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.
Friday, 27 March 2009
Posted by Britannia Radio at 20:14