Bath once a week with warm water heated on a wood stove. All bathing in turn with the same water. Kerosene lamps for light. Cooling water by wrapping a wet burlap bag around a gallon jug of water and hanging the jug from a tree branch, and hope for a breeze. No refrigerators of course, put meat or other perishables in sort of water-tight containers under water in the hand dug well. Kitchen still the warmest room . . . hell in summer as the wood stove had to be kept burning to cook food on.
Then came REA, and it was soon another world. Running water, and heated when needed. Just turn on a tap. Septic tank and a flush toilet. An actual bathtub, with hot and cold water as needed. Clean water not having been used by others for bathing. Lighting at the flick of a switch. A real refrigerator, even ice for drinks in the summer. An electric range, quick on and off at the turn of a dial. No bucket of water with a broom in it next to the wood burning range to adjust the temperature of the oven when bread had to be baked. And wonder of wonders, even an electric fan to help keep cool in summer.
Yes, I do indeed know how to live under those circumstances. Of course with today’s environmental regulations, the wood stove would be outlawed, makes smoke after all. Lots of luck for all of you younger folks.
What a world of madness it has become. How to commit national suicide quickly and easily.
Perhaps it would be best to invest in down comforters and feather beds. And shot and shell to prevent theft of the down comforters and feather beds.
Now some of you may think that I was too young then to still remember those days. Well, when it is 2:00 AM in winter, with a foot or snow to trudge through to get to the outhouse, and the temperature outside is hovering around 5 degrees below zero, and you have to take a crap and the chamber pot is already full, it tends to make a lasting impression on a child. The bricks heated on the stove and wrapped in flannel were sure nice to have in bed with you. Didn’t last the night of course, but at least at first a bit of warmth.

son of mulder (04:28:29), you raise an interesting issue:

I assume your table is different from a table that would show CO2 produced as a consequence of personal consumpsion by country eg in your table the UK is low but how does it look after factoring in the stuff we import from China. UK GDP is a lot of financial sevices so relatively low industrial production, House prices in the UK are in GDP as I understand it. Someone must have an absolute per capita measure that reflects CO2 effective footprint per capita. On an individual and country basis I bet it tells a much different story. Albeit a story that would still show how messing with with trade would screw up poorer countries’s GDP as they so depend on the consumpsion of others.

Unlike the chart at the top of this thread, the table has nothing to do with CO2. It measures “energy intensity”, which is the amount of energy used to produce a dollar’s worth of goods.
There are measures of CO2 production per capita such as you request. However, this thread is not about that.
It is about how constraining the CO2 production of Western Europe and the US (Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Denmark, Faeroe Islands, Finland, France, Gibraltar, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malta, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Norway, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States) will make no difference to the global CO2 levels.

“Carbon footprint” – a stupid concept
The origins of the notion of a “carbon footprint” can be traced to racism.
Virtually every time I turn the TV on, I am told to turn it off by a Government advert. In the name of “Act on CO2”, we are supposed to turn off all appliances, lower our thermostats, and generally obsess about our “carbon footprint”. This concept has entered popular discourse without substantial debate, so it is this I seek to redress, with a little help from a brilliant new book called “Energise” by Woudhuysen and Kaplinsky.
Hundreds of websites and newspaper supplements badger us to calculate and reduce our “carbon footprint”. Added to the phenomenon of recycling, which in many areas carries penalties for those who do not recycle, and we have a kind of 21st century ritual where people find meaning and absolution in sorting out their rubbish and using less energy. But like all rituals promoted by the authorities, it encourages slavishness and conformity.
And with regard to nuclear energy, don’t worry about the problem of radioactive waste: recent scientific experiments have found ways to deradiate the waste, so it can be reused.
What we currently live under is the alternative to a rational energy policy – instead of Governments leading the way in cleaning up energy, they moralise to individuals to cut their “carbon footprint”. Unfortunately this beckons further state intervention into our private lives. The recent development of “Smart” meters which the Government wants in every home will monitor all our energy consumption. Given the Government’s notorious authoritarian bent, pretty soon such meters will be used as devices to spy on citizens and punish those who use too much energy and do not conform to the ritual of cutting the “carbon footprint”. School children are also now routinely encouraged to spy on their parents to see if they’re turning off all the lights at night – this encourages an Orwellian situation where parents become afraid of their kids in case they grass them up.
The concept of the carbon footprint is a logically flawed concept for four reasons:
Firstly, it seeks to compare all human activities and find a common denominator in the shape of their so-called “greenhouse gas” emissions. But this approach doesn’t look at the human worth of a human activity – it only looks at its impact on the environment. This is a lousy anti-human approach to ethics. As Woudhuysen and Kaplinsky argue, “the carbon footprint idea strips each individual and social activity of its merits and dissolves all goals into one: add up your carbon impact and reduce it. In this scheme, the value of regularly visiting your ailing grandmother by car is of course not comparable with the value of flying an artificial heart to save someone’s life. Such things can never be quantified…The question is not what their activity adds to the world in human terms, only the resources it takes away.” Instead a decent approach to ethics would examine the worth of human activities on their own terms, not abstract from what is worthwhile to find a common negative, and then say that is the problem.
Secondly, the concept of a “carbon footprint” is a misnomer because “greenhouse gases” go up into the sky and then fall to Earth where they are absorbed into the biosphere and the sea – they are not trodden in the soil by feet. The related idea of the carrying capacity of the land was first used by colonial authorities in Northern Rhodesia to speculate about and warn against future population growth among black Africans – a particular concern among white settlers. So the origins of the notion of a “carbon footprint” can be traced to racism.
Thirdly, the concept is moralism dressed up as science. It wears pseudo-scientific clothes in its mathematical adding up of different activities – but the whole idea that consumption of energy is a problem derives from morality and ideology, not an objective study of the world.
Fourthly, the campaign to reduce everyone’s “carbon footprint” is actually a stupid way to deal with the problems presented by climate change. In impoverished areas like Bangladesh, where there are threats of increased flooding, what is needed is more development, not less. This means increasing our “carbon footprint”, not reducing it. And with regard to energy, a rational energy supply should replace moralising. There’s also the possibility of different types of geo-engineering to combat the effects of destructive weather patterns.
Whatever solution is preferred, it is better than the campaign to cut the “carbon footprint” which won’t do much to save the environment – turning your thermostat down or driving a Toyota Prius won’t actually do much for the planet.