Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Copenhagen in December: The Decline of the West – And Money

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shanghai_skyline_gIT is generally recognized that the west is in decline and that China will emerge as a superpower some time later this century.  

It is also generally recognised that it is the west that has spear-headed the campaign against the so-called climate crisis.  And the west is desperate to get the rest of the world to a United Nations meeting in Copenhagen in December to discuss solutions to this issue.  

The UN’s top climate negotiator, a Dutchman Yvo De Boer, has already said the west will have to put $10 billion on the table to get the developing world – read China and India – to agree to anything at Copenhagen.

He doesn’t sound like much of a negotiator to me: More likely a bleeding-heart who can’t see that those in power in so-called developing countries like China and India are probably laughing behind closed doors.    Indeed their GDP is already very large and growing relative to countries like Holland.

All the west really has on its side for this upcoming meeting in Copenhagen is its own smug, misguided sense of morality based on environmentalism.  

Indians appears to better understand the science and the politics – at least better than Holland and Australia.

Rajendra Pachauri, an Indian and chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has explained, “You cannot, in a democracy, ignore some of these realities and as it happens with the resources of coal that India has we really don’t have any choice but to use coal in the immediate short term.

Jairam Ramesh, the Indian environment minister, recent accused the developed world of needlessly raising alarm over melting Himalayan glaciers. 

The west will of course continue to obsess over environmentalism and its tax payers continue to finance planned investments in renewable energy in countries like India and China that will continue to build coal power fire stations.

Tax payers in the west have already been paying through their nose for all the moralizing on climate change.  According to a recent study by Australian Joanne Nova the US Government has spent more than $79 billion of taxpayers’ money since 1989 on policies related to climate change, including science and technology research, administration, propaganda campaigns, foreign aid, and tax breaks.  And she concludes: Most of this spending was unnecessary.

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Notes and Links

Read Joanne Nova’s Climate Money: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/climate_money.html
 Despite the billions wasted, audits of the science are left to unpaid volunteers. A dedicated but largely uncoordinated grassroots movement of scientists has sprung up around the globe to test the integrity of “global warming” theory and to compete with a lavishly-funded, highly-organized climate monopsony. Major errors have been exposed again and again.
 Carbon trading worldwide reached $126 billion in 2008. Banks, which profit most, are calling for more. Experts are predicting the carbon market will reach $2 – $10 trillion in the near future. Hot air will soon be the largest single commodity traded on global exchanges.
 Meanwhile, in a distracting sideshow, Exxon-Mobil Corp is repeatedly attacked for paying just $23 million to skeptics—less than a thousandth of what the US government spends on alarmists, and less than one five-thousandth of the value of carbon trading in 2008 alone.
 The large expenditure designed to prove the non-existent connection between carbon and climate has created a powerful alliance of self-serving vested interests.
 By pouring so much money into pushing a single, scientifically-baseless agenda, the Government has created not an unbiased investigation but a self-fulfilling prophecy.
 Sound science cannot easily survive the vice-like grip of politics and finance.

To get a perspective on what some Chinese political theorists are thinking, consider this. While Westerners “anguish” about how to manage China’s rise, Chinese think-tankers debate about “how to manage the West’s decline”! Wang Yiwei, from Fudan University, shares this worry, and asks, “How can we prevent the USA from declining too quickly?” (pp. 115-116)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Does-China-Think-Leonard/dp/0007230680

“(It) will allow developing countries to begin preparing national plans to limit their own emissions, and to adapt to climate change,” he told the BBC.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8163456.stm

Image of the Shanghai skyline from http://www.ghmadsen.com/Bilder/Kina/shanghai_skyline_g.jpg

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Tim Curtin says

    You cited “The UN’s top climate negotiator, a Dutchman Yvo De Boer, has already said the west will have to put $10 billion on the table to get the developing world – read China and India – to agree to anything at Copenhagen.” De Boer has to be joking; China’s foreign exchange reserves stand at $3,000 billion, so its share of De Boer’s $10 billion is hardly likely to be very persuasive.

  2. dhmo says

    Interesting times after Copenhagen the developed nations will have take stock of the fact that the developing nations have just said bugger off. It may be polite and hidden in poly speak but that will be the reality. Then the decision will be have to be made. Do the developed nations give 2% of their gross national product and any energy technology freely to China and India. This is what is asked for perhaps in the vain hope they will reduce emissions. There are those made enough to do so I certainly won’t be voting for them.

  3. dhmo says

    OOPS I meant “There are those mad enough to do so I certainly won’t be voting for them.”

    Tim they asked for 1 to 2% of the developed nations GNP!

  4. Allan says

    And K Rudd refuses to sell Australian uranium to India so that she can avoid burning coal.
    Maybe Rajendra Pachauri could have a word in K Rudd’s ear at the next climate talkfest.
    What a patronising lot we have in Government nowdays.

  5. Jeremy C says

    Jennifer,

    Thanks for the link to Joanne Nova’s article.

    I’ve read it and the article is an impressively passionate piece of writing and marshaling of points but its a polemic and I don’t think it should call itself a ‘paper’. I think the logic in it is circular and you could spend a long time working through the points rebutting them.

    I will raise one point and thats Jo Nova’s repaeted assertion of ‘attacks’ being made against deniers yet she constantly makes the sort of attacks she claims to decry. This inconsistency stops me from wanting to take her seriously. Is she aware of what she is doing? If she is aware then she has to answer as to why she does this, saying that the ‘other side’ does it is not a justification.

    You have to admire the energy she has put into the piece.

  6. Sean says

    I’ve often wondered why China and India don’t play along with the AGW crowd for political show and then go on doing what they want anyway. Instead they have been more forthright in their intended direction with respect to energy and economic development. Perhaps its because they recognize the potential for damage from poorly thought out climate change policies and their honest insistence that they will not sacrifice their people properity for a theory is their way of preventing the USA (and the developed west) from declining too quickly.

  8. Louis Hissink says

    Jeremy C

    So it’s okay for AGW types to attack “deniers” but it’s not appreciated when the boot is on the other foot.

    That is the problem, the cant hypocrisy of the AGW side.

  9. Louis Hissink says

    Gee, 85 MW nuclear reactors in a submarine, sailors are not rebelling over the potential radiation hazards, and it’s okay to deploy these power sources in military machines, but not for anything else.

    These reactors must be quite safe – so does that mean the Greens are simply spruiking unwitting untruths from sheer ignorance when they oppose civilian nuclear energy?

    Or have we another case of hypocrisy?

  11. janama says

    It’s also OK for a US Aircraft carrier to have two of them Louis.

    USS Bush:

    Propulsion: 2 × Westinghouse A4W nuclear reactors
    4 × steam turbines
    4 × shafts
    260,000 shp (194 MW)
    Speed: 30+ knots (56+ km/h; 35+ mph)
    Range: Essentially unlimited
    Complement: Ship’s company: 3,200
    Air wing: 2,480

    So why aren’t all those supertankers nuclear powered?

  12. Louis Hissink says

    Janama,

    If a super tanker is shipping oil, and you own the oil in the first place, why buy any other fuel than the one you have extracted out of the ground in the first place.

  13. Alan says

    “It is generally recognized that the west is in decline ”

    Who recognises this and why? Data, please.

  14. kasphar says

    There seem to be two forces at play here. One push was Kyoto where the idea was to slow Western economies by restricting carbon-based energy so that developing countries could catch up. Now that China has caught up, there is a realisation that China and a quickly emerging India need to be restricted so that they don’t become the economic power houses. Was it really ever about climate change?

  15. Eyrie says

    Janama,

    Sounds like Keith Orchison is spruiking for the ETS in the linked article. Why would anyone believe anything the chinese are saying they are doing?

    I’m sure they can build modern coal fired power plants for 40% less capex than in Australia. No endless hordes of luddite greenies making waves about environmental impact, cheap labour, no problem resuming land etc etc. Just do it.

    Note that the vast majority of the renewable energy capacity quoted is hydro.

    What is clear is that the Chinese are going hell for leather installing as much electrical generating capacity as they can. They aren’t too fussy about what they use and sure advanced technology coal plants make a lot of sense when you have to import coal. Much of Australia’s coal generation is built on top of the coal mines and we’ve already paid for the power stations..
    The numbers thrown around by Orchison don’t mean much until you look at the total generating capacity in China.

  16. janama says

    Eyrie – China is the biggest Miner of coal as well as the largest consumer of coal so it’s no brainer they would be adding coal power.

    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/T629172A.gif

    It’s interesting that India is 4th biggest producer and the 3rd biggest consumer.

    We seem to be ignoring the consortium of BRIC – Brazil, Russia, India and China who along with the Shanghai Group are going to be the major economies into the future, if they aren’t already.

    We should be a part of the BRIC group, we can produce what Brazil contributes but we are too tied to the US.

  17. Patrick B says

    What’s up Jen? You trying to impress the CIS in the hope of getting a job? Or maybe looking to stay on at the IPA? Either way a bit of a neocon rant.

  18. Gordon Robertson says

    Surely it’s not being suggested in this article that Rajendra Pachauri has an understanding of the situation. This guy is about as gullible as the day is long. In a talk he gave in Australia recently he did not know that global temperatures have plateaued the past ten years.

  19. dhmo says

    Gordon plateaued? Can’t be we have looked at the GCM and obviously we are still warming. Ask all the movers and shakers it is not happening. That is why it is snowing in the middle east and the Swiss Alps in summer! Wonder who is in denial?

  20. wes george says

    Yawn. The long Melodramatic decline of the West is like the Climate Change soap opera.

    After all, climate is, by definition in a perpetual state of change.

    Sure, the AGW acolytes believe that through authoritarian government control of your personal life–right down to cap and tax on your methane emissions–a perfect climate stasis can be achieved by August 3, 2167 according to the latest Fortran computer simulations of reality. Don’t believe word of it.

    Likewise, there is no such thing as a stasis in the evolution of civilizations. Cultures are always rising or declining. Historically, the fat and happy place to be is in the early days of a civilization’s decadence at your local KFC in a Holden V-8 ute listening to AC/DC so loud as to be annoying to the whole neighbourhood.

    The halcyon days of decline in America were circa 1965 to 2008. Post-2008, the US seems to have entered the Nero-fiddling-as-Rome-burns stage of late decadence. Things tend to get more Bosnian from here on out.

    For Australia, the happy days continue to get fatter. For now… Although, I can’t help but think that Australia must be in decline too, it’s just, how would you know?

    Change happens! Embrace it. Don’t think of culture or weather or your body as static objects, but complex systems… in decline. Unless you’re of Chinese or Indian descent.

    And finally, don’t short sell the creative genius of the parts of the West still superpowered by highcarb democracy, diversity, personal and market freedoms, low taxes and property rights and a healthy disrespect for politically correct elites and the defeatist orthodoxies they repeat endlessly. A big surprise comeback is always in the cards.

    http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/07/23/the_china_bubbles_coming_but_not_the_one_you_think

  21. janama says

    Not to worry 🙂

    There’s the new carbon expo site for an October ( 3 months away) love fest.

    http://carbonexpo.com.au/

    check out the paying sponsors – there aren’t any apart from think tanks and greenie groups.
    They have no real speakers apart from the odd commitment that will probably pull out over the remaining few weeks cos they don’t have sponsors to pay the hotel bills.

    The creator of the famous Ausra.com will speak – about what? – that his supposed solar thermal power company, the love child of the Hunter Valley power experiment went to the US and promised to deliver reliable base load power cheaper than coal – has pulled out and now specialises in solar steam production? They even had Arni open their one and only 5MW power station.

    Is James Hansen going to stand up and show how he predicted the climate we have today? Tim Flannery will make more dubious predictions and slime on as usual?

    It’s sad really.

  23. Louis Hissink says

    It’s sad really, these socially concerned types stressing over how we are over populating the planet, causing environmental damage, and in order to mitigate this, all sorts of hare-brained schemes are proposed, most, or all?, of which, when implemented, fail, often spectaculary, but mostly as muffled, embarassing, implosions.

    Notice that it’s the same crowd rooting for AGW that are also rooting for “managed” economies using complex economic models. In fact the AGW model incorporates both climate and econometric modelling. We know economic modelling has never got it right, and now we discover climate modelling can’t either.

    So what pyschological factor impels some people to believe these ideas? Notice that none of them started with any basis in physical reality. Economic modelling assumes a robot-like behaviour for humans, and that “thing” does not exist. Humans do not automatically choose a good with the cheapest price – and Keynesian economic theory cannot deal with this.

    Climate modelling involves extracting great significance from temperature fluctuations within the measuring accuracies of the instrumentation, and again not really based on any physical experience.

  24. Jeremy C says

    Louis,

    “Gee, 85 MW nuclear reactors in a submarine, sailors are not rebelling over the potential radiation hazards, and it’s okay to deploy these power sources in military machines, but not for anything else.”

    So, what sort of reactors do they have on military craft (I’ll give you a clue Louis…….. its a trick question)?

  25. Louis Hissink says

    Jeremy C,

    Idiot – nuclear reactors but the sudden change to patronising repartee is illuminating, especially coming from anomymous churls.

  26. Communist says

    “IT is generally recognized that the west is in decline and that China will emerge as a superpower some time later this century.”

    I think this is a premise with which I cannot agree. Apart from the last two years, GDP in all Western countries has continued to rise, along with standards of living and a number of other ‘indicators’. I don’t know what evidence you base the (first part) of your statement on, but I think it is wrong.

    As to China becoming a superpower, that depends entirely on your definition. I suppose you mean superpower in relation to the projection of power beyond it’s borders. Undoubtedly that is increasing. But, I think that there are caveats here also. As more of the population begin to enjoy the higher standard of living flowing from the development of a modern industrial economy, it is likely that there will be an exponential growth in demand for such benefits from those who still pursue subsistence agriculture. It seems to me that much of the wealth and energy developed will go to satisfying that domestic demand. So the society as a whole may be forced to be more inward looking than would be the case for a conventional superpower.

    Nevertheless, this is an interesting thread.

  28. Louis Hissink says

    Jeremy C

    Is that all you can post here, silly little posts to provoke me?

    I choose to play your little game since it amuses me – but ignoring you would be bad manners, so if you like getting your jollies acting like the rhetorical village idiot, please continue to make it interesting otherwise I might become bored and wander off to read something more stimulating.