by Russel Norman
An interesting article by Australian academics Jeffrey McGee and Ros Taplin at Macquarie Uni (where I did my PhD!) on the role of the AP6. AP6 is the agreement between Australia, US, Japan, China, India and Korea to work towards minimising their greenhouse emissions thorugh technology cooperation. There are no binding reduction targets.
The study concludes that AP6 is effectively undermining Kyoto by providing an alternative “legitimate” international agreement that has no reduction targets and will result in a doubling of emissions by 2050.
Published in Environment & Resource Management by Russel Norman on Tue, January 30th, 2007
Tags: environment
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on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Interesting, but not surprising, that this is lead by the US and Australia, who have shown a marked tendancy in the past to dodge any agreement which takes away their market advantage and might level the playing field for the Rest of the World.
“International” is beginning to have a connotation of “us and anyone we can coerce by trade embargoes” when the USA and Australia are designing the paperwork. We should be glad that NZ is not involved in this one, but it is sobering to think that they think this is a legitimate ‘out’ to dealing with the consequences of their overconsumption of the earth’s resources.
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To put a positive spin on the AP6 thing : at least they are talking about greenhouse gases and means of reducing them. It’s important to note that Japan has a foot in both camps, being the poster child for Kyoto compliance (appropriately enough) but wishing to stay engaged with the US and China.
Tony Blair reckons he can get the US, China and India on board for a post-Kyoto treaty (nobody gives a stuff about Australia)… I think Blair is dreaming, he somehow still believes that by being Bush’s friend he can get him to do sensible things, even after Iraq… But the groundwork is being laid for that post-Kyoto treaty, which Bush’s successor, whatever their political stripe, will almost certainly sign up to.
The AP6 thing is exemplary of the US “coalition of the willing” doctrine of the Bush years. You build an ad-hoc alliance to serve US interests, and you undermine the multilateral institutions. This model is completely discredited, and will die when Bush leaves office. The only question is, what will replace it? Isolationism (which would be disastrous for the US and the world)? or co-operation?
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Here’s a cute initiative :
Global Cool initiative launches today — in just a few minutes, they are releasing a previously-unheard Jim Morrison song, reworked by Perry Farrel, the Jane’s Addiction man.
Speaking at the launch, KT claimed she become a climate change campaigner after realising that her carbon footprint had become somewhat Sasquatch-sized.
“The average person emits around 15 tonnes of CO2 a year and I learned that, through the manufacture and transportation of 500,000 records, my emissions had gone up to around 650 tonnes.? Admitted the Grammy nominated Scottish singer.
KT, who’s now sold over 3.6 million records, has since led the way in green touring through embracing innovative actions such as running her tour bus on environmentally-friendly biodiesel fuel, printing administration documents only on recycled paper and offsetting the entire CO2 emissions of her US tour – including that of all of her fans’ transport to and from shows.
KT says ” the best way to tackle climate change is make it un-cool and unacceptable not to be involved.”
And KT is hot… so that’s pretty cool!
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Oops, that’s KT Tunstall I’m talking about, with my tongue hanging out.
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Alistair – I cannot predict the path the US will take once the shrub is uprooted…
I can predict the long term path of the US economy pretty certainly, (barring their actually going to back into Space in a big way). It is going down-down-down.
Right now the housing bust is not even half over. Foreclosures are way up and the trillion dollar interest rates adjustments haven’t even hit and food prices are artificially low with farm subsidies the order of the day. The subsidies ran into the deficit being run (off budget mind you) for the Iraq war recently… something’s gotta go.
So down goes the US $. It has to inflate because the only other choices are default or debt-peonage. The controlled inflation is masked as heavily as possible, but is real enough.
http://www.shadowstats.com/cgi-bin/sgs/data
Using GAAP standards, NZ doesn’t fiddle its standards afaik, USA is running real inflation at ~10% That puts its trade partners from whom it borrows (at less than 5% I may add) in the position of buying their own exports and it punishes future generations of Chinese and Americans heavily. Moreover, if ever the US $ is finally exposed as the absolutely sh!tty store of value that it actually is, the jig is up, reserve-currency status is done and the goose is flambe’ .
So watch them push interest rates up into the coming recession and watch the recession break the back of the US consumer.
Politically this is destabilizing. The Congress switched hands, but an absolutely amazing 33-35% of Americans still find Bush a “good President”. Have to remember that detail. It means that the resistance to reality there is still quite firmly entrenched.. or that you can indeed fool some of the people ALL of the time. Considering US literacy rates and religious views I am not surprised but as a US citizen I am dismayed and ashamed.
The point is that there’s no way to construe this optimistically except to note that the Congress DID change hands (the election wasn’t outright stolen. This counts as a good thing), and could now go ahead with impeachment against Bush-Cheney. In theory.
In practice this would divide the country along the usual fault lines, but more deeply than at any time since the Civil War. Such a move could quite possibly trigger insurrection in some parts of the nation.
Economic impacts flow from that as well.
So the USA is going to be pre-occupied with economic problems and middle-east war problems and political problems for the foreseeable future. It has no attention to pay to environmental problems. The end of this century will see its influence in the world greatly reduced.
respectfully
BJ
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