Russia Abandons Kyoto Protocol
From Dr. Benny Peiser at The GWPF
Moscow won’t join the second phase of the Kyoto Protocol, which starts on January 1st 2013. Russia decided to discontinue its participation in the protocol because the world’s major producers of greenhouse gases – the United States, China and India – are still refusing to commit themselves to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. —Voice of Russia, 31 December 2012
Ukraine may join Russia in shunning the extended Kyoto Protocol after United Nations envoys approved a text the two nations didn’t agree with, according to the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels. —Business Week, 14 December 2012
The controversial and ineffective Kyoto Protocol’s first stage comes to an end today, leaving the world with 58 per cent more greenhouse gases than in 1990, as opposed to the five per cent reduction its signatories sought. –Max Paris, CBC News, 31 December 2012
As of today, the Kyoto protocol is a zombie treaty. It’s a corpse that keeps moving, but it’s dead. Kyoto died Monday at midnight when the greenhouse gas cuts it set for 37 industrialized nations between 2008 and 2012 expired. –Lorrie Goldstein, Toronto Sun, 1 January 2013
We are entering a new Renaissance in the oil market, not just in the US, but globally as well. New technology, slower growth in the emerging markets over the next decade, and an era where a decade of high prices will finally bear some fruit with market dynamics working as their supposed to leading to more supply, and an eventual reduction in prices.–EconMatters, NASDAC, 30 December 2012
A “rational optimist” like me thinks the world will go on getting better for most people at a record rate, not because I have a temperamental or ideological bent to good cheer but because of the data. Poverty, hunger, population growth rates, inequality, and mortality from violence, disease and weather — all continue to plummet on a global scale. But a global optimist can still be a regional pessimist. When asked what I am pessimistic about, I usually reply: bureaucracy and superstition. Using those two tools, we Europeans seem intent on making our future as bad as we can. It is entirely possible that ten years from now the world as a whole will be 50 per cent richer, but Europeans will be 50 per cent poorer. –Matt Ridley, The Times, 2 January 2013
“RIP” is the wrong epitaph for the Kyoto treaty. I prefer something like “EIA” for Exuro In Abyssus. Not really sure if that is proper Latin for “Burn in Hell” but you get the idea.
The Rio 1990 choice of the precautionary principle should have been the first clue.
As do-gooders, especially govt do-gooders, are predominately deceitful power-hungry rent-seekers, the precautionary principle required us to treat them as such.
This we failed to do and as bureaucracy is the natural home of weak minds and groupthink we have todays conditions where an unelected, non accountable group are seeking to use our civic institutions and public hysteria to seize power over us all.
Course cowardly, stupid and lazy people have always been with us.
tgmccoy says:
January 2, 2013 at 7:26 am
Put a stake in it’s heart, shoot it with a sliver bullet and bury it in a lead casket with garlic cloves..
*
Oh, and the corpse should be lying face down, too, so if it does dig its way out, it will be digging the wrong way, as in deeper. Yes, it’s an old superstition, but, hey, it pays to be sure. 🙂
Canada’s CBC normally doesn’t permit comments on climate change articles.
However, they have made an exception on the article describing the demise of Kyoto.
The comments overwhelmingly celebrate the death of this ill-conceived and ineffective treaty.
It is easy to say what is wrong with Kyoto. Instead, we should look at what is sufficient to make it a reasonable policy. The underpinnings of the Kyoto Protocol used benefit-cost analysis to achieve a compromise solution. To achieve is goal it needed ALL of the following assumptions to be true.
1. CO2 causing a massive increase in global warming.
2. For that warming to have massive catastrophic consequences.
3. For economic theory to provide a theoretical solution with benefits ≥ costs.
4. The actual solution matches the theory.
5. There are no unintended consequences of actual policy implementation need to be taken into account.
6. That the Kyoto Protocol was originally estimated at being 97% useless in constraining temperature rises.
ALL the assumptions do not hold. We should say “DNR”.
http://manicbeancounter.com/2013/01/01/kyoto-protocol-is-now-dead-dnr/
Canada, leader of the free world!
It is not that Kyoto is ineffective. It is a non-cure for a non-crisis. It is a folly. Ineffective is a possible to solve a real problem that is either poorly used or badly designed. Kyoto could have never accomplished its alleged goal even if every nation had complied with its CO2 goals.
/PC off
No love lost here. May The Kyoto Protocol and all of its facilitators rot in hell for what they have had a hand in bringing its share of hardship onto mankind as a whole. People will continue to suffer slow subtle deaths for decades from its ramifications of no longer being able to live comfortable lives.
R.I.H.
Truth is, it was DOA.
@ferd berple: Your explanation is correct, but I think I can make it clearer:
This is how I understand it and have written it down to help me get it all straight.
The “US Treasury” puts out bonds (think T-Bills) to raise money not covered by taxes. If and when the public or other countries’ people or governments do not buy them, the “Federal Reserve” “prints money” and buys the bonds.
This is correct right?
Russia was persuaded to sign up to Kyoto 1 by bribery: because they had closed down old polluting, inefficient Stalanist industries which had been done long ago for financial reasons, the offer of juicy carbon credits to sell and no obligation to actually DO anything, a signature was assured. Then the Russians could sit back and laugh at the fools who would buy this fresh air!
They had no intention of signing up to anything that would actually cost them any money.
Cynical or what?
@Mario Lento:
A bit simplified, but basically right. One ‘nit’ though: “Print Money” is widely used as a metaphor for ‘increase money supply’, but there are many kinds of money. Technically, only the U.S. Treasury Dept. of Engraving and Printing actually prints paper currency (commonly called money):
http://www.moneyfactory.gov/
The Treasury puts up a load of bonds for sale, and anyone can bid on them. If The Fed wants to drive down interest rates, they bid “not much interest required” i.e. they may say “I’ll take a $Billion at 1/2 % interest rate” while The Bank Of Japan might be bidding “$1/2 Billion at 1%”. Since the government doesn’t want to pay twice as much for the ‘loan’, The Fed ‘wins’ that auction. It collects the bonds, and makes an electronic entry in the U.S. Govt accounts saying it has $Billion of cash.
Now that isn’t currency (paper money), and it didn’t get printed, so it technically isn’t ‘printing money’, but it is increasing the “money supply”.
(Technically, again, it’s increasing M1 if it’s a checking account and M2 if a time deposit / savings account like. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/m1.asp “A category of the money supply that includes all physical money such as coins and currency; it also includes demand deposits, which are checking accounts, and Negotiable Order of Withdrawal (NOW) Accounts.”)
There is another bit of jargon / picky bit here too. “Money” is defined as a medium of exchange AND a store of value, while “currency” is just a medium of exchange. So while it is widely ignored (even by people who know better like The Fed Chairman) technically if you have inflation in your currency it is no longer money… as it fails the store of value test. This is the point the ‘hard money’ people fixate on…. So some of them tend to say things like “you can’t print money” at all. And our constitution does say “coin money” and that it ought to be precious metals; but that’s been ignored since the first time a budget hick cough came along…
Also, one sidebar: At one point the Treasury directly printed “U.S. Treasury Notes” for circulation as currency: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Note
This played into a small drama where The Fed wanted to control money supply and some of our Presidents wanted to issue a bit more cash without playing footsy with The Fed. This all came to an end (though in theory could be restarted at any time). So now the Treasury prints the “Fed Reserve Notes” and trucks them off to The Fed, who adjusts their ‘computer account entry’ in exchange for the notes. (“buys them”). This leaves The Fed in charge of the actual money supply and forces the US Government into the business of issuing debt to get more money / M1.
Every so often someone suggests that the Treasury COULD just start printing and spending “U.S. Notes” directly and bypass that whole “public debt” issue via directly inflating the money supply ( currency). At present, that would require some ‘paperwork’ to reauthorize it… HOWEVER…
There’s a numismatic law on the books that lets the Treasury mint coins (that old gold and silver thing) but has a specific that platinum coins can be set at any value they want (unlike gold that is involved in that whole Fort Knox thing…) So it has been proposed that a giant Platinum Coin be minted and assigned the value of $Trillion. Then Obama could have it walked over to The Fed, who would be required to accept it as valid, and deposit it. “Presto”, they get $Trillion bank deposit, and no need for that whole “debt ceiling” issue or action by The House… I’ve looked into that and it looks like it is an accurate statement of the laws… But I think the political fallout would be lethal…
And folks of the Progressive-Liberal sort are advocating it:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/12/07/platinum_coin_seigniorage_fdr_pushed_the_law_and_obama_should_too.html
At any rate, that’s probably more about money supply than you wanted, but I think it helps clear up the mixed mess we’re in. Where the Treasury has to print currency it takes to The Fed who then trades them electronic bits for it… and where we are mandated to use precious metals, but don’t. And where if we did what some people want, we’d use a couple of platinum coins to do an end run around congressional authority.
So, IMHO, it’s easiest if you just don’t think of those “pretty pieces of paper” or computer bits as money at all. Just think of them as “Fiat Currency” and it is much easier to follow…
Oh, and there’s also the whole issue of “Fractional Reserve Banking” that can create higher M numbers of “money” from M2 on up via various kinds of manipulation of “reserve requirements”, but that’s a bit over the top for here… If you want that, let me know at my place and I’ll work up a posting. But as it is really just making more or less computer bits and books entries (that can be very inflationary) it likely isn’t what you had in mind.
Thanks EM Smith… Yes, I do understand the print money is a methaphor for stacking up bits into one of the columns of a balance sheet. I did not think of the treasury as creating the money – and thought it was the Fed instead… confusing as hell.