If only we were more like China…
Eric Worrall writes:
The Guardian, a green British newspaper, has published yet another green sneer at democracy, with reference to the recent climate agreement between China and America, contrasting the efficient obedience of the Chinese government, with the “difficulties” Obama will encounter, when he faces the democratically elected representatives of the American people.
According to the Guardian,
“While Chinese apparatchiks will, presumably unquestioningly, jump to realize President Xi Jinping’s order to reduce carbon emissions in an ambitious deal with the United States, Barack Obama will come home to a newly elected Congress that will probably tell him to neuter his climate change agenda or be prepared for the kind of knock-down, drag-out fight that could potentially end with a government shutdown.”
This is not the first time greens have expressed open contempt for democracy. Who can forget former NASA GISS chairman James Hansen’s glowing praise of the Chinese way of doing things http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/18/hansen-would-rather-have-us-ruled-by-china/ , or even more blatant calls for anti-democratic extremes, such as Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki’s call for people who disagree with him to be jailed? http://www.nationalpost.com/Jail+politicians+ignore+climate+science+Suzuki/290513/story.html
The utter contempt greens hold for democracy, or for anything which empowers ordinary people to obstruct their ruthless pursuit of their goals, is in my opinion a trait they share with other villains from the pages of history.
A belief in imminent catastrophe is a moral slippery slope – if someone truly believes the world is on the brink of destruction, what wouldn’t that person do to stop their nightmare from being realised? What crime could possibly be more awful than a horrific vision of the whole world dying?
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. In the case of deep greens, that road to hell is paved with their utter, unshakeable belief that they know better than other people what is good for them, and with a totalitarian willingness to override the concerns and rights of others, in a singleminded effort to realise their warped vision of global salvation.
How could anyone be praising China’s efforts to keep to the status quo but chastise the US for actually making strides?
Granted, this is all a debate in a vacuum but I’m really intrigued how so few people could have critical reading/comprehension skills.
there you go again, assuming intelligence.
Making strides? Was this a test?
Yes.
Sorry, you flunked…
☹
Did I pass? 🙂
Darn it. The last part of your post didn’t show up in my notification.
Since I failed, do I get do overs?
After all, I’m making strides!
Apparently you don’t remember what it was like in most US cities back 30, 40 years ago–the smog was thick and palpable.
Now it’s a whole different situation and it wasn’t because China cleaned up their act.
Ah. Context.
I remember quite well the smog and water pollution. I am a fan of the EPA due to this memory. I’m for re-missioning them and not “defunding” or destroying them entirely. I’ll get flak for stating that here, but that’s find.
I assumed, the post to which I responded was germain to the topic of the “pact” between China and the U.S. as I don’t see this pact as “making stride”.
As the press has recently stated, climate change action may be Obama’s greatest legacy. What faint praise. Look ,he has shown total failure in EVERYTHING he has attempted. Six years is more than enough to qualify as a total fail. His hypothesis has been falsified. What an appropriate ending having the climate hoax as his greatest achievement .
Time to defund his mistakes and let them die on the vine. Another watermelon has fallen of the truck and is all over the highway.
latecommer2014,
I realize that this response will be entirely counter to the political leanings of this site, but how about some perspective. The “Press” stated? Hindsight is the best tool for evaluation of presidents. While this is the topic of the day, let’s remember that he navigated us through the most challenging financial crisis in recent history. Do we have debt yet to pay? Yes. Do we deserve to have to pay it? You bet. We (via our leadership) allowed the crisis to occur, realized that financial institutions cannot be left to their own devices, and have done pretty much nothing to correct the situation. And this happened through the thread of “leadership” of both parties. So let’s not rely on the “Press” as our guide as depending on which “Press” one consumes, the orientation will vary.
INCOMING!!!!!!!!!!!!
Obama has agreed to triple the cost of energy in the US as compared to China which will result in increase job loss from the US to the China due to the higher cost of energy in the US. China has a strategic plan. The US has madness.
PBS noted in their November 12, 2014 segment on the China/US ‘agreement’: China is the number one world supplier of wind turbines (China restricts the export of rare earth elements which they have developed monopoly for. The rare earth elements are required to construct the wind turbine generator magnets and wind turbine bearings. China purchased the US rare earth company and then moved all of the US rare earth manufacturing equipment to China and subsequently closed the US manufacturing plant). China is the number one world supplier of photo cells, due to low labor costs. PBS stated that China is ‘helping’ the US reach our ‘green’ energy goals by supply us with all of our wind turbine and solar cell ‘needs’.
Obama’s executive order will enable the EPA to force US utilities to install wind turbines and to force utilities to install solar farms. The objective of Obama’s executive order is to get the green movement’s support to help with reelection. The unintentional consequences of the Obama executive order is further job loss to China.
The US and EU are losing the industrial war with China. That is a fact. Job loss and well paying US and EU jobs is the crisis, not AGW. Enough is enough. It is time to stop this green madness.
William Astley +1. The Guardian is extraordinarily naive – no, make that disingenuous. China’s leaders can say what they like but their actions past present or future don’t have to match their words (a bit like Russia saying it had no intention of invading Ukraine, and later saying they hadn’t invaded Ukraine).
The Chinese must be having a good laugh over this – they are making money hand over fist selling stuff to the USA which makes the USA even less competitive, and the USA is applauding them for it and vowing to go at it even harder. Has any democracy ever willingly worked so assiduously on its own destruction?
William I too agree with your general analysis. The missing parts are: China’s emissions of CO2 will “peak in 2030”. Well, that was going to happen anyway. They are going nuclear. They are building a Thorium fluoride reactor right now. They are building several Sasol coal to liquid plants. There is a rumour they are building a direct conversion CTL plant in Inner Mongolia but the technology involved is unclear.
By 2030 they will be energy independent and hold their CO2 emissions below the 2030 peak level. It will not require any changes in policy or pace. There is about a trillion tons of coal in Mongolia, right next door. (South Africa also has more than 1000 years worth of coal.)
Gas from Russia, oil from Canada, coal and Thorium – they have enough to run for centuries. In the meantime compact fusion reactors will be sorted out. The “greens” of that day will insist we stop killing so many birds and bats with windmills.
One reason the Chinese leaders have no interest in meeting their targets is that they have even less interest in having 1 billion starving citizens starting the next revolution.
Actually, the current leaders are smart enough to understand that they have to keep the peasants at least marginally happy. The Chinese standard of living has increased substantially over the past decade and a bit.
Today most Chinese are happy with their life, but give the one chance to go abroad and stay and they will. I have asked many why and the reason in most cases is they do not trust any government in China. Everything might change tomorrow, you never know what will happen in China. Most of all you have no influence. But life today is good, they have everything we have and more. Most well of families have a nanny and they who are better off have cars with a driver. They live in mansions within the city and they have money. Most of them have a bit less, but still have a good life.
The deal between Obama and Xi is clear. Xi will not sacrifice anything and will not cut any emissions. He will just continue business as usual. If not he will face huge domestic problems. By 1930 it’s estimated the population in China is at it’s peak and it will just be natural emissions will go down anyway. China is also investing heavily in nuclear power which will help for years to come.
Uh, Rolf, I think you mean 2030.
And the whole thing being even funnier in that the Chinese are actually doing absolutely nothing about reducing emissions under this agreement anyway! I think they are “considering” stopping the increase in CO2 emissions by 2030, or something like that. And this is lauded in the Grauniad! Priceless.
Holy smokes Rob, thanks for noticing this too. I can’t quite get over the fact that so many people appear to be oblivious to the fact that China has essentially promised to increase their emissions for the next 15 years and that somehow everybody is applauding this as a coup d’etat climate treaty breakthrough. I mean for goodness sakes! How gullible can people be?
Mark/Rob: The way to test this story is to reverse the roles: China for USA – and then imagine what the Guardian’s article would have read like…
Maybe the EPA can pretend the Chinese are actually cutting and introduce those fictional models into its EnviroAtlas simulations for K-12 science classes. http://enviroatlas.epa.gov/enviroatlas/atlas.html
If there’s a multimedia presentation, it must be real. Warned about this virtual reality danger.
Yes, not just increase their emissions, but increase them as fast as possible, so as to provide the highest possible base level from which to peg future emissions. And the Guardian are falling for it.
Not to mention they have “promised” that *only* 80% of their total energy mix will be from fossil fuels! Meanwhile, 3% will be wind and solar, 6% from WOOD and the remainder from hydro and nuclear. Somehow this is an enormous achievement in the eyes of greenies and leftoids.
The idea is to make believe China is taking action so they can sell their action plans. This way they can explain the world won’t cross the extremely dangerous 2 degree C threshold by 2036 as predicted by Mann.
Rob,
Yes my interpretation of what they said was that they would continue building coal fired power stations at the rate of one a week until around 2030. How that equates to a huge cut in generation capacity by the USA is difficult to understand. However, what is not difficult to understand is how easily the Chinese premier will be able to sell the agreement on US industrial suicide in China.
Much ado about nothing.
They agreed to “Targets” because the current administration (et al.) in Washington is easily fooled into thinking they “have a deal”. China will do what it wants and this announcement probably quantifies their “best guesses” as to what will happen anyway. China, unlike the USA and the European alarmists, will not allow anything to get in their way to interrupt or stall their economy. China has some very smart folks looking into their future energy requirements, advising policy based on economics, and we just polarize it with politics. Our alarmist “smart” folks in contrast, not so much.
Rob said: “And the whole thing being even funnier in that the Chinese are actually doing absolutely nothing about reducing emissions under this agreement anyway! I think they are “considering” stopping the increase in CO2 emissions by 2030, or something like that. And this is lauded in the Grauniad! Priceless.”
I pointed this out to the greenies from 350.org on a facebook post they released that was all unicorns and rainbows over the Obama/China agreement.
They all got pretty quiet after that.
I asked them how much temperature decrease the agreement would secure.
Crickets.
I asked them why they didn’t demand more of their leaders.
Crickets.
These people have such poor reasoning skills. Ghads.
I saw the lack of commitment from the Chinese in the wording. I didn’t bat an eyelid because the Chinese will do whatever they want regarding co2 emissions, now and in 2030 and the US can’t do anything about it.
Ernest Moniz, Secretary of the US Department of Energy, spoke this morning at SLAC, Stanford University. Among other climate-related comments, he revealed that the during Obama’s just past visit, the US agreed with China to pursue a project to achieve large scale carbon storage.
Secretary Moniz was careful to distinguish between sequestration and large-scale storage. They’re talking about a very large project. He said that the work on this project will be carried out in China. That will mean transfer of money, most likely in the many billions.
So we can surmise why the Chinese are, in part at least, happy with the agreement. It involves the US giving them lots of money. And any useful technology that’s developed will be at least half theirs.
Spot on. And supposing they do develop a sequestration process, who will use it [not China] and who will buy it [USA] and whose economy will thus go forwards [China’s] and whose economy will thus go backwards [USA]. And the money to achieve all of this came in the first place from ….. USA! Oh well, I suppose if you want to be barking mad you might as well do it thoroughly.
Maybe they mean they’ll store the co2 in the ocean?
Unbelievable foolishness from the enviro-whacko leftists all over the world who failed to note that China can burn coal, burn coal, burn to up their emissions to unbelievable levels to 2030 while they are bringing their nukes on line, then easily drop emissions as the coal plants are decommissioned or rejigged to run on natural gas making them look like geniuses with how they reduced emissions.
Amazing how many people only read the headlines. Course the news media and politicians know that.
Oh well. I’ll be dead by then but the ride has been amusing.
This NYT graphic shows how successfully the Chinese have played this for pr purposes (as indeed has Obama’s tame press and spin brigades). The US agrees to reduce its carbon footprint to 17th century levels (or thereabouts, I haven’t done the maths), the Chinese say they might do something after 2030 but will continue on their current course at least until then. America cuts its own economic throat and the Chinese look on with amused and profitable indifference. Win-win for them, economic and social disaster for the US. And, by 2030, China’s population will (they expect) stop growing – see a report on that aspect at Jo Nova’s blog.
https://twitter.com/nytgraphics/status/532626387468050433/photo/1
@RichiP.
Yes, well pointed out. Good graphical illustration of this deal.
I could not believe that the Obama administration would spin this as a victory for US negotiating prowess, and for the environment and climate. If I were the head of this negotiating team, I would hang my head in shame, and slink off to a quiet hicksville US town, and retire.
And yet we see Hussain Obama, grinning and crooning as if he is a world statesman with a feather in his cap. The guy has no shame. He is a clown and a retard, and he has been whipped fair and square by the Chinese. And while I am quite happy to see Obama being whipped, the whole of America has been whipped too. And China knows it.
Hang your heads in shame, Americans, you now have the same influence on world politics and affairs, as Albania.
Ralph
.
…. Is that whipped or wipped?? For Obama, it could be either…….. 😉
Ralph
At the core of environmental extremism is a belief that the enlightened state is always right. In a word, it is fascism.
More like Marxists.
Both are totalitarian. Mussolini said it succinctly, ” “Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”
I talk to Marxists on the blogosphere and they are in favor of progress, whereas the Greens are against it. The Marxists consider this pseudo leftist scum (PLS) as a blight on humanity.
A lot of marxists joined the green movement after the Soviet Union fell. Former General Secretary of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev got heavily involved with the green movement after he lost his old job – I’m sure he brought plenty of his old pals with him when he made the move.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Gorbachev
“… Since his resignation, Gorbachev has remained involved in world affairs. He founded the Gorbachev Foundation in 1992, headquartered in San Francisco. He later founded Green Cross International, with which he was one of three major sponsors of the Earth Charter. He also became a member of the Club of Rome and the Club of Madrid, an independent non-profit organization composed of 81 democratic former presidents and Prime Ministers from 57 different countries. …”
it is simply the Watermelon Branch of National Socialism.
Green on the outside, red on the inside.
National Socialism is fascism, but with an environmental “uber alles” twist. The state controls (dictates) anything and everything it wants, as long as the profiteering industrialists, who are allowed a handsome personal profit and property and elitist status, kowtow to the state and by extension, the “green” agenda. Elon Musk is probably the prototypical Watermelon Fascist Billionaire.
They are worse than Marxists if now that’s possible.
Simply a different spelling of the word.
I agree. It is a curious policy victory of the Left over the years! It was they who wanted to distance themselves from fascism. So they claimed that the Nazis were a “far right” party, when in fact, they were the National “Socialists” party, a party that wanted the people to look to the state to solve there problems real or perceived, they want total control over the lives of ordinary people!
Given the impossibility of competing in the free market place against an authoritarian government lording over forced and directed labor, I wish Great Britain, except for the Graniad, a long and authoritarian-free future. We just don’t need more of that kind of competition in a world of steadily diminishing freedoms.
“Given the impossibility of competing in the free market place against an authoritarian government lording over forced and directed labor, ”
Sorry dp but China does not have the forced and directed labor as you state. There might be forced labor for prisons, but the vast majority of people in China participate in a free labor market. This is evidenced by rapidly rising wages and standards of living in the areas like Shenzhen, Guangdong, Shanghai, Beijing, etc. In fact the problem of rapidly rising wages has gotten so bad that some factories are closing in China, and reopening in a special zone next to North Korea, to take advantage of North Koreas truly ‘forced and directed labor.’
When you say “free labor market”, the Chinese actually do get paid–not much, but it puts food on their table.
Nobody wins working for free.
/sarc
Every Chinese must have a “certificate of domicile,” and cannot live or work in any place, other that the one stated in this certificate. Most of the Chinese cannot work in any other place without getting a special permission. There are quotas for workers who get such permissions, and even these permissions are temporary — after working the allowed amount of years in a sweatshop factory, a worker must return to his former place of domicile. Anybody who speaks about “free labor market” in China is living on another planet.
>>Sorry dp but China does not have the forced
>>and directed labor as you state.
Rough quote from ‘Gone With the Wind’. Rhett Butler says…. “A man with no food in his belly is not free’.
Indeed, if you are that poor that you have no choices in life, you are still a slave. And since a slave is someone with a subsistence living and no choices in life, then the majority of Chinese workers are still slaves. It always amazes me that the Liberal Left will condemn slavery, yet have reinvented slavery in China and made us all dependent on it.
If you are buying a torch for $1 or a lawnmower for $25, you are a slave owner dependent on slavery, just the same as the plantation owners of the 18th and 19th century. It matters not if the shackles are made of iron or made of hunger – it is still slavery.
Ralph
@Kozlowski – Kind of amusing. What happened to first Japan, then South Korea, Taiwan and other Asian nations, is now happening to China. It is a new domino effect
Alexander Feht, You are behind with your history. Although some backward cities and states in China may indeed still require a “certificate of domicile” which allocates where you may work and live etc. in the growing areas of China especially Shanghai, the demand for skills and labour by PRIVATE companies is so much that workers simply find they have enough wealth to eat and live according to the free market and are ignoring the old regulations. Interesting my language tutor from Shanghai had observed that first hand.
It is also significant that the administration do not appear to be enforcing the old rules and I believe the policy is to let them wither as they become redundant.
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
Roger,
Yes, many are working illegally and ignoring regulations — and each one of them can be arrested any minute, beaten, forced to return home, if not end his days in jail. The fact that the government gangsters connive at the violation of their rules when it suits them, doesn’t mean that there is a free labor market in China.
Oh, I forgot: your language tutor from Shanghai says otherwise. I should prostrate myself in the dust before his traditional Chinese wisdom of never criticizing the authorities.
Alexander Feht,
“and each one of them can be arrested any minute, beaten, forced to return home …” etc
Do you care to state your sources for your opinions?
Mine are based on what people who were there have told me, Including during the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and the rise of Zheng Xiao Peng and the times since.
Hate to tell you old son, but if you want to take the time to see the architecture of HK, Beijing and Shanghai etc. you might just realise that China is no longer the place you think it is.
Cheers
Roger
Evolution:
Sierra Club, Green Peace, Earth First, Michael Mann, Obama Care man Gruber.
China too is in reverse evolution also.
Well, gee, The USA used to do this “elites-only decision” stuff all the time under King George III (I think it was called “Georgecare”), right up until the time of the American Revolution.
Now we’re supposed to bow to the will of a bunch of “basement dwellers at mom’s house” idiots who think “scientific methodology” is something you do to save someone from choking and “accurate data” is restaurant recommendation on YELP.
I don’t think so.
Um… this comment made as much sense as a Yoko Ono concert.
Have you tried playing the concert backwards?
Will playing a Yoko Ono concert backwards cause my glassware to unbreak?
Sorry for the presumed knowledge of American history (George III was the British king during the US revolution).
The point was the USA decided a couple of hundred years ago that we chose to conduct our public affairs as a representative democracy, as opposed to unilateral decisions by an unaccountable king. These representatives are located in the US Congress (House & Senate), not in the Executive branch.
Thus the US constitution requires the Senate to provide “advice & consent” regarding foreign treaties. Hopefully, Obama’s agreement will not pass muster.
That should clear up my feelings about unilateral executive action; however, I’m in total agreement on the value of a Yoko Ono concert.
Chip,
The Constitution, like all agreements, contracts, and laws, is just an old manuscript if the people sworn to protect and enforce it instead disregard it or (mis)use only those parts that they find useful. The population of the USA is so poorly educated on The Constitution now that most could not tell you what it was or why it was written, So the country can be easily mislead by glib politicians trying to feather their own nests and fill their own wallets happy in the knowledge that if they attractively bait every hook the low information voters will vote for them. The result is that what The Constitution was intended to prevent: government by fiat, has returned and every section of The Bill of Rights is under threat.
It is not only the USA that is under this threat, the same is happening in Europe where politicians are building a Eurocracy that is unaccountable to the people. The same authoritarian approach is also being taken by the UN in many areas including the invented claims of ‘Climate Change’ to allow authoritarian treaties.
Meanwhile the low information populace watches ‘reality’ TV and MTV in ignorance of what is going on around them.
That’s an adolescent interpretation of history.
Better than being lied to and called stupid.
Of course, evidence indicates the lies were directed toward the Democrats, who voted for hell care hook line and sinker.
They’ve still not been told.
Rainbow Six
Tom Clancy
1998
When I first read that book so many years ago, I thought Clancy was off the mark with his portrayal of certain rabid environmentalists. After listening to the rantings of the activists over the years since, it seems that Clancy’s portrayal was rather moderate.
They wouldn’t blink an eye at the thought of the death of 7 billion humans just to “save the planet” … especially for the enjoyment of the activists.
Nothing changes much in the cast of the human theatre. It is just he same in Chesterton’s brilliant, and brilliantly funny, masterpiece: “The Man Who Was Thursday”, written more than a hundred years ago, with a glorious description of the hunger for radical action in the meek middle classes, where the villains are the global anarchists, or terrorists, as we would call them today, but the typology has not changed.
Our next Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau (may God have mercy on all Canadians) when asked which country he most admired, replied: China, for the same reasons espoused by the Guardian.
The election is next year.
If the Empty Suit wins, the good news is, he’ll make Obama look like a winner.
Oh sure, tank Canada just so the big zero doesn’t look quite as bad…
No thanks.
If Trudeau looks like he might actually get close in the next election, the flight of capital from the western part of this country will send us into a recession just like his father caused with his NEP, designed to kill the economy in the west and improve the economy in the Quebec and Ontario. I will be one of the people fleeing. Maybe go south if the Obaminator is replaced by a decent leader.
Oh no please god no!
This guy got his degree in drama , dropped out of second year engineering and taught snowboarding up at Whistler. His suit is not only empty, its a vacuum.
I thought the Chinese hadn’t actually set any reduction levels but merely stated that they will reduce them. Given the pressures on China, India and Germany to produce cheap energy, I doubt there will be any real reduction in the next few decades. The future for these countries is coal!
You got it almost right. They never said they would reduce anything, at any time. They just said they will (may) stop INCREASING CO2 in 2030. About the time the massive hydo projects are in full operation and the 600 megawatt coal plants every 10 days for the next 10 years, (each with a 40 year life) come on line, they just MIGHT consider leveling off.
Jonova is running with this.
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/11/why-did-china-pick-2030-oh-look/
If the US drops out of the CO2 race, we’ve got to have somebody willing and able to feed the biosphere!
Quite a bit smarter than us.
The problem is China has agreed to NO reductions. So they are actually saying that anyone will agree to no reductions, but free people balk at arbitrary burdens of witchcraft.
China has agreed with itself that INCREASED emissions is quite all right for the next sixteen years. Or thereabouts. On my turf, the MSM is remarkably silent about this supposedly break-through deal. “Nothing to see here, move on please”.
The world will be free to follow the Chinese example next year in Paris, city of nuclear-powered light.
There is one more detail hiding back in the corner. Note that Xi,s statement makes no agreement to reduce emissions once the future cap is put in place. All they are committing to is a future cap. I noticed that China is now emitting 30% of the global total emissions. If I remember right it was only a year ago where China was listed at 28% of the total. If the US and Europe reverse their co2 output, then China,s share of total emissions will skyrocket perhaps as high as 50% of the global total.
Yup. A very concise demonstration of them being smarter than us.
But, seriously folks, if you’ve ever been to Beijing on a “normal” pollution day, you’d understand they’re all going to choke to death before they die from global warming.
Correction – Not “us”, Obama.
Always loved this…
http://youtu.be/DGscoaUWW2M
This video, in light of the flurry of recently-released videos of the ObamaCare architect bragging about taking advantage of voter stupidity, is painfully prescient.
I also love it….so true! We play all the DVDs from time to time; they never date.
Ah, thanks for this, Big Jim. One of my favorite T.V. programmes.
Commands respect. 🙂
Eamon.
Yes, there is a certain slight yearning for the Chinese way of decision-making in the article, but in general it looks like a very sober -and, for the greens, sobering- description of the obstacles the Republicans can put int he way of Obama’s climate policy. Rather a subdued tone. Is the Guardian finally waking up to the fact that the game is up?
Any form of government is a good one if I’m in charge.
Churchill: Democracy is the worst form of government…..except for all the others.
Thinking about it…
For Europe, this deal means greater diplomatic pressure to raise our cost of living and, relatively, harm our industry.
This deal is a definite victory for the USA and China against the EU. It costs them nothing (as they haven’t agreed to do anything) and costs us a lot.
what planet are you from?
UK – Earth. Just wondering what you didn’t understand?
The US Senate will block any action in the West. China has no intention of doing anything in the East.
And we will be hoist by our own petard and thus bounced into committing to raising our energy costs.
That’s a good result for our competitors, China and the USA.
I kind of agree with MC.
Why don’t you? Because you don’t really say.
Smokie, MCourtney, the EU doesn’t need adversaries to sink itself.
DirkH, Only economic failure will sink the EU.
It has a cultural vitality that can draw in most people… unless they are hungry, scared or angry.
No-one wants conflict; togetherness is nice.
MCourtney, the EU is a bureaucratic tyranny. It is already a political failure. Failure of the rest will follow.
It’s beyond me how a vigorous independent-minded society like the UK could have ever ceded its independence to a bunch of continental upper-crust self-serving twits.
How it remains a controversy in the UK about whether to ditch the EU, or not, is also beyond my understanding.
Better to live in modest freedom than in opulent slavery.
On the other hand, it is a great helping hand to the EU from America and China, effectively letting the EU off its self-imposed hook of emissons reductions. Which only are supposed to be binding if other nations make similar promises. It will be very hard to convince even the most gullible greens that the world’s two largest emitting nations have agreed on anything remotely close to the EU’s commitment. So the Union can shrug and say “sorry we tried our best, but the nasty foreigners have betrayed the planet”, and be very, very relieved.
As for the others, India (thanks for this info, WUWT) wants to INCREASE or even double its coal production in the next five years, Brazil, Indonesia, Korea all want business as ususal, that is, growing, and the Russians will worry about a boycott of their 2018 soccer world championship.
I hope you’re right but I fear that any commitment from the USA and China will push the EU to hold firm to its foolish commitments.
Not Poland nor other eastern EU countries, of course, and France has nuclear so… but Germany, Italy and the UK have influential green fear-monger groups.
dbstealey, what?
I thought we had agreed to disagree on political or religious issues.
Maybe, I’m wrong….
You’re right for a change! ☺
How’s your dad doing? I miss his commentary.
RichardSCourtney is doing OK. But he’s not really up to stress. And commenting here, with the political views he expresses, is not always conducive to a mellow debate. In some ways he is less emollient than me.
MC – I’m glad he’s doing OK. I too miss his input. I do not agree with his politics but where’s the point in debating only with people whose views you espouse? Anyway, we cider drinkers are always emolient!
Please pass on my best wishes to him. Thanks.
Sneering at democracy? The incriminating quote is just a statement of fact – and a rather accurate one. What’s wrong with it?
I can’t really see the sneer against democracy either in the quoted paragraph;
““While Chinese apparatchiks will, presumably unquestioningly, jump to realize President Xi Jinping’s order to reduce carbon emissions in an ambitious deal with the United States,”
But it is misleading to say that they will “jump to reduce”, unless the Guardian thinks it takes sixteen years of preparations to make this “jump”.
If you didn’t leave out the following part of the quote, which is the part that takes a swipe at U.S. democracy, you would see the sneer much easier:
“Barack Obama will come home to a newly elected Congress that will probably tell him to neuter his climate change agenda…”
The implication is obvious. A dictatorship is better for the climate than a democracy because it’s easier for such governments to force people to do what they don’t want to do in order to supposedly save the planet. Never mind that China actually agreed to increase their emissions for the next decade and a half before they even attempt to limit them. The Guardian is deliberately ignoring reality and pretending that China is going to act quickly just so they can take a swipe at the slow and purposely deliberate U.S. democracy. Greens love dictators because they love telling the rest of us what to do.
“Barack Obama will come home to a newly elected Congress that will probably tell him to neuter his climate change agenda…” I consider this very likely; I’ll bet 10 to 1 on it. Where is the sneer? Do you somehow see anything wrong with it? For me, that’s how democracy is supposed to work.
the sneer is in the lie they tell before talking about the americans. they say that china are jumping to reduce emissions, which is just a total load of crap in any logical sense. first, they NEVER agreed to reduce emissions, and second 16 years is not jumping at something. the lie is the basis for the comparison being made.
I was taught we live in a REPRESENTATIVE REPUBLIC. Most of our processes are democratic although there are checks and balances to limit that, e.g., THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE. And three (3) distinct branches of government, or at least there are supposed to be. Unless we have a TYRANT in the White House preempting the legitimate process of WE THE PEOPLE. That’s why we have a SECOND AMENDMENT which the UN and OBAMA are trying to usurp. That’s why I decide to administer a dose of TRUTH SERUM, which is appropriate.
The agreement Obama made with China allows China to continue its ways for the next 15 years, while the US must immediately begin reducing its carbon emissions. From a political perspective, the deal is DOA even before Obama presents it to the Senate. There is no way there is 2/3rds of the Senate in Obama’s bag. And this agreement cannot be implemented via Executive Action. The enforcement costs alone will run into the millions, and only Congress can give the President the money.
The President got exactly the kind of agreement he wanted in order to tar the GOP in Congress. But, after last week’s drubbing, there probably isn’t a dozen Senators willing to sign this ridiculous agreement
Obama will most likely give the agreement to the EPA and tell them to implement it.
Congress needs to pull the plug on finances and stop the EPA.
Anything Obama does by edict can be undone by the next POTUS.
Although I don’t know of any executive orders that have been ended by a new POTUS.
How ironic that the Guardian does not even realize that printing this kind of article would be forbidden under the Chinese government, perhaps even ending in the disappearance of the author.
And forbidden even more so in Turkey, which has about 150 reporters in jail at present. And Turkey is supposed to be the new frontier of the ever-expanding EU.
Over my dead body.
R
Reblogged this on Public Secrets and commented:
That darned democracy keeps getting in the way of our Intellectual Betters (all bow) by giving the plebes a voice. As the article reminds us, Progressives, such as the NYT’s Tom Friedman, often wish we were more like China. Thank Heaven we’re not.
Here is an honest-to-God quote from the New York Times today: “President Obama’s landmark agreement with China to cut greenhouse gas pollution is a bet by the president and Democrats that on the issue of climate change, American voters are far ahead of Washington’s warring factions and that the environment will be a winning cause in the 2016 presidential campaign.”
Given what happened just a week ago in West Virginia, and Kentucky, and Louisiana, and in every other energy producing area where Obama’s actions have driven long time democrats into the arms of the Republicans – this thinking is absolute insanity!
It’s one thing to have said this before the election – but to say this a week after Tom Steyer’s $75 million vanished without a trace??? Unbelievable! It does let you know that the left is NEVER going to change its stripes for any reason on this; they are going to go down with this ship if its the last thing they do.
Just speculating .. maybe the Democrats are giving the Republicans enough rope to hang themselves on in time for 2016 elections. What a remarkable strategy – including a gambit.
The ship will go down, but in the nick of time, the rats will have abandoned it for another ideological vessel, threatening us with yet another global disaster which will happen “Two days before the day after tomorrow”. All skeptics; this South Park episode is a must.
Oddly in the last presidential election it was a none-issue , so what has changed ?
You know, I think I finally understand this. It’s a simple domino chain that goes like this:
1) Our progressives in the U.S. are conditioned to unthinkingly accept and cheer anything the media gives them regarding climate treaty news. The lights have been off upstairs for a long time when it comes to reading climate change news anyway.
2) Our media in the U.S. are conditioned to unthinkingly praise anything Barack Obama tells them is admirable.
3) Barack Obama has proclaimed this an historic diplomatic victory for the environment.
put it all together, what else could have happened really.
If that’s what the greens want, then I say we should act like China and increase our GHG emissions without limit for the next 15 years. At that point, we can talk about trying to keep our emissions level by not exceeding the new maximum. Isn’t that what China agreed to do? And isn’t that what the Guardian is praising them for doing?
One of China’s 20th century environmental changes was to collectivize agriculture in the 1950s. They deliberately starved to death 20-30,000,000 of their own citizens.
Just saying…
Keep in mind, the official story is that the starvation during the Great Leap was that it was from natural causes. They don’t even admit it was done by the government. China is also behind most of the studies in “sustainable agriculture.” For example, Rio +20 was led by Chinese communists who hate the US. And here is an example of attacks on our domestic agriculture by the UN, and foreign operatives in NGOs:
So why are the EU and the US DOAg signing organic agriculture agreements with Maoists to destroy our agriculture?
Nobody was supposed to notice that.
The article does not bother me nearly as much as the Comments on the article.
The story was written by one person and published in a newspaper that is fully invested in the theory, but I would have hoped that at least a few people would have commented on the other side.
Or maybe those comments were remvoved?
Interesting point; I have noted that there has been a marked increase in skeptical comments on climate issues in the Guardian lately. A few years ago, there were hardly any dissident voices. But the comments on this article seems to have become more of a Republican-bashing venue, than a climate discussion. Maybe the more liberal-minded sceptics are staying away.
As a sceptic who is left-wing and comments on the Guardian often… this article has very little attraction to me.
It is not about the climate – neither China nor the USA are going to act on this stated intention.
It is a little about the games of the great powers. But that is not as important a round as Ukraine or the Middle East or even Africa.
But mainly, this article is click-bait to enjoy a rant at the US right-wing.
I don’t agree with the US right-wing either.
But I’d rather talk to the US right-wing directly about why I disagree than rant behind their back in a close-minded echo chamber.
MCourtney
So why don’t we put it to a vote and see what the citizens think?
So, the Chinese will continue with the status quo till 2030 and Obama says he will reduce GHG’s, effectively tighten the noose on the U. S. economy and hail it as a breakthrough achievement. It’s no wonder the village Obama left knows they have rid themselves of their idiot.
““While Chinese apparatchiks will, presumably unquestioningly, jump to realize President Xi Jinping’s order to reduce carbon emissions” the may do but his given no such order , its only a Green dream that he has. China is carry on has before.
All they have to do is stay their present course. CO2 emissions were going to peak in 2030 anyway because they are going nuclear. China made no concession at all. Obama’s short term play is to put a price on CO2 emissions. The rest is noise.