Barack Obama announced his new energy team at a press conference Monday, sending a subtle slap down to President Bush by saying his administration would "value science" and "make decisions based on the facts."
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Scientists skeptical of the assertion that climate change is the result of man's activites are criticizing a recent Associated Press report on global warming, calling it "irrational hysteria," "horrifically bad" and "incredibly biased."
Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner was present at the Kyoto negotiations back in 1997, and predicted their failure because of the inability to get the developing nations like China to commit to emissions reductions. He has recently returned from the Poznan Conference of the Parties aimed at drawing up Kyoto II, and is of the opinion that nothing has been learned from history. He has set out his concerns in a letter to President-elect Obama (copy below).
Of course, in many ways the developing nations are right to object to the imposition of emissions restrictions. Emissions represent the fastest way out of poverty for their peoples. That's why, as I argue here, we need to think again and move away from the emissions reduction paradigm as the only solution to the global warming risk. Nevertheless, Rep. Sensenbrenner is to be congratulated for calling attention to at least one reason why the current approach is doomed to failure.
Letter follows.
+++++
The Honorable Barack Obama
President-Elect of the United States
451 6th St., N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20002
Dear Mr. President-Elect:
On November 18, speaking by videotape to the Bi-Partisan Governors’ Global Climate Summit, you invited Members of Congress who would be attending the 14th Conference of Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Poznań, Poland to report back to you on what they learned there. I have just returned from serving as the only Member of the U.S. House of Representatives to observe the negotiations and the only Member of Congress to observe the entire final week. I am happy to accept your invitation.
By way of background, I currently serve as the Ranking Republican Member of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, a committee created by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the 110th Congress to study policies, strategies and technologies to substantially and permanently reduce emissions that contribute to global warming. I have attended three prior UNFCCC Conferences of Parties and led the U.S. House delegation to Japan, which observed the 1997 negotiations that produced the Kyoto Protocol.
I am deeply concerned that the current negotiations, which are intended to lead to a new international treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol next year in Copenhagen, are recreating Kyoto’s fatal flaws. Specifically, any treaty that does not include legally binding and verifiable greenhouse gas emissions reductions from developing countries will not be ratified by the U.S. Senate because it will not accomplish the fundamental goal of reducing global emissions.
You are aware of the Byrd-Hagel Resolution, which the U.S. Senate adopted by a 95-to-0 vote on July 25, 1997, expressing the sense of the Senate that the U.S. should not be a signatory to an agreement that does not include specific scheduled commitments to limit greenhouse gas emissions for developing countries or will result in serious harm to the U.S. economy. Because the Kyoto Protocol failed to satisfy these requirements, neither President Clinton nor President Bush submitted the treaty to the Senate for ratification. At a meeting in Poznań, Senator John Kerry and Vice President Al Gore agreed that an international treaty must include mandatory emissions reductions from developing countries.
The current negotiations seem to be leading toward a similarly flawed outcome. At another meeting in Poznań, I met with negotiators from foreign countries, including China and India. These countries, the first and third largest CO2 emitters in the world, clearly stated that they would not accept legally binding emissions reductions.
The impasse that international negotiators have reached indicates that a new strategy is necessary. I am eager to assist you in emphasizing that, without legally-binding, verifiable commitments from all nations, global reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are neither scientifically nor politically achievable.
I look forward to scheduling a more detailed briefing.
My best wishes to you and your family during this holiday season.
Sincerely,
F. James Sensenbrenner
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ91oXYce9M 285 234]
Not evil, just wrong.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUVzVXz19I8 285 234]
It is only fitting that amid the talks over a successor to the 2008-2012 Kyoto “global warming” treaty in Poznan, Poland — where the Poles were lectured how they should leave that abundant coal in the ground since their friendly Russian neighbors have a reliable gas supply for them to burn instead — that we should see eye-popping rhetorical revisions to join such ignorance of history.
Participants at last week's United Nations climate conference in Poznan, Poland, were taken aback by a world seemingly turned upside-down. The traditional villains and heroes of the international climate narrative, the wicked U.S. and the noble European Union, had unexpectedly swapped roles. For once, it was the EU that was criticized for backpedalling on its CO2 targets while Europe's climate nemesis, the U.S., found itself commended for electing an environmental champion as president.
Coal is the enemy of environmentalists. At the site of international climate treaty negotiations this week in Poznan, Poland, Greenpeace activists have built a giant replica of the earth to protest the use of coal. American environmental organizations find coal so objectionable that they have launched a public relations campaign against technology that would enable utilities to capture and store greenhouse gas emissions at coal-fired power plants.
-America's electricity infrastructure is bursting at the seams, as demand for juice outpaces the grid's capacity to accommodate the flow. Massive investment in new wires and transmission towers is necessary to avoid an increasing threat of system-wide failures of the sort that left 10 million in the Northeast without power during the summer of 2003, warns the North American Electricity Reliability Corporation, an industry watchdog.
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