With today’s news on India’s candid admission that global warming is so great a threat that other people need to pretend to do something about it — that is, that a failure to grow economically is a far greater threat than the greatest threat facing mankind — allow me to lay out how I see December’s “Kyoto II” talks in Copenhagen unfolding. I say this fully aware that the administration has reiterated, in the wake of India’s candor, that Team Obama “need[s] an agreement” in Copenhagen, something to wave about declaring Greenpeace in Our Time, look at me I’m not Bush Part XII, etc.
India, China, Mexcio, and the rest of the 155 nations happily exempt from Kyoto — and adamant that they will remain exempt from Kyoto II — are more than happy to take our wealth transfers. I feel confident in saying that they are left shaking their heads at this rich man’s folly. Recall, for example, this gem from India’s government, noting (and I paraphrase) that, hey, that’s a nice theory, but that’s all it is and we see a much stronger relationship between energy use and prosperity than the climate. Hear, hear!
So, these nations know full well what they’re doing, hoping to milk for all it’s worth the prosperous West’s environmentalism that is partly borne of ideology, partly driven by panic. They’re confident we’ll accept some sop from them in the form of a claim, at the 10th or 11th hour — don’t want too draw too much hype and therefore scrutiny to what will be hailed as an historic breakthrough — that they will keep their emissions below some projected business-as-usual limit in return for massive wealth and technology transfers. They will give us this big fat nothing knowing it is precisely what we so cravenly seek from them: a meaningless gesture that will help our domestic Greens to sell an economic suicide pact (both in legislation and treaty form) as part of a global effort.
With that said, I also see in this piece from yesterday’s Washington Post, “A growing India sets goal to harness renewable energy,” noting that 26 years after establishing its Ministry of Renewable Energy, “renewable energy, predominantly wind and biomass, make up 3 percent of India’s total electricity production.” Oh, and sunny India gets a grand total of “near zero” percent of its electricity from solar power. And this in a country whose infrastructure, to the extent it exists, is largely of recent construction. That 26 years of failure is not much of a track record to reward with billions in transfer payments come December (billions that, according to the president during his appearance in the broadcast booth during the MLB All-Star game, we don’t have).