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.
…
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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Barking mad fool- the stress of plummeting investments.
EUconomics
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/11/euconomics.html
Where are all of the comments?
[Reply: There is only one moderator on duty, and his wife just got out of the hospital after a knee replacement. Please be patient. Trying to hold down the fort here and also be a nurse. ~dbs]
Lord Stern’s words effectively come down to, “If you Americans don’t do as I tell you I’m going to groin you in the knee then poke you in the finger with my eye!”
He is an irrelevant ex-government advisor whose economic reports have been very widely criticised. Ignore him.
steveta_uk says:
November 19, 2010 at 9:07 am
“We Brits have a word for people like ‘Lord’ Stern who spout such nonsense.
The word is “plonker”.
We also have other words for people like him. Unfortunately I’d be snipped…
Like a crusading rebellious adolescent, he needs to be ignored. But you have to blame those in charge for not doing so.
If a parent was to parade such a teenager through society, and implore them to listen to his ‘message’, they would soon find themselves the object of worried glances. But this is exactly what is happening in the case of Stern. Journalists whose job it is to investigate truth and expose scams should have put down this adolescents ravings for the nonsense it clearly is. Not only have they not done so, but they have lauded this man, treating every utterance with the reverence normally afforded to histories greatest. The adolescent, mistaking the fawning accolades of a discredited media as confirmation of his own greatness, moves from one outrage to another.
Where is the mainstream journalist – just one – who will raise his or her pen in righteous indignation and spell out what is obvious to everybody with half a faculty? That this man is mad. Has been driven mad by all of you. All of you fawning journalists for fawning over his nonsense. Driven mad by the empty salutations of UN bodies, of politicans and by the enoblement of the previous government.
Or shall this petulant adolescent be allowed to run and run until he becomes a danger to himself and all the rest of us?
Reminds me of “the Mouse that roared” with Peter Sellars. Trouble is the gentleman seems to be operating in a parallel universe.
He does not speak for all Brits – just the numpties.
Caleb says:
November 19, 2010 at 9:50 am
‘This sounds like the bluster of a desperate man.’
I think this is entirely the point. He and his cohorts at the Grantham Institute, Bob Ward’s outfit, know that the jig is up. It’s just final desperation as they see their hopes of power and control start to spiral down the bog. Nobody with any remaining grasp on reality could imagine that the UK (where I am, totally buggered as we are, who can’t even afford to put planes on our one aircraft carrier, which we time-share with the French), could seriously pose any threat to the US. But these folk are used to behaving like bullies, especially to people who ‘don’t understand’ or who simply stick up two fingers to their cant and claptrap. There’s a good line in ‘Julius Caesar’: “Defiance, traitors, hurl we in your teeth’. That’s how I feel about these deluded nutters.
@Doug (November 19, 2010 at 10:31 am } – may I respectfully correct a typo? Birk, properly, should be Berk, an abbreviation of the Cockney Rhyming Slang expression ‘Berkshire Hunt’. Very apt Doug, very apt, I agree.
Weird, wouldn’t a Lord, within the Euro nation, know that it is highly illegal to threaten anyone with anything, especially in an official capacity and especially when it comes to the protection of the Euro nations total wealth and income?
And oh yeah it is, if memory serves, using the same laws the idiot greenie hobnob hippie cultists wanted once upon a time, like less then 20 years ago.
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.
This is utter bunk.
World Bank Funds Massive Coal-Fired Power Plant in South Africa
The World Bank voted last week to approve a $3.75 billion loan to South Africa’s public utility Eskom, the bulk of which would finance construction of what will be the world’s seventh-largest coal plant. The U.S. abstained from the vote.
“Giving the go-ahead to the Medupi coal plant, which will release massive amounts of greenhouse gases for decades, without a clear South African plan to level off and then decrease emissions amounts to a step backward when the world is moving forward to a clean energy future,” said Peter Goldmark, director of Environmental Defense Fund’s climate and air program.
http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/20119
With our trade deficit and the bs exchange rates prevailing, wouldn’t some of these countries refusing to trade with us cause a boom in our economy?
The UK abstained from the vote also.
JEM says:
November 19, 2010 at 11:36 am
“Brother Jonathan.”
###
Your signature is the title of a book I read decades ago.
???
If every country had to stand alone and support itself, the US would be the biggest winner. We import nearly everything now, to the detriment of our manufacturing base.
Such a situation would cause the greatest industrial boom ever seen in this country.
The Cabal of Climate Thieves are becoming desperate. With the Obama Presidency, they thought they finally had the keys to the kingdom. Now Americans (and the GOP) have gone and spoiled the plan. Their desperation is showing badly.
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.
What is this? the weekly ten minute hate?
One tosspot has been says something stupid and suddenly the whole of Europe gets it in the neck?
Get a grip.
Jeremy
November 19, 2010 at 11:36 am
I expect the great USA will chuck Lord Stern into Boston Harbor – if he dares to visit – just like they did with the tea.
#
Not a good idea … would pollute the water, but we have other time honored traditions 🙂
Man, if we had a commander-in-chief with a pair in charge these days, he’d have some choice retorts for this clown! But alas, we don’t. We’ll probably send him a fruit basket with an apology and a promise to do better.
What an ambition and ego and what a crock. I would bet he is brilliant within his own circle of friends.
And so the plan to cause the collapse of the economies of the developed world (starting with every Liberal’s favourite hate-target, the USA) rolls on.
Not just evil; STUPID. When will Liberals wake up to the idiocy that is being perpetrated in the name of this bullsh*t anti-human agenda? It is part of the human condition to create, invent, TRADE and aspire to increased wealth. These self-loathing A holes will not be satisfied until the West is ruined, shackled by their fascist laws and tariffs, and China steps in to become the new USA (albeit a despotic one).
Economist, is he!
An economist can best be described as someone who drives a car at seventy miles an hour and steers by looking through the rear window.
He couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery.
It looks to me like imports are being positioned to become a revenue source for Governments far larger than current import duties make it – emissions related revenue can be raised at the consumption end that would go into our Government’s pockets rather than Chinese ones.
The problem with that is we know what politicians are like. The revenue raised from emissions related taxes will be in addition to all other tax revenues rather than instead of some. Regardless of my scepticism over the science I personally wouldn’t be that bothered about emissions related taxes *if other taxes such as income tax were reduced to compensate*. But they aren’t. These are never neutral measures when it comes to the cost that Government inflicts upon us.
When Governments are prepared to show *they* are willing to forgo the plump revenue stream they are salivating over I might believe they sincerely want to encourage cleaner and more efficient lifestyles.
“Peter Foster: Canada dodges carbon suicide”
“Harper right to kill ‘irresponsible’ bill that would have erased legions of jobs”
“Mr. Harper has always clearly grasped — apparently unlike the majority of his international counterparts — that the greatest threat facing humanity is not climate change, but climate-change policy. Bill C-311 was a perfect example. Opposition parties, in thrall to radical green groups or sheer hypocrisy, were supporting a piece of draconian legislation that would not have had one raindrop’s worth of perceptible effect on the global climate. Nor would it have in any way influenced the way other countries are attempting to writhe away from this issue.”
“The bottom line is that the Conservatives have worked consistently to minimize the damage to the Canadian economy from the all-but-collapsed climate-change juggernaut, and have succeeded admirably. Public concern has — despite flagrantly rigged opinion polls — subsided in the wake both of more immediate economic issues and the very valid doubts over “the science” raised by Climategate and Glaciergate, and by the review of the IPCC undertaken by the InterAcademy Council — the representative body of national science academies. That review acknowledged that the whole IPCC process needs to be reformed.
No matter what the state of the science, however, anybody who supports unilateral action such as Bill C-311 could only be an economic masochist or a political numbskull. To reiterate: the prospect of international agreement to slash emissions has collapsed; any measures to hobble Canada unilaterally would thus be both economically suicidal and climatologically pointless.
Mr. Harper is to be congratulated. The measure of his success will be the volume of “dinosaur” or “fossil” awards given to Canada at Cancun. Canadian representatives should accept them with pride.”
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2010/11/18/peter-foster-canada-dodges-carbon-suicide/
tallbloke says:
November 19, 2010 at 12:33 pm
What is this? the weekly ten minute hate?
=======================================================
Well, you know its just vent. Some of us are given to a knee jerk reaction from time to time, but, we’re tied to our cousins across the pond in more ways than just trade. Britannia and her offspring will always be tied to each other.
Speaking of, has there been any word from N.Z. re. the miners?
Lots of bloviating. Corn Wheat and Cotton, Corn Wheat and Cotton, please send Corn Wheat and Cotton. We did it before and we can do it again.
The decision to boycott US goods would be taken by the EU, the British “government” have a very small voice in the matter. Smaller voice than the Germans who export BMWs to the US. It just shows how out of touch with reality this feeble man is. His words are not worth reporting.
Here in the UK i no longer listen to the news, they are so out of touch it is better, and more productive to the intellect, to turn over to Radio three where they play recording of concerts..