Climate Change: With less than two months to go before the big Copenhagen Conference on global warming, two major nations have said "no thanks" to the no-growth agenda. For that reason alone, so should we.
Following a deal signed late Thursday between China and India, anything we might agree to do in Copenhagen is likely moot anyway. The two mega-nations — which together account for nearly a third of the world's population — said they won't go along with a new climate treaty being drafted in Copenhagen to replace the Kyoto Protocol that expires in 2012.
They're basically saying no to anything that forces them to impose mandatory limits on their output of greenhouse gas emissions. Other developing nations, including Mexico, Brazil and South Africa, will likely reject any proposals as well.
The deal was already in trouble. Three weeks ago, the Group of 77 developing nations met in Thailand to discuss what they wanted to do about global warming. Their answer: nothing.
William Hawkins, writing in the American Thinker, quotes a piece in China's Science Times journal that sums up how China — and other developing nations — feel:
"Why do the developed countries put an arguable scientific problem on the international negotiations table?" the article's author, Wang Jin, asks. "The real intention is not for the global temperature increase, but for the restriction of the economic development of the developing countries."
They see clearly what the rest of us seem to miss — that, for all its bad science, the Copenhagen Conference is about the world's Lilliputians tying down its Gullivers, not about global warming at all.
So, thanks to China and India, Copenhagen is dead — just as Kyoto was when it was signed in 1992, though no one knew it at the time. Without them, no global treaty on climate change will be workable.
The two nations are not only the world's most populous (with, together, more than 2 billion people), they are also the fastest-growing major countries. China is now the world's No. 1 emitter of greenhouse gases, and India is catching up fast.
Even with their participation, Copenhagen should have been a non-starter for the U.S. Indeed, the main reason for the greenhouse gas deal, all but admitted to by its major participants, is to cripple the U.S. economy — the most successful economy in the world.
True enough, as green critics keep saying, we produce nearly 20% of the world's CO2 and other greenhouse gases with just 5% of the world's population. But our GDP of roughly $14 trillion is nearly 25% of the world's total — in line with our gas output.
Posted 10/23/2009 06:44 PM ET
Climate Change: With less than two months to go before the big Copenhagen Conference on global warming, two major nations have said "no thanks" to the no-growth agenda. For that reason alone, so should we.
Following a deal signed late Thursday between China and India, anything we might agree to do in Copenhagen is likely moot anyway. The two mega-nations — which together account for nearly a third of the world's population — said they won't go along with a new climate treaty being drafted in Copenhagen to replace the Kyoto Protocol that expires in 2012.
They're basically saying no to anything that forces them to impose mandatory limits on their output of greenhouse gas emissions. Other developing nations, including Mexico, Brazil and South Africa, will likely reject any proposals as well.
The deal was already in trouble. Three weeks ago, the Group of 77 developing nations met in Thailand to discuss what they wanted to do about global warming. Their answer: nothing.
William Hawkins, writing in the American Thinker, quotes a piece in China's Science Times journal that sums up how China — and other developing nations — feel:
"Why do the developed countries put an arguable scientific problem on the international negotiations table?" the article's author, Wang Jin, asks. "The real intention is not for the global temperature increase, but for the restriction of the economic development of the developing countries."
They see clearly what the rest of us seem to miss — that, for all its bad science, the Copenhagen Conference is about the world's Lilliputians tying down its Gullivers, not about global warming at all.
So, thanks to China and India, Copenhagen is dead — just as Kyoto was when it was signed in 1992, though no one knew it at the time. Without them, no global treaty on climate change will be workable.
The two nations are not only the world's most populous (with, together, more than 2 billion people), they are also the fastest-growing major countries. China is now the world's No. 1 emitter of greenhouse gases, and India is catching up fast.
Even with their participation, Copenhagen should have been a non-starter for the U.S. Indeed, the main reason for the greenhouse gas deal, all but admitted to by its major participants, is to cripple the U.S. economy — the most successful economy in the world.
True enough, as green critics keep saying, we produce nearly 20% of the world's CO2 and other greenhouse gases with just 5% of the world's population. But our GDP of roughly $14 trillion is nearly 25% of the world's total — in line with our gas output.
