Enviromelons

Carbon , Carbon, Carbon. That's all I seem to hear these days. Whatever happened to the old term fossil fuels. I guess that term went out of style when the High Priests (Scientists) backed ever so quietly away from their "consensus" that oil was produced by decaying dinosaurs.

Greens With Envy

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, September 12, 2007 4:20 PM PT

Alliances: President Bush and Australian Prime Minister John Howard are being accused of pretending to care about global warming. The real pretenders are the ones who lecture us about man-made climate change.

Related Topics: Global Warming

At last week's Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Sydney, Bush and Howard signed a joint statement indicating their commitment to cutting carbon dioxide emissions from their countries — and then had the nerve to insist that China, India and Russia be a part of any effort to slow the discharge of greenhouse gasses.

Critics dismissed the "aspirational" agreement as so much "hot air," coming from two leaders who have resisted subjecting their countries to economy-killing environmental standards such as those set out in the Kyoto protocols.

But the agreement simply recognizes the obvious: There's no way greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced without China and India chipping in. Both are now exempt from Kyoto's curbs.

Briskly growing China is the world's largest consumer of coal, the burning of which is responsible for a third of all greenhouse gas emissions. The superpower wannabe is opening a new coal-fired power plant every week to 10 days.

With 1.3 billion people, China is still the most populous country. But India's population is expected to exceed China's in 2030, and by then its demand for coal is expected to be 2 billion tons a year vs. 456 million tons now. Through about 2025, India's carbon emissions are expected to increase at an average 3% a year, twice America's expected growth rate over the same period.

Though its economy has suffered in recent years, Russia remains the world's third-largest producer of greenhouse gas. It has the world's second-largest coal reserves, and analysts expect it to move toward coal and away from lower-carbon natural gas for electric power.

The increased greenhouse gas emissions in these nations won't stop with growing coal use. Their citizenries will be driving more cars, and there's little chance that the Chinese and Russian militaries will be burning less fossil fuel in coming years.

China is only a few years, and maybe even months or days, away from overtaking the U.S. as the world's biggest greenhouse gas producer. By 2030, China's emissions will be growing twice as fast as emissions from all Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations combined, says Fatih Birol, the International Energy Agency's chief economist.

In a sense, Bush and Howard are calling the bluff of global warming alarmists by insisting that China and India be included in any emissions-reduction effort. They know the enviro-activists' ultimate goal is not what the green lobby and complicit media have been selling to the public, but rather a crippling of thriving capitalist economies. Braying at a plan that insists on China's and/or India's participation exposes their real objective: punishing success.

The Los Angeles Times, in an editorial that could have been issued by any arm of the militant environmental movement, sniffed that Bush, Howard and Chinese President Hu Jintao gave "compelling performances in Sydney in the against-type role of leaders who give a fig about global warming." It nominated all three for the "best actor" award at APEC.

The Times rarely has anything good to say about Bush. But it gave Howard honorable mention as a scoundrel, noting that he's "fighting for his political life against a much greener opposition party leader."

Howard's motivation in addressing global warming, the newspaper said, was "simply a cynical attempt to pad a fading prime minister's environmental resume."

Instead of attacking Bush and Howard, the Times and the ever-noisy environmental groups should thank them for standing up for the system that has provided them the cushy lifestyles to which they have grown accustomed.

The BBC has been typical of the "all-emotion all the time, all heat and no light" agenda of the watermelon left. But lately, the rhetoric has taken a marked turn against capitalism. The anti-carbon crusade is surging against the evil, heavy carbon-footprint of commerce and industry. This is what the IBD editorial was pointing out...it's not really about the environment. Well, maybe it is for the lemmings, but the prime movers of the movement have something more sinister in mind. The atmosphere is definitely getting warmer as the left turns up the heat on its old enemies. Expect to see the temperature continue to rise.