re: #283 karmic_inquisitor

And because wingnuts will monitor the comments here …

I want to offer kudos to the Obama Administration for holding their own in Copenhagen this week.

Anyone who theorizes that Obama has wanted an opportunity to destroy America’s economic future and hand it over to the “New World Order” run by Chinese Socialists will have to deal with these facts -

1) The US has held firm on China / India /Brazil having to sign up to actual emissions cuts that are verifiable;

2) The US taxpayer will not be paying China a subsidy to continue polluting (something China is actually demanding).

The Clinton admin needed to “save face” and signed up to a Kyoto deal that the Senate was never going to ratify. Obama isn’t going down that road.

The latest news (all of 23 minutes old):

The only way there will ever be a deal is if China concludes that it is in her own national interest to agree to measures that will actually curtail emissions. China won’t take the hit solo. Neither will the U.S., nor really, anybody. Thus, to get an agreement, everybody has to be on board, and there have to be consequences for cheating. Without verification, there cannot be consequences because the cheating itself cannot be proved. So, there have to be provisions for verification.

Curtailing emissions, now, is not politically or economically feasible for China. They have to move further up the economic ladder, to where they can build nuclear, wind, solar installations on a massive scale and at a cost within their reach, before they can wean themselves from coal. We’re sort of in the same boat, though we’re nearer being able to make that transition.

A huge R&D and pilot project program in solar and advanced wind technology is necessary. It’s the only way that we can do what we have to do without facing politically immobilizing economic pain.