When former vice president Al Gore braves the Gore Effect (a D.C. winter storm watch is already in effect for his arrival) to tell the Senate Foreign Relations Committee sages what a Kyoto II must include–in addition to the U.S. as one of the very few “bound” parties–I’m willing to bet that he will tout the European Union’s plan to be rolled out the same day.
Here are some highlights from AFP’s anticipatory reportage today of the scheme:
“BRUSSELS (AFP) – Eager to take the lead on climate change, the European Union aims to pile pressure on the United States and big emerging countries to sign up to an ambitious strategy to reduce greenhouse gases.
Last month European leaders approved an ambitious climate change action plan which the 27-nation bloc hopes will become a model for international negotiations in Copenhagen in December.”
Ummmm . . . not so ambitious. In fact, despite the 1990 baseline and dragging in the post-1990 economic basket cases to make Kyoto’s EU-15 now the EU-25, this is an increase in emissions from the first (failed), purportedly less-ambitious promise. It is an increase of emissions since Kyoto was agreed, of course, despite demanding a fairly whopping reduction from us. In case you were wondering how substantive the sales pitch is going to be.
This puts the next paragraph in perspective:
“‘We will do everything to make (Copehagen) [sic] a success,’ European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso told reporters on Friday. ‘The problem is to know whether the others are ready to do what we have been doing.”
Which, Planet Gore readers know full well, has been increasing their emissions while beating their breast about slashing emissions, and transferring huge sums to China to go along with the act. And that really isn’t what he’s proposing for the U.S., as we also know. We don’t have the luxury of the cleverly chosen 1990 baseline (for a 1997 treaty that went into effect in 2008) or having cheated massively on our already rigged emissions baseline, finding the equivalent of Ireland under the sofa cushions before we had to stick to a number.
The “plan” involves €94 billion (appx. $123,263,000,000, today) to be raised by an energy tax–selling the cap-n-trade ration coupons–then transferred to India and China, among others. Then there’s the matter of 200 additional schemes (!) “target[ing] the energy, agriculture and forestry sectors.” Mmmm. What’s not to like?
Which seems to be Barrosso’s belief, given the following: “‘I think the most important issue for Copenhagen in terms of preparation is to have the Americans on board and afterwards the biggest emerging economies China, India, and Brazil,’ Barroso said.”
Gosh, do you think we could persuade them to settle?
Benny Peiser notes that elsewhere Reuters asserts a similar naïveté, “If widely agreed the EU plan could encourage the world’s top carbon emitter, China, to agree to internationally binding climate measures” [mirroring FRC chairman John Kerry’s perspective as reported in today’s E&E Daily, and surely Gore’s thesis on Wednesday].
“Could.” That is, if I hit myself on the head with this frying pan it could cause the vast majority of the world rejecting the idea to reconsider and start banging their own noggins, too. I’m curious, but how self-centered (or worse) must we be to believe that 150+ nations of, how do we say, developing peoples, who have articulated their judgment that it is not in their interests to do something are really just making excuses for the embarassing truth that they are playing follow-the-leader, the leader being the great us?
When they followed our lead under George W. Bush, we were told it was just because Bush wasn’t doing what Europe claimed to be doing. If Kerry-Gore et al. prevail we will learn in a very short while that, gee, these countries meant what they said and–shocker–really do believe themselves capable of informed, independent judgment and are going to continue on their preferred course no matter how badly we harm ourselves. How will our all-knowing elites euphemize their, ah, cultural and intellectual superiority then?