The Wall Street Journal - Should the U.S. have signed the Kyoto Treaty?

The U.S. should not have signed the Kyoto Treaty.

Kyotos long goodbye

posted by jas225Approved 7/14/2008 3:36 PM

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Kyotos long goodbye

From a recent WSJ editorial:

The article discusses the limitations and problems with the solutions presented in the Kyoto protocol.

The irony is that Kyoto has handed them every reason not to participate. Europe knew all along that it couldn't meet its quotas, so it created an out in "offsets." A British factory, say, buys a credit to pay for basic efficiency improvements in a Chinese coal plant, like installing smokestack scrubbers. This is a tax on the Brits to make Chinese industries more competitive. Sweet deal if you can get it.

It gets worse. The offsets are routed through a U.N. bureaucracy that makes them far more valuable in Europe than the cost of the actual efficiency improvements. So far, Kyoto-world has paid more than €4.7 billion to eliminate an obscure greenhouse gas called HFC-23; the necessary incinerators cost less than €100 million. Most of the difference in such schemes goes to the foreign government, such as China's communist regime.

Given these perverse incentives, the magical realism of Kyoto has backfired in a big way. The global warming elite will never admit this, because that would mean giving up their political whip against George Bush. But Kyoto II is already collapsing under its own contradictions. By sticking to a more realistic alternative, this reviled President has handed his green opponents a way to save face.

Posted on 7/11/2008 2:15:26 PM by jas225Approved 7/14/2008 3:36 PM

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