re: #143 boxhead

Europe splits over fiscal union, UK isolated

Europe divided on Friday in a historic rift over building a fiscal union to preserve the euro, with a large majority of countries led by Germany and France agreeing to move ahead with a separate treaty, leaving Britain isolated.

Twenty-three of the 27 leaders agreed to pursue tighter integration with stricter budget rules for the single currency area, but Britain said it could not accept proposed amendments to the EU treaty after failing to secure concessions for itself.

[…]

Looks like the same old story… UK not wanting to lose some of its sovereignty to a central authority.

Speaking of the same old story, down in Durban the COP17 is peaking with the expected drama, with not a lot of progress (in the big picture.)

According to the pressers/tweets, it appears the US, China, and India are all refusing to agree to a EU “road map” that would call for a legally binding treaty on all nations, a treaty that would embody the numerous pledges to reduce emissions. The US of course didn’t ratify the previous treaty (KP), and under the KP China and and India didn’t have (numerically defined) obligations to reduce emissions.

The US proposal that every nation should just wing it until some time in the future makes most of the delegations unhappy, even though it is likely the reality of the situation. The lack of any legally binding arrangement if obviously the outcome of the US Senate refusing to even consider any treaty that doesn’t treat all nations the same (especially China). China and India’s unwillingness to go along with a legal treaty has more to do I think with each other’s competition to become fully developed and they know that means (for the foreseeable future) increasing climate change affecting actions (e.g., emissions.)

So the question is just how it will all play out in the propaganda war. The US often plays the villain in this arena, mostly in the view of NGOs and the Bolivarians, but the reality of life is that the G20+OPEC do not want changes to business as usual in how they structure the world economy, even if the other 100+ nations on the planet want it otherwise.