Copenhagen's Collapse

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052748704431804574540002267533772-lMyQjAxMDA5MDEwNzExNDcyWj.html

As the WSJ Editorial Board points out attached, President Obama has bowed to reality and admitted that little of substance would come from the climate change summit in Copenhagen next month. This would contrast with the President's promises over the past year to create a binding international carbon-regulation treaty, but instead negotiators from 192 different countries now hope to reach a preliminary agreement that they will sign such a treaty when they meet in Mexico City in 2010.

Wait for it: the "environmental lobby" is blaming Copenhagen's pre-emptive collapse on the Senate's failure to ram thru a "cap-and-trade" scheme like the House did in June, arguing that the world won't make commitments until the U.S. does.

Is that right? Well, as the WSJ editors point out, China and India have no intention of limiting their economic growth because of the West's climate neuroses. And, why should they? Then, of course, there's Europe which appears to be ready to agree with emissions quotas only if they don't have to be "met".

China has, however, expressed a willingness to help us with our climate neuroses by agreeing to build a wind farm in West Texas (with the aid of U.S. government green subsidies). For those of us that support "wind", we're glad to see somebody finally doing it. However; we kind of hoped for the jobs and the profits from such enterprises to stay here. Evidently, there was such an "outcry" over this that the China-based company agreed to build one wind spar (the blades for the wind turbines) plant here.

And, thank you China.

The WSJ editors go on to point out that the pointlessness of Copenhagen will now become part of President Obama's arguement that the Senate must inflict cap and tax on the U.S., in addition to the EPA's "nondemocratic" carbon crackdown via clean air regulation (see our prior posts on the EPA's handling of its own staff and its determination to "get the carbon"). However; if the Senate is consistent, and just behaves as it normally does, it will fail to act. The EPA acted so precipitously (and, again, inconsistently relative to its own staff) that it is very likely to get tied up in court (which is good and certainly why we have a democracy). This, of course, will be very helpful to the U.S. economic recovery since we will not be facing higher energy taxes anytime soon.

My thought on this situation is that "economic growth" comes ahead of "climate change". Why don't we resolve to reexamine the "get the carbon" situation when the unemployment rate in the United States drops from 10.2% back down to it's long term equilibrium (4%/5%)? Perhaps we can reconsider a "carbon police state" in 18/24 months. At that point, perhaps, the issue of "global cooling" might also be brought to the for since it would appear that the first decade of the 21st century has watched the planet get "cooler." Even better, we could suggest a "twin cities" approach to climate: say Minneapolis and St. Paul or Dallas and Fort Worth. Here the approach would be to "split" the 192 countries mentioned above that will be meeting in Copenhagen next month (probably to hear from Al Gore about 2012): half of the countries would meet in one city to talk about "global warming" and the other half would meet in the sister city to talk about "global cooling". Once they have consensus, representatives of the two country groups could meet on "neutral ground" (say Arlington) to devise a compromise approach to saving the planet - something like smoking on alternative Mondays, or certain auto license plate numbers can fill up with gas on smoking Mondays, and certain other license plate numbers can only fill up with gas when it rains! We actually had something like this during the U.S. wage and price controls during the early 1970s. We had gas lines based on license plate numbers.

Certainly, the "carbonistas" (my dictionary says that's not a word) would be willing to compromise and listen to reason. Oh wait, I forgot, we're talking about the global warming alarmists.