Climate Wars: Nick Stern Threatens U.S. With Trade Boycott
Ben Webster
The United States will be banned from selling goods to many countries if it continues to shirk its promise to cut greenhouse gas emissions, according to the world’s leading climate change economist.
In an interview with The Times, Lord Stern of Brentford said that nations that were taking strong action on emissions could start imposing restrictions on “dirty” US exports by 2020.
Lord Stern, who advises several G20 leaders and is one of the key players in the international negotiations seeking a deal on emissions, made his comments ten days before the annual United Nations climate change conference opens in Cancun, Mexico. They reflect the feeling in many countries that a lack of action on emissions in the US is delaying progress in the talks.
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Lord Stern said that Europe and the Far East (sic) were forging ahead of the US in controlling emissions and switching to low carbon sources of energy. They would not tolerate having their industries undermined by American competitors that had not paid for their emissions. “If you are charging properly for carbon and other people are not, you will take that into account,” he said. “Many of the more forward-looking people in the US are thinking about this. If they see a danger on the trade front to US exports that could influence public discussion.”
Asked what type of US products could face restrictions, Lord Stern said: “Aircraft, clearly, some cars, machine tools — it’s not simply what’s in the capital good, it’s what kind of processes the capital good is facilitating.”
Lord Stern said that a complete ban on some goods was also possible. He said the American people should overcome their historical antipathy to taxation and accept that emissions needed to be controlled either through a tax or a trading scheme.
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Let me help you out here Lord Stern.
The USA will default on it’s national debt and financial obligations.
It is a mathematical certainty the USA will have a complete and total economic collapse.
The rest of the world will cut the USA off from trade with them because we are a deadbeat nation.
The USA will make it own little trinkets, bobbles and whatever other electronic crap its people want to buy., right here in our own land mass.
Lord Stern, please don’t try to rationalize why the rest of the planet will stop trading with the USA. You just sound silly, uninformed, and kooky with your rationalizations.
Stern has gone completely nutter, jumped the shark, lost his marbles.
He needs better meds, seriously.
See the thing is, US citizens don’t take kindly when threatened. Good luck…
Let them have it, these arm twisting bunch of crackpot brags.
Don’t send a single US made product to Europe, ban all the use of US patents, withdraw all American companies, close US Air Space for European aircraft and withdraw all US forces.
And the next time these EU hacks need to be liberated, screw them all.
Arrogant bastards.
I say go ahead USA – don’t sell your goods to any nations that blackmails or terrorises you, whether the threat comes from some medieval caveman in Tora Bora or from a “climate change economist”. Don’t sell them any of your patented products or license them any of your patents and see how long they last.
A comment was made this summer that is telling on this topic. To paraphrase, leftists were saying that the way to help Obamba is to do things that forces him to act. Now, some of it was directed towards violent actions, but this commnent reminds me of that. For someone in the G20 to say that America will be cut off if we don’t push climate legislation would give Obamba an opportunity to enforce it as a national security item, or regulatory edict to claim it was done to save America.
I really don’t like Progressives.
To friends in the USA – don’t panic.
Stern is a born-again idiot who resides in an asylum for un-elected fraudsters called The House of Lords. He wrote a bizzare report a couple of years ago on the economic impact of CAGW that sought to enrich his cronies with shares in wind farms. His rantings made Jones, Mann, et al look like reasonable scientists – only Gordon Brown took it seriously.
“it was a “conceptual mistake” to see charging for emissions as a tax”
If you are a government and you are taking money out of my pocket it is a tax. Is that concept too hard for them to understand? Maybe he thinks “carbon user fees” are not a tax?
Remind me again what happened the last time someone in Europe proposed people in the US pay more taxes…
The Marxists are getting impatient and revealing themselves. They subverted the democratic electoral processes to install their own leaders. When the electorate rebels, the Marxists then disenfranchise the electorate. When the electorate protests their being disenfranchised, the Marxists resort to executive orders, diktat, and finally open dictatorships. It appears that Lord Stern has grown impatient enough with the opposition to the Marxist redistribution of wealth to invoke worldwide economic warfare.
LOL. No one can stop trade to penniless Iran, North Korea or a myriad other countries that are problematic. And this jack ass thinks he is going to embargo the USA? Please. Some one convince the good Lord to lay off the hard stuff.
Would they do the same to China?
If the US reduces emissions, manufacturing would be reduced, reducing exports, or if the US doesn’t reduce emissions, exports will be boycotted. It looks like the US is doomed no matter what.
It won’t happen!
David Cameron leads largest trade delegation to China in 200 years
Read about it at:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8116651/David-Cameron-leads-largest-trade-delegation-to-China-in-200-years.html
Lord Stern and the current government will, of course, be delighted to trade with China’s clean economy….
I always thought he was nuts but this confirms it. What country in it’s right mind would start a trade war with the US – the largest trading nation in the world. Stern started much of the global warming nonsense and seem to think that his ideas still have value in the real world. This is almost on a par with geo-warmists wanting the flood the atmosphere with sulphur dioxide from volcanoes they’ve activated to “cool the planet”.
What a load of rubbish.
Lord Stern must be afraid that Great Britain’s Green suicide program will bankrupt the country before the US.
Why not just sign everything over to China? Or encourage an isolationist US. That always works.
I suppose this Stern moron doesn’t know that we can deny access to our markets for countries that want to play that game. We are not only the largest exporter in the world. We are also the largest importer.
Pound salt my lord.
Whatever the merits of reducing carbon emissions, this is typical UN bashing on the USA. It’s in the same category as putting Libya on the Human Rights Commission. The UN and its political positions have nothing to do with reality and everything to do with schoolyard politics.
Really: all first-world countries should drop out of the UN and let it collapse under its own, corrupt weight. Start over with a new organisation. The new one will also eventually become corrupt, but sometimes you have just got to clean house.
I don’t have the links available right now, but I believe the record shows that the U.S. has a better record of reducing CO2 emissions than the EU, since they collectively embraced their carbon trading scheme.
Give me a break !
China’s already passed the U.S. in carbon emissions due to its rapid industrialization and electrification. In ten years it will be emitting even more and exporting even more goods. Will Lord Stern suggest barring the importation of Chinese goods then ? Thoght not.
Why would we want to trade with carbon fools?
These people are evil.
Stern is an embarassment to us Brits. I offer my apologies on behalf of normal Brits.