Copenhagen

We will find out in a few days if there will be some climate change regulation which of course will only have bite to it if the two biggest polluters (China and the US) don't commit themselves to serious steps to cut carbon emissions.


Obama’s had about ten watershed moments and this will be another one. So far on the international stage he has: tripled the troops in Afghanistan while the rest of NATO is pulling out, watched Karzai and Ahmadinejad steal elections, seen Moscow continue to bully it’s neighbors, watched China enable Iran and North Korea, continued to see Israel build-up it’s settlements, watched the poor Irish get ripped off by Henry and lost the Olympics. I figure it might be time for him to come up bigger than he has done so far since everybody seems to love him but nobody seems to fear him.

I’m all for concessions when there are reasons for it, carrots and sticks work but I’m not for regulation with no teeth. If there is one thing the Obama administration has embraced more than anything- except maybe helping out Goldman Sachs-it’s greening the planet with visions of wide prairies decked out with solar panels and windmills. One reason they like these ideas is because they claim will bring a ton of manufacturing jobs back to the economy although I honestly think that if you are going so far as calling a job of installing a solar panels on a roof ‘manufacturing’ you should do the same thing for the guy installing your cable.

But the bigger picture will be what carrots and which sticks Obama will bring to this party because every plan I’ve heard so far may sound ambitious by making the real big emissions cuts by 2050 at which time Obama will obviously be out of office and may very well be dead.

I think the US consumer can be convinced to get better at carbon emissions but I’ve been to Eastern Europe and Central China and it’s depressing to know that I carry the NY Times home with me to make sure it’s recycled properly when you see acid dumped into rivers, garbage dumped on the sides of the highways and feel the grit of burned coal in my teeth whenever I go to any of these places

The problem sometimes is that the US Plans seem big in idea but small in practice. There are so many small things the government could do but they always go for the ones that give them the most media exposure. This summer you got $4500 credit for trading in a 1990 Ford Taurus clunker but you can’t find a recycle bin in any park, public building or street corner in NYC. The government fines you if you accidently throw a bottle with your normal trash but also see fire hydrants running open for weeks at a time and park rangers drive around Prospect Park for hours burning fuel while trying to catch somebody who may drop a plastic wrapper