Posted by
Always To The Right on Monday, June 30, 2008 3:29:18 PM
Bad news out of Canada, according to Greenwire.
It seems that not only have the Chinese overtaken the U.S. as the
largest overall emitter of carbon dioxide, but our wretchedly excessive
per capita emissions also have fallen behind other kinder, gentler
nations.
China of course is and says it will remain exempt from
the Kyoto scheme, much like other top and rapidly growing emitters
India, South Korea, Indonesia, Brazil and Mexico among 150 others.
Now,
it turns out, those nice, polite neighbors to the north are larger
per-capita emitters than Americans are. I wonder if they know that they
can't just go around setting their thermostats where they want and
driving the vehicle of their choice, and think other countries are
going to just accept that.
This can't be good for the global
warming industry, predicated on decrying America's rogue, outlier
status as a means to shame us into accepting onerous economic
restrictions — binding upon us, thanks to our judicial system, while
largely ceremonial for those few other countries purporting to also
accept those restrictions.
As I've said before, beginning next January, the press will no doubt begin noting that the U.S. did
sign Kyoto (under Clinton, not that mean George Bush) but that the
Senate chose not to ratify it. And, of course, U.S. emissions have
been rising at a fraction of the pace of Europe's, despite our economy
and population having grown faster then those of our EU
counterparts. Given these two bits of information, a "hard cap"
rationing scheme such as Kyoto — which restricts only those countries
whose emissions aren't rising as fast as the developing world's — may
not necessarily be the only way to go.
That will be the story come January. Then again, McCain could still win the election.