Bush: Kyoto Would Have 'Wrecked' Economy
Well, assuming that he's right (which he probably isn't since he never is), what the hell difference does it make? Isn't he wrecking the economy, anyway? Or did he just want to do it on his own terms? And isn't the economy going to be a pretty moot point if the world gets wrecked instead?
"I couldn't in good faith have signed Kyoto," Bush told the Danish Broadcasting Corp., noting that the treaty did not include other nations — including India and China — that he called "big polluters."
Yeah, and the US is a big polluter too, moron. So, good job setting an example and trying to encourage those other countries to follow our lead.
He also says more study is needed to determine whether human activity is primarily to blame for rising temperatures.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So, what if you do more study, and research it for 100 years, and then it comes back, that yep, it was human activity all along, but now, unfortunately, it's too late to do anything about it. On the other hand, if we go ahead and try to make changes now, and then it turns out that we didn't really need to, we haven't really lost anything. That is, of course, assuming that you're stupid enough to believe that it actually does require more study, which it pretty clearly doesn't. Common sense will tell you that the emissions we produce can only do bad things to the world. I guess this is the kind of shit we get when the President is fighting a War on Science. At least in that one, he seems to be having success, unlike in the War on Terror. Unfortunately, I'm rooting for science in this one.
5 comments:
Fucker.
That son of a bitch is willing to ruin the globe (no, it's not hyperbole) to make a few extra bucks for his corporate masters.
Thinking about Bush's stance on global climate change makes me angrier than can be healthy. I saw this story yesterday on LiveScience but I couldn't bring myself to blog on it. It just pissed me off too much.
I don't know the details of the treaty, you might be right, but my problem with Bush is that he refuses to even acknowledge that there might be a problem, and certainly is not in favor of doing anything about it. It would be one thing if he didn't sign the treaty, then suggested other, more effective ways to address the same problems, but he doesn't do anything, he just doesn't care.
Kyoto is not perfect, Christiana, you're right about that. Basically, people in the atmospheric chemistry community see it as a stepping-stone; if countries can get their emissions down to 1990 levels, they might be convinced to keep going once they're there. And yes, the fact that it leaves out India and China sucks, but it's better than nothing.
As for your hypothetical, I think it misses the mark a bit. I did a post on the possible impacts of global warming a little while ago, and they are legion. Drought, famine and disease are not difficult to imagine. Spending to fix these problems would have to be astronomical, and it's also not a stretch to say that the global economy will be seriously fucked if global warming gets as bad as it might.
Think about what percentage of the world's economy is due to agriculture. Now think about what happens to that sector if global warming leads to a reduction in clean water available for irrigation (and it's quite likely that it will). The way I see it, it's much cheaper to address the problem now adn possibly mitigate the effects rather than respond to those effects in the future.
Yeah, I'm sure it probably is already too late, that doesn't mean that we should not do anything, though.
There could very well be better ways to spend the money, but I don't really think we're looking at those choices, I think the choice is some rich corporation getting richer, or spending the money to reduce emmissions.
It sounds like you know more about it than I do, my problem is just that Bush doesn't seem to care about it at all.
He is just trying to "err on the side of life." Oh wait, that was something else
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