Getting real about Kyoto

Wall Street Journal Editorial:

One of the mysteries of the universe is why President Bush bothers to charge the fixed bayonets of the global warming theocracy. On the other hand, his Administration's supposed "cowboy diplomacy" is succeeding in changing the way the world addresses climate change. Which is to say, he has forced the world to pay at least some attention to reality.

That was the larger meaning of the Group of Eight summit in Japan this week, even if it didn't make the papers. The headline was that the nations pledged to cut global greenhouse emissions by half by 2050. Yet for the first time, the G-8 also agreed that any meaningful climate program would have to involve industrializing nations like China and India. For the first time, too, the G-8 agreed that real progress will depend on technological advancements. And it agreed that the putative benefits had to justify any brakes on economic growth.

In other words, the G-8 signed on to what has been the White House approach since 2002. The U.S. has relied on the arc of domestic energy programs now in place, like fuel-economy standards and efficiency regulations, along with billions in subsidies for low-carbon technology. Europe threw in with the central planning of the Kyoto Protocol -- and the contrast is instructive. Between 2000 and 2006, U.S. net greenhouse gas emissions fell 3%. Of the 17 largest world-wide emitters, only France reduced by more.

So despite environmentalist sanctimony about the urgent need for President Bush and the U.S. to "take the lead" on global warming, his program has done better than most everybody else's. That won't make the evening news. But the fact is that the new G-8 document is best understood as a second look at the "leadership" of . . . you know who.

...

Put another way, global warming is an economic, not a theological, question. It is not at all clear that huge expenditures today on slowing emissions will yield long-run benefits or even slow emissions. Research and development into sources of low-carbon energy is almost certainly more useful, and the G-8 pledged more funding for "clean tech" programs. This is vastly preferable to whatever reorganization of the American economy that Barack Obama and John McCain currently favor in the name of solving this speculative problem.

...

Negotiating cost benefit analysis with globo warmers is like negotiating compromise with al Qaeda. They both think they are on a mission from God to save the planet and any compromise will send them and the rest of the world to hell here on Earth. Al Qaeda must be defeated and the globo warmers must be shown to be the alarmist control freaks that they are. Many are using the fear of global warming to impose the discredited command economic model of communism.

President Bush has been a rare voice of sanity and leadership in dealing with what ever climate change is taking place. That the rest of the world is finally noticing is a good sign, but hopefully voters in the US will also notice.

I don't think I will have too much difficulty adapting to temperatures a few degrees warmer. I like warmer weather. Spending trillions to lower the temperature one or two degrees seems like a fools errand. I think my grand kids will have a better quality of life if we let them adapt to the temperature and do not lower their standard of living by ruining the greatest economy in the wrold.