Like trying to tell other countries that *they* can't have nuclear weapons after we and a bunch of other people already have theirs, (and we've actually dropped some on innocent people), it sounds (not only sounds, IS) supremely arrogant and stupid to try to negotiate some arbitrary quantity of carbon emissions to be allowed within the boundaries of countries yet to have become as developmentally irresonsible as we have been for the longest time.
If I were an Indian contemplating a coal-fired power plant, or an Iranian dreaming about possesing nuclear weaponry, I'd have walked away from the table far faster than these guys have.
We really need to figure out that we're often the world's biggest horses asses, and sooner rather than later, if we ever hope to influence how the rest of the world behaves.
To borrow a term from author Andrew Bacevich, we need to end American exceptionalism. For longer than I can remember, and perhaps my parents and their parents, we've piously attempted to pilot everyone else's boat using our rules.....and then we are shocked when we are rejected. Some people on earth don't really want cable TV and become Southern Baptists. Kyoto was and is an absolute disaster if only because it is written in such condescendingly scientific legalese that almost nobody can figure out what it says.....thus...it says whatever a current power group WANTS it to say. For the US, Copenhagen is going to be one more huge public embarrassment....not only for the country but for a President who continues to view the world through his own narcissistic prism.
Sadly too, science itself is on the top of a very tremulous credibility bubble and I would think that the recent revelations of fraud and the upcoming disaster in Copenhagen will put irretrievable nails in at least the environmental science coffin.
Like trying to tell other countries that *they* can't have nuclear weapons after we and a bunch of other people already have theirs, (and we've actually dropped some on innocent people), it sounds (not only sounds, IS) supremely arrogant and stupid to try to negotiate some arbitrary quantity of carbon emissions to be allowed within the boundaries of countries yet to have become as developmentally irresonsible as we have been for the longest time.
ReplyDeleteIf I were an Indian contemplating a coal-fired power plant, or an Iranian dreaming about possesing nuclear weaponry, I'd have walked away from the table far faster than these guys have.
We really need to figure out that we're often the world's biggest horses asses, and sooner rather than later, if we ever hope to influence how the rest of the world behaves.
To borrow a term from author Andrew Bacevich, we need to end American exceptionalism. For longer than I can remember, and perhaps my parents and their parents, we've piously attempted to pilot everyone else's boat using our rules.....and then we are shocked when we are rejected. Some people on earth don't really want cable TV and become Southern Baptists. Kyoto was and is an absolute disaster if only because it is written in such condescendingly scientific legalese that almost nobody can figure out what it says.....thus...it says whatever a current power group WANTS it to say. For the US, Copenhagen is going to be one more huge public embarrassment....not only for the country but for a President who continues to view the world through his own narcissistic prism.
ReplyDeleteSadly too, science itself is on the top of a very tremulous credibility bubble and I would think that the recent revelations of fraud and the upcoming disaster in Copenhagen will put irretrievable nails in at least the environmental science coffin.
Regards,
Neal