I’ve just received a few useful links.
The first email reads:
“Well, easy to see why Blair has done a U-turn on Kyoto if you read the following:
http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=157608
and this, too, is a good summary:
http://www.spiked-online.com/Printable/0000000CAE28.htm
But what still just astonishes me is that reality is only setting in NOW, in 2005. Sensible, balanced commentators were predicting all these costs at least 5 years ago, but the Kyoto juggernaut just rolled on nevertheless.”
And I have previously posted on the cost to New Zealand here, http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/000674.html .
Then I received something from a member of generation Y. The following link, also with future projections, is good fun if you don’t mind advertisements and some coarse language: http://www.funnyjunk.com/pages/world.htm .
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Finally climate change has arrived as a “serious” topic – why – because we have jokes about the subject …. all serious subjects are the source of bad humour . …. loved the cartoon.
We have lawyer jokes, economist jokes (sorry Ian) and even engineer jokes. Climate science has a surfeit of CO2 but lacks inner warmth !
I also thought that geologists were also perhaps humourless but Louis’s site has convinced me otherwise.
Anyway back to it …
despite my predaliction for kidding Rog about kill-rusting under my bed (Reds under the bed for those not up with the threads)
I find it annoying that pro-AGW automatically has one labelled left wing = greenie = catastrophist = anti-development = pro-Kyoto = anti-nuclear … whatever happened to independent thought !
Anyway – have to run – off to vote at the collective on who marching up the front at the demo. My turn to take in the herbal tea.
Well thats a new one, I’ve never heard it called “kill rusting” before……to each his own I guess…..how’s that huge you hole you’ve been digging Phil?
Economic-cost benefit analysis for environmental regulations? That is pure blasphemy constructed by some heartless, right-wing, capitalist accountant.
Perhaps when people realise they are actually paying for this non-sense and that it is taking money directly from their back pockets that people will go- perhaps the environmnetal movment should have some form of accountability.
But hey ‘it is for a good cause’
No accountability? What do you think Tom, that new regulation gets implemented with no checks and balances?
Elected government implements regulation, not the environment movement. If you don’t like it, vote the Howard government out.
Steve,
I was not claiming that NO checks and balances are imposed on new regulations but that all considerations are not viewed objectively and on equal footing.
As soon as anyone claims that a regulation to ‘save’ the environment is ‘uneconomic’ they are slammed for being anti-environment. What one must realise is that economics is not necessarily linked to monetary worth but is a process of comparing finite and competing resources.
The classic example with Kyoto is that it has been implemenetd on discretionary science with little to no consideration for long term economic implications.
The US and Australia have not ratified Kyoto on the basis that it will cripple economic development and technological innovation. I applaud John Howard for refusing to bow to minority pressure and to implement a system which is not only uneconomic but completely ineffective.
We only have to look across the tasman to see the significant impacts that Kyoto is having on the New Zealand economy. Now we are seeing the UK realise that the system costs too much and achieves too little.
It is a top down regulatory model which is based on ideology not practical reality. The ‘golden goose’ of carbon credits and carbon economy whilst sounding very attractive is based on flawed economics and flawed market processes.
The environmental movement could not care less how much it costs because they are NOT concerned with long term goals which are outside their own ideological position. Ecomomics is bad, capitalism is bad, development is bad.
Economics and the crucial role it plays in allocating resources should be embraced not rediculed- objective criteria for consistent outcomes. At the end of the day whether we like it or not, it does not matter if it is a forest or a freeway someone, somewhere will have to pay for it. Imagine the outcry if a freeway was imposed with the same level of economic distain as the Kyoto agreement! The forest for example may appear to be free- but the economic costs of excluding it from development and maintaining its up keep is very real and very expensive.
In much the same context, Kyoto has some serious economic implications which not only threaten the economic viability of this generation but the next. The lost economic opportunity on spending billions of dollars implementing such a scheme and the billions of dollars lost in economic development could go to solving real and tangible problems such as democracy in developing nations, feeding the poor and ‘shock horror’ developing new technology to provide real solutions for global climate change. Whether those solutions are limiting human induced carbon emmissions or developing mitigation processes- the market, not a lobby of environmentalists and career burecrats, is in the best place to decide where those resources should apply.
The role of government is to apply all considerations equally and in the terms of supposed ‘sustainable development’ look at environmental, economic and social implications. Sadly, Kyoto seems to look at only one factor and plays lip service to economic and social needs. The scary reality is considering the vast resources lost in discovering the mistake.
Tom,
Kyoto ‘not only threaten(s) the economic viability of this generation but the next’ – did you read the report? I think you should – according to report cited (the one commissed by the International Council for Capital Formation (ICCF)) for the UK reducing emmissions by 60% by 2050 will ‘cut’ 1.2% of GDP growth (with 1.1% over the first 4 years or less than 0.3% per year). This hardly sounds like a threat to the economic viability of this or any other generation.
I think the anti-Kyoto people are the ones who are scare mongering with their cries of ‘we’ll all be ruined’.
PS According to Howard we’ll meet our Kyoto targets (despite not ratifying it) – so why hasn’t Australia fallen into economic free fall?