Friday, 27 March 2009

My first reaction to this madness is "You and whose army?"  . The UN 
is not a highly respected body and is primarily a meeting place for 
all nations  with the possibility of settling differences without 
bloodshed.

But the idea that nations would be willing to see themselves stripped 
of their industries to fit some maniac's false religion is farcical!  
And do without most of their present electricity .  All of this to 
stop something that isn't happening!

They think they've nobbled every politician in sight (They may be 
right there) and they're going for the ultimate, in the expectation 
that they'll get most of it.

The world is near to financial meltdown and they think of this.  Both 
things together have been dreamed up by the worst generation in 
history - the drug-crazed 60s generation.  This is a product of their 
addled brains.

xxxxxxxxxxx cs
==========================
FOX NEWS 27.3.09
U.N. 'Climate Change' Plan Would Likely Shift Trillions to Form New 
World Economy

By George Russell

A United Nations document on "climate change" that will be 
distributed to a major environmental conclave next week envisions a 
huge reordering of the world economy, likely involving trillions of 
dollars in wealth transfer, millions of job losses and gains, new 
taxes, industrial relocations, new tariffs and subsidies, and 
complicated payments for greenhouse gas abatement schemes and carbon 
taxes - all under the supervision of the world body.


Those and other results are blandly discussed in a discretely worded 
United Nations "information note" on potential consequences of the 
measures that industrialized countries will likely have to take to 
implement the Copenhagen Accord, the successor to the Kyoto Treaty, 
after it is negotiated and signed by December 2009.  [The little wird 
"IF" is missing -cs] The Obama administration has said it supports 
the treaty process if, in the words of a U.S. State Department 
spokesman, it can come up with an "effective framework" for dealing 
with global warming.  [WHAT global warming? -cs]

The 16-page note, obtained by FOX News, will be distributed to 
participants at a mammoth negotiating session that starts on March 29 
in Bonn, Germany, the first of three sessions intended to hammer out 
the actual commitments involved in the new deal.

In the stultifying language that is normal for important U.N. 
conclaves, the negotiators are known as the "Ad Hoc Working Group On 
Further Commitments For Annex I Parties Under the Kyoto Protocol." 
Yet the consequences of their negotiations, if enacted, would be 
nothing short of world-changing.

Getting that deal done has become the United Nations' highest 
priority, and the Bonn meeting is seen as a critical step along the 
path to what the U.N. calls an "ambitious and effective international 
response to climate change," which is intended to culminate at the 
later gathering in Copenhagen.

Just how ambitious the U.N.'s goals are can be seen, but only dimly, 
in the note obtained by FOX News, which offers in sparse detail both 
positive and negative consequences of the tools that industrial 
nations will most likely use to enforce the greenhouse gas reduction 
targets.

The paper makes no effort to calculate the magnitude of the costs and 
disruption involved, but despite the discreet presentation, makes 
clear that they will reverberate across the entire global economic 
system.
. Go to://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/032709_informationnote.pdf

Among the tools that are considered are the cap-and-trade system for 
controlling carbon emissions that has been espoused by the Obama 
administration; "carbon taxes" on imported fuels and energy-intensive 
goods and industries, including airline transportation; and lower 
subsidies for those same goods, as well as new or higher subsidies 
for goods that are considered "environmentally sound."

Other tools are referred to only vaguely, including "energy policy 
reform," which the report indicates could affect "large-scale 
transportation infrastructure such as roads, rail and airports." When 
it comes to the results of such reform, the note says only that it 
could have "positive consequences for alternative transportation 
providers and producers of alternative fuels."

In the same bland manner, the note informs negotiators without going 
into details that cap-and-trade schemes "may induce some industrial 
relocation" to "less regulated host countries." Cap-and-trade 
functions by creating decreasing numbers of pollution-emission 
permits to be traded by industrial users, and thus pay more for each 
unit of carbon-based pollution, a market-driven system that aims to 
drive manufacturers toward less polluting technologies.

The note adds only that industrial relocation "would involve negative 
consequences for the implementing country, which loses employment and 
investment." But at the same time it "would involve indeterminate 
consequences for the countries that would host the relocated 
industries."  [Does anybody get asked? -cs]

There are also entirely new kinds of tariffs and trade protectionist 
barriers such as those termed in the note as "border carbon 
adjustment"- which, the note says, can impose "a levy on imported 
goods equal to that which would have been imposed had they been 
produced domestically" under more strict environmental regimes.

Another form of "adjustment" would require exporters to "buy [carbon] 
offsets at the border equal to that which the producer would have 
been forced to purchase had the good been produced domestically."

The impact of both schemes, the note says, "would be functionally 
equivalent to an increased tariff: decreased market share for covered 
foreign producers." (There is no definition in the report of who, 
exactly, is "foreign.") The note adds that "If they were implemented 
fairly, such schemes would leave trade and investment patterns 
unchanged." Nothing is said about the consequences if such fairness 
was not achieved.

Indeed, only rarely does the "information note" attempt to inform 
readers in dollar terms of the impact of "spillover effects" from the 
potential policy changes it discusses. In a brief mention of consumer 
subsidies for fossil fuels, the note remarks that such subsidies in 
advanced economies exceed $60 billion a year, while they exceed $90 
billion a year in developing economies."

But calculations of the impact of tariffs, offsets, or other 
subsidies is rare. In a reference to the impact of declining oil 
exports, the report says that Saudi Arabia has determined the loss to 
its economy at between $100 billion and $200 billion by 2030, but 
said nothing about other oil exporters.

One reason for the lack of detail, the note indicates, is that impact 
would vary widely depending on the nature and scope of the policies 
adopted (and, although the note does not mention it, on the severity 
of the greenhouse reduction targets).

But even when it does hazard a guess at specific impacts, the report 
seems curiously hazy. A "climate change levy on aviation" for 
example, is described as having undetermined "negative impacts on 
exporters of goods that rely on air transport, such as cut flowers 
and premium perishable produce," as well as "tourism services." But 
no mention is made in the note of the impact on the aerospace 
industry, an industry that had revenues in 2008 of $208 billion in 
the U.S. alone, or the losses the levy would impose on airlines for 
ordinary passenger transportation. (Global commercial airline 
revenues in 2008 were about $530 billion, and were already forecast 
to drop to an estimated $467 billion this year.)

In other cases, as when discussing the "increased costs of 
traditional exports" under a new environmental regime, the report 
confines itself to terse description. Changes in standards and 
labeling for exported goods, for example, "may demand costly changes 
to the production process." If subsidies and tariffs affect exports, 
the note says, the "economic and social consequences of dampening 
their viability may, for some countries and sectors, be significant."

Much depends, of course, on the extent to which harsher or more 
lenient greenhouse gas reduction targets demand more or less drastic 
policies for their achievement.

And, precisely because the Bonn meeting is a stage for negotiating 
those targets, the note is silent. Instead it suggests that more 
bureaucratic work is needed "to deepen the understanding of the full 
nature and scale of such impacts."

But outside the Bonn process, other experts have been much more blunt 
about the draconian nature of the measures they deem necessary to 
make "effective" greenhouse gas reductions.

In an influential but highly controversial paper called "Key Elements 
of a Global Deal on Climate Change," British economist Nicholas Lord 
Stern, formerly a high British Treasury official, has declared that 
industrial economies would need to cut their per capita carbon 
dioxide emissions by "at least 80% by 2050," while the biggest 
economies, like the U.S.'s, would have to make cuts of 90 percent.  
[They're totally MAD!   We all knew Stern was but there must be 
dozens of them -cs]

Stern also calls for "immediate and binding" reduction targets for 
developed nations of 20 percent to 40 percent by 2020.

To meet Stern's 2050 goals, he says, among other things, "most of the 
world's electricity production will need to have been 
decarbonized." [= little if any electricity so none of the rest can 
apply - Utterly barmy -cs]
  Stern's paper (on London School of Economics heading) . is on: 
http://www.occ.gov.uk/activities/stern_papers/Key%20Elements%20of%20a%
20Global%20Deal%20-Final01may.pdf

By way of comparison, according to the U.S. Department Of Energy, 
roughly 72 percent of U.S. electrical power generation in 2007 was 
derived from burning fossil fuels, with just 6 percent coming from 
hydro-power and less than 3 percent from non-nuclear renewable and 
"other" sources. And even then, those "other" non-fossil sources 
included wood and biomass - which, when burned, are major emitters of 
carbon.
to see the Department of Energy report go to:.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat1p1.html
- - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - -
George Russell is executive editor of FOX News.