Don't expect any climate agreements in Copenhagen
Polynesia@pacific-rim.tf ~AGG~
By GEORGE F. WILL
Washington Post
Nov. 7, 2009, 5:26PM
Intelligent people agree that, absent immediate radical action regarding
global warming, the human race is sunk. That is a tautology because those
who do not agree are, definitionally, unintelligent. Britain's intelligent
Prime Minister Gordon Brown gives scary precision to the word "immediate."
By his reckoning, humanity now has about 30 days to save itself. He says
that unless a decisive agreement is reached at the 192-nation summit on
climate change that opens Dec. 7 in Copenhagen, all is lost.
So, all is lost. The chances of a comprehensive and binding treaty are
approximately nil.
The fourth of five parlays preparing for Copenhagen occurred in Bangkok from
Sept. 28 through Oct. 9, with delegates from about 180 nations
participating. Remember diplomat George Kennan's axiom that the unlikelihood
of reaching an agreement is the square of the number of parties at the
table? The meeting adjourned with, as usual, essentially no progress toward
an agreement on reduced emissions by developed nations or on the money such
nations should pay to finance developing nations' efforts against global
warming.
The New York Times reports that "the United Nations Adaptation Fund, which
officially began operating in 2008 to help poor countries finance projects
to blunt the effects of global warming, remains an empty shell, largely
because rich nations have failed to come through with the donations they
promised." The fund has a risible $18 million, which might not cover the
cost of the Copenhagen conference.
There they will experience more futility because of, among other things, two
stubborn facts - the two most populous nations. On Oct. 21, China, the
world's leading emitter of greenhouse gases, and India, which ranks fourth -
together they account for 26 percent of emissions - jointly agreed: They,
with their combined one-third of the world's population, will not play in
what increasingly resembles a global game of climate-change charades.
Neither nation is interested in jeopardizing its economic growth with
emission caps of a sort that never impeded the growth of the developed
nations that now praise them.
But do not really embrace them. Recently, the U.S. House of Representatives
took time out from fending off the world and exempted large cattle, dairy
and hog producing operations from an Environmental Protection Agency
requirement for reporting greenhouse gas emissions. And 13 Great Lakes cargo
ships were exempted from a proposed mandate requiring the use of low-sulfur
fuel. When constituents' interests conflict with global grandstanding,
Congress' rule is "act locally, think globally tomorrow, maybe."
In their new book, SuperFreakonomics, Steven D. Levitt, a University of
Chicago economist, and Stephen J. Dubner, a journalist, worry about global
warming but revive some inconvenient memories of 30 years ago. Then
intelligent people agreed (see above) that global cooling threatened human
survival. It had, Newsweek reported, "taken the planet about a sixth of the
way toward the Ice Age average." Some scientists proposed radical measures
to cause global warming - for example, covering the arctic ice cap with
black soot that would absorb heat and cause melting.
Although the political and media drumbeat of alarm is incessant, a Pew poll
shows that only 57 percent of Americans think there is solid evidence of
global warming, down 20 points in three years. Gallup shows that only 1
percent of Americans rank the environment as their biggest worry. Two
reasons are: They are worried about their wages, which will not be improved
by clobbering a weak economy with the costs of a cap-and-trade
carbon-reduction regime. And climate Cassandras are learning the wages of
crying "Wolf!"
In 2005, global warming worriers warned, as they tend to do after all
adverse or anomalous environmental events, that Hurricane Katrina was caused
by global warming and foreshadowed an increase in the number and
destructiveness of hurricanes. As this year's Atlantic hurricane season
ends, only three hurricanes have formed - half the average of the last 50
years - and none had hit the United States.