On the One Hand, the Earth Needs Kyoto; On the Other Hand, Kyoto Barely Makes a Dent in the “Problem”

I’m contrasting two sentences from the same article in the Independent today to show why so few serious people take the pro-Kyoto propaganda campaign seriously:

The protests were directed primarily at President George Bush, who has been assiduously trying to sabotage the [Kyoto] protocol…

and

The Kyoto protocol targets, even if they are met, will reduce [carbon dioxide emmissions] by only 5.2 per cent, and everyone agrees that it barely makes a dent on the problem.

Had the climate change alarmists truly been as alarmed as they claim, they would have negotiated a climate change treaty of far greater consequence and fought harder for its ratification in the largely skeptical U.S.Kyoto, after all, was negotiated during the Clinton-Gore Administration (and while pro-Kyoto Tony Blair was at Downing Street); both Clinton and Gore profess to believe the global warming theory is accurate and the problem it predicts, dire. Yet, after signing the treaty with the usual PR fanfare, both men let it die in the Senate without even a fight.

Kyoto is about a number of things. Among them are: feeling good (the self-satified “I care about the planet” attitude that characterizes many of the participants in events like these); acquiring grants (the U.S. alone spends $5 billion in climate change research annually); resenting the United States (Old Europe’s answer to stagnant economies is to foul ours; the EU’s worst nightmare is that its semi-sovereign nations signed it while the U.S. did not); and, of course, politics.

I have to think a little bit of twisted psychology is involved as well — how else to explain climate change activists on private jets complaining about the mpgs of minivans?



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