Realizing Reality

In Europe, the financial turmoil has broken the stride of the EU’s lockstep approach to climate issues. Those with greater economic vulnerability — Italy, Poland, and much of Eastern Europe — refuse to accept a new climate deal, crafted by French president Nicolas Sarkozy, on the grounds that it will further damage their already fragile economies. German Chancellor Angela Merkel seeks exemptions for her country’s heavy industries. Italian environment minister Stefania Presciagiacomo pooh-poohs the idea that “green jobs” will transform advanced economies, scoffing, “Some people claim environmental measures are a way to re-launch industry. But let’s be realistic: Resources are limited, and they will be even more so because of the economic crisis.”

Meanwhile, developing countries remain adamant that they will not accept any new limits on their emissions in Kyoto II. This is a fact of no little salience, given that China is today the world’s No. 1 emitter of greenhouse gases, followed by the United States, Indonesia, and India.

(It’s worth keeping in mind what the U.S. gives the world along with those emissions: the United States is the best performer by a very wide margin, producing $2,000 in economic value per ton of greenhouse emissions to China’s $450, India’s $497, and Indonesia’s $679. A ton of emissions from the United States brings the world 4.5 times as much economic good as a ton of emissions from China.) [and that not factoring the North American CO2 Sink which literally absorbs emissions to below zero {.2%} - but the UN 'doesn't count' that][snip]

For eight years, the United States has been the object of criticism, harsh and unfair, for its unwillingness to be afflicted with sweeping emissions limits and the punitive economic consequences that will go along with them. And now, the very same international parties that censured the United States for looking to its own interests have themselves become the agents of delay...

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