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Try this on for size, regarding the long since forgotten Kyoto Protocol:

This is about international relations, this is about the economy, about trying to create a level playing field for big businesses throughout the world. You have to understand what is at stake and why it is serious.

That’s Margaret Wallstrom, one time environmental commissar commissioner of the European Union. You have to “admire” her honesty.  For the benefit of my younger readers who may not remember the debate surrounding Kyoto, let me remind you of a little irony. At the time this “backlash” was happening against the US, only ONE single European country had ratified  the protocol – that being powerful and influential Romania (nothing against it). Energy costs were then, as they continue to be, higher in Europe than they are here in the US. They are higher due to both tax policy and regulatory policy. So, much like we saw in 2001 when Gray Davis and the California PUC asked (successfully) for our federal government to impose price controls on states OTHER than California to “level the playing field” so too were European opinion-leaders seeking to “level the playing field.”  They seemed to have been hoping to find a way to hobble American manufacturing.

Level or not, as a former football player, I sure as heck don’t like the idea of playing on a playing field that is full of these characters:

I also had the pleasure of playing on a pretty unlevel playing field during my first two years as a football player. What strikes me as ridiculous about the analogy is that both teams had to play on that “unlevel” playing field – and don’t recall it being to any of our advantages. So I declare from this day forward that the term, “level playing field” does not really invoke the correct image for what people have in mind. Never use it again!

UPDATE: Wow! Timing can’t be “better” on this. A reader sends me a link to this piece, here is the relevant quote:

“But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy.  Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this.  One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy.  This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.”

That from a German economist.

4 Responses to “The Environment is Not About the Environment, Episode 774953”

  1. Harry says:

    You are a great economist, Wintercow.

    The Kyoto Protocol was designed to ship money from the US to Europe and assorted members of the United Nations, quite a few of whom do not read Wintercow’s blog because they do not read or write English.

    In their heart of hearts, the people who commission the atmospheric scientists are not interested in the answer, as long as it gives them dominion over the plant and animal kingdoms. Once you get agreement that it is worth any price to reduce the level of CO2 from 0.035 percent, plus or minus .002 percent, you have the world by the short hairs

    Romania liked the idea because their heavy industry consumed so much energy, and it was easy, especially if you got free money from the IMF and the World Bank to invest in more efficient turbines and motors.

    You worked off your 1992 base, and every ton of carbon meant, under Kyoto, a credit worth real money which some US utility would buy. Thus Romania gets to print US dollars and ship them to Romania.

    This was an elaborate shell game, which I bet the collectivists across the world understood.

    They never cared that the US would reduce its energy consumption, and they never cared about atolls being buried.

  2. It’s a scheme to regulate C02 emissions, and issue pollution credits in the same way as taxicab medallions. Both systems serve the same purpose; to restrict competition and increase the profits of existing polluters/taxi companies.

  3. Harry says:

    Not exactly, Stone. The idea was not to increase the profits of polluters, who are defined as anyone producing energy, including the ones who burn methane to produce water and carbon dioxide. The idea was to shut down the United States by rationing energy, and to ship US wealth abroad, including, but not limited to, France, Germany, and Ghana.

  4. Rod says:

    If there had been uneven playing fields back in 1848, Karl Marx would have mentioned them in Das Kapital.

    Communists have always been at a disadvantage to the capitalists, and they know it. Step 1: teach several generations of American children to replace their devotion to God and country with worship of the United Nations. Step 2: Kofi Annan gets his bro’s to issue a report that says the planet will die unless trillions of dollars go from the USA to Romania, Burkina Faso and Ghana. Step 3: elect Obama president and elect Democrat majorities in both houses of Congress. Easy.

    This is not to say that BO, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are card-carrying commies. No, they’re Democrats. But they are true believers in all this BS.

    Remember the Kudlow Creed: I believe the best path to prosperity is free-market capitalism.

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