Eco-Realism in Asia
- From: JohnSmith <JohnSmith492@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 01:42:53 -0500
Kyoto Treaty RIP. That's not the headline in any newspaper story emerging from the first day of the Clinton Global Initiative, but it could have been -- and should have been.
On stage with former president Bill Clinton at a midtown Manhattan hotel ballroom, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he was going to speak with "brutal honesty" about Kyoto and global warming, and he did. Blair, a longtime supporter of the Kyoto treaty, further prefaced his remarks by noting, "My thinking has changed in the past three or four years." So what does he think now?
"No country," he declared, "is going to cut its growth." That is, no country is going to allow the Kyoto treaty, or any other such global-warming treaty, to crimp -- some say cripple -- its economy.
Looking ahead to future climate-change negotiations, Blair said of such fast-growing countries as India and China, "They're not going to start negotiating another treaty like Kyoto." India and China, of course, weren't covered by Kyoto in the first place, which was one of the fatal flaws in the treaty.
So what will happen? Blair answered: "What countries will do is work together to develop the science and technology. There is no way that we are going to tackle this problem unless we develop the science and technology to do it." Bingo! That's what eco-realists have been saying all along, of course -- that the only feasible way to deal with the issue of greenhouse gases and global warming is through technological breakthroughs, not draconian cutbacks.
Blair concluded with a rhetorical question-and-answer: "How do we move forward, post-Kyoto? It can only be done by the major players coming together and pooling their resources, to find their way to come together." The Prime Minister has long been pushing, of course, for a binding international treaty on climate change. It's one part of the Euroleft agenda he has traditionally kept faith with. In a policy-setting speech in September 2004, for example, he laid out an ambitious agenda, declaring that "Kyoto is only the first step but provides a solid foundation for the next stage of climate diplomacy."
In fact, nobody seems to have reacted to what Blair said. But that's OK. As for the rest of the world, it will soon understand that Blair has effectively pulled the plug on Kyoto.
http://www.techcentralstation.com/091605JP.html .
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