“SMOKE AND FIRE UPON THE SEA…”

12/10/09

The UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen is very much in the news of late. Progress is being made on a number of fronts, but, being the Insightful Pontificator, what I consider progress is usually not what the strutting popinjays in politics and the media consider progress.

First, the eminent conferees have finally faced reality and determined that, if curbing greenhouse emissions, rather than bashing the developed world, is one’s true goal, one must do something about such emissions from the developing world. Virtually all the growth of greenhouse emissions from here on out will come from the developing world, and half of that will come from China. If we are going to cut greenhouse emissions, there will clearly be some price to pay in economic growth, and most of that price will be borne by those struggling on the first few rungs of the long climb to prosperity. This is a truth that such climate and environmental conferences have tried to avoid, and it doesn’t, as some would argue, by any means destroy the argument for cleaning up the environment. But honest debate must proceed from honest facts.

Second, the Bush/Obama administration has finally shown some backbone and refused to give in to Chinese demands that the “wealthy nations” foot the entire bill for cleaning up the developing world. The administration has come up with $10 billion for such purposes, but large developing nations, and China in particular, not wanting to be seen dipping into that pool at the expense of far poorer developing nations, have demanded more.

Hopefully, the administration’s refusal (so far, at least) to come up with more dough arises from its realization of the utter absurdity of the Chinese demand. Where will the U.S. come up with any more money to help China clean up its emissions? Where, indeed, will it come up with the $10 billion it has already pledged? You guessed it; given the state of our budget after 9 years of Bush/Obama, the government will have to borrow the money to give to China to clean up its environment. And from whom will we borrow the money? You guessed this one, too…China. So we’ll borrow money from China to give to China to clean up its industry, which exists primarily to meet U.S. demand for consumer products. The logic is either completely absurd or compellingly perverse.