Couldn’t Help But Notice (110907)
I can retire from blogging now. I’ve been linked to by Lileks.
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But I will carry on, because watching the globaloney blowup is going to be so much fun that I wouldn’t think of being on the sidelines when it happens.
The latest gems: First at the BBC, John Feeney gets to the true enviro agenda, which is radical depopulation –
The growth in human population and rising consumption have exceeded the planet’s ability to support us, argues John Feeney. In this week’s Green Room, he says it is time to ring the alarm bells and take radical action in order to avert unspeakable consequences.
….. We’ve outgrown the planet and need radical action to avert unspeakable consequences. This - by a huge margin - has become humanity’s greatest challenge.
….. We are now in “overshoot”; our numbers and levels of consumption having exceeded the Earth’s capacity to sustain us for the long-term.
We must end world population growth, then reduce population size. That means lowering population numbers in industrialised as well as developing nations.
Notice in the bolds above that Feeney is entirely in the present tense. We’ve done the dirty deed already, and we must atone. So will he step up and voluntarily die when some World Authority figures out how many volunteers are needed?
Second, we have the ongoing spectacle of China giving the rest of the world the environmental finger:
China will reject any agreement that calls for binding limits on carbon dioxide emissions that will replace the Kyoto Protocol, an EU official said Wednesday.
I don’t blame the Chinese — or India, which if I recall correctly is #3 and gaining rapidly — for telling the world to buzz off. Both countries have hundreds of millions in poverty, and, finally, lifting most of them out of it in the next 20 or so years is in the realm of possibility. Enviros could care less, and as a matter of fact have been hostile to economy-improving developments worldwide.
In case you missed it, China became the world’s largest emitter this year. US emissions are leveling off, and in 2006 actually declined. Watch enviros treat China with kid gloves while demanding that the rest of the industrial world radically reduce living standards.
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Howler of the morning –
Democratic White House frontrunner Hillary Clinton on Monday pledged that as president she would negotiate a successor treaty to the Kyoto protocol on climate change by 2010 - two years before Kyoto expires.
“This [tackling global warming] is too important,” she said. “We cannot afford to wait two more years.”
In contrast to President George W. Bush’s administration, which is pushing for non-binding international standards on carbon emissions reductions, Ms Clinton said she would negotiate mandatory targets that would bind all the world’s polluters - including China and India.
Mrs. Clinton seems to forget that Kyoto was never ratified by the Senate, and never will be ratified by the Senate. A “protocol” doesn’t become a “treaty” until that occurs. In fact, a Senate resolution rejected it 95-0, and the treaty was never brought up for a formal vote that would have meant certain defeat.
Earth to Hillary: There’s nothing to “succeed.”
Also note that Mrs. Clinton and her two principal Democratic rivals would be perfectly comfortable with hundreds of millions of Indians and Chinese remaining mired in poverty. Some “party of compassion.”
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Huckabee’s not the only one to wonder about on this:
An author and investigative journalist says Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee’s pledge for strong border enforcement doesn’t match his record on the issue when he was governor of Arkansas.
Huckabee continues to be dogged by a lingering controversy over the role he played in establishing a Mexican consulate office in Little Rock that was financed by Arkansas taxpayers and local businesses.
The fact is, there are at least 48 Mexican consulates (scroll down to middle of link) in the US. No other country has more than a dozen (correction: Canada has 19), and those countries with multiple locations (e.g. Canada, Japan, UK) can justify their presence because of international trade.
Consulates, schmonsulates — There is no legitimate foreign policy or trade-related reason for the Mexican government to have established so many locations. These are nothing more than consciously established illegal-immigrant assistance centers. At least 75% of them should be shut down.
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You’ve got to admire how “clever” the New York Times is at burying the lede and/or the story itself.
Here’s the key paragraph from the first example:
As a consequence, the group from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Cancer Institute reports, there were more than 100,000 fewer deaths among the overweight in 2004, the most recent year for which data were available, than would have expected if those people had been of normal weight.
The Old Grey Lady’s “Please don’t read this” Headline: “Causes of Death Are Linked to a Person’s Weight”
Here’s the opening paragraph from the second example, found on Page A19 in the November 7 print edition:
American forces have routed Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the Iraqi militant network, from every neighborhood of Baghdad, a top American general said today, allowing American troops involved in the “surge†to depart as planned.
Headline: “Militant Group Is Out of Baghdad, U.S. Says”
Unfortunately, the “cleverness” and moonbat-driven story placements demonstrated in these two examples both go a long way towards explaining why the Times’s business is suffering mightily, and deservedly. Its only consolation is that it has plenty of company.
Also: Major kudos to our troops and their Iraqi counterparts on what they have just accomplished. Thankfully, the news isn’t buried, despite the Times’s attempt to do just that.
re: sustainable development, or Groningen Protocol West
Thank you for the insert regarding global warming as depopulation. I’ve constantly attempted to show through history how this has been used and the results.
The bloody history of Communism on google video does an okay job of linking how it came about as well as others tagged evolution, communism, social darwinism.
Also, many didn’t catch a hearing of mayors in DC re: Social Security/Insurance last year. They discussed the high percentages of elderly and disabled that were ‘weighing’ down the system… it was straight out of Mein Kampf.
Comment by Ali — November 9, 2007 @ 9:18 am
It is interesting that they seem to be complaining about both the rising standard of living and population. The problem is and always has been the wasteful frivolous lifestyles of the wealthy like Al Gore who literally consume half of all the residentially used energy in the US. I find it extremely hypocritical that the wealthy 15% of the population who has 70% of the personal wealth (spending power) of the US are demanding limits on the rest of us, the 85% who own 30% of the wealth.
Let’s be very clear about this, the Law of Supply & Demand states the greater the demand on a product with limited availability, the greater the price. The price only rises proportionally in response to demand until the endpoint of availability/production occurs, then the price thereafter rises exponentially to limit demand. The fact that the wealthy like Al Gore have the financial ability to pay any price for the product in question such as electricity and other forms of energy means they are willing to squander any resource within their means to do so leaving the rest of us (285 million people) to suffer the consequences of high energy costs. One look at Al Gore’s lifestyle speaks to the reality of frivolous wanton excess consumption. If you really do believe in AGW then you should be focusing on the group who causes the bulk of the problem…Al Gore and his friends. That may sound like class warfare to some, however, I submit this question: What group has the right to negatively impact society with their activities and then saddle that society with the burdens of remediation?
I don’t believe in AGW, I see this as a national security issue. We have the Madhatter of Iran pushing up oil prices with his insane talk involving nuclear power. The problem is he is not insane, he is calculatingly clever to advance Iran’s interest in having high oil prices to line his pockets and also destabilize the world economy in an attempt to neutralize the US. Once the US is preoccupied with economic problems, Iran is free to persue it’s religious objectives of spreading the Shiite form of belief on the entire ME and thus grabbing control of Saudi Arabia itself. Once firmly in his hand Ajad will be able to command any price for oil. This is about power and control.
The only way to rationally deal with this situation is to begin building nuclear power plants, and use the Government’s power of national security exemptions to block all the econut attempts at trying to stop nuclear power plant building. This has been successfully used against their attempts to stop the building of the border fence (btw- 260 miles done so far).
Once we begin building those nuclear power plants we then can start the shift to the electric car (check out http://www.teslamotors.com ). These two sectors of the economy account for most of the energy use.
Comment by dscott — November 9, 2007 @ 11:01 am
Bizzy – With 173 signatories, the Kyoto Protocol is alive and well in most of the world. Negotiating the successor treaty/protocol makes perfect sense, especially if the U.S. is enlightened enough to adhere this time. I’m surprised you don’t know this.
Comment by Tony B. — November 9, 2007 @ 11:43 am
#3, the writer acts as if it’s in effect for us. It’s not. Hillary acts as if it’s in effect for us. It’s not.
Of course I know about the 173 signatories. I could care less. Kyoto is dead, and has been dead:
http://www.bizzyblog.com/2005/09/17/kyoto-treaty-rip-blair-delivers-the-blow/
In fact, I believe it’s not considered binding on anyone until the US signs it.
Enviros keep grotesquely carrying around the corpse and pretending it’s alive. It’s not.
Comment by TBlumer — November 9, 2007 @ 12:05 pm
Bizzy – You’ve mocked Mrs. Clinton for making a perfectly logical statement on a subject, the Kyoto Protocol, about which you appear to know little.
I didn’t act “as if it’s in effect for us.†I merely pointed out that the rest of the world has moved on without us. The protocol may be dead here, but it is alive most everywhere else.
Comment by Tony B. — November 9, 2007 @ 1:20 pm
#5, that’s hysterical. “The rest of the world” that would be hindered by complying with Kyoto hasn’t complied with Kyoto.
That’s not moving on, that’s called “ignoring something that’s irrelevant, except in the deluded minds of pretentious enviros and political candidates who pander to them.”
China for sure, and India probably, have said they will not be bound by mandatory, world-imposed restrictions. Nor should they be.
Comment by TBlumer — November 9, 2007 @ 1:41 pm
What’s hysterical is that the US actually is using less energy without even implimenting Kyoto. All except two European countries are meeting their kyoto targets, the others who are not, the US is doing better than them at reducing energy consumption. Bahahaha So such for the sanctimonious foolishness of liberals.
Comment by dscott — November 9, 2007 @ 2:35 pm
My previous statement might be interpreted incorrectly I meant to say only two European countries are reducing consumption and meeting their Kyoto targets while the others are not.
Just to back up what I’m saying you might be interested in a few graphs from the EIA:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/pages/sec1_12.pdf both in overall and per capita terms the US is using less energy despite a rise in GDP.
Here is for the world to 2005: http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tablee1.xls We will have to wait to June 2008 for the next update.
And we will continue to reduce energy consumption via technology, not using the idiotic carbon trading system scam designed as a transfer of wealth scheme. We’re not falling for that one. Part of the reason why they pushed carbon trading was the fact the Europeans knew if the US became more energy efficient via a cost effective means, that would immediately put them at a competitive disadvantage in producing goods. Tieing up the US in a politically correct meaningless program like the Kyoto Protcol was to their advantage as they hoped US Corporations would be so short term in their outlook as to just pay the fees and not actually do something about it. Yeap, that’s why Al Gore created his carbon trading company, he is reaping the profits of this con game. Bahahaha
Comment by dscott — November 9, 2007 @ 3:07 pm