This article originally appeared in the National Journal’s Cancun Insider.
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Kyoto was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of its burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Japan announced it. And Japan’s pronouncements are good for anything they choose to put voice to.
Old Kyoto was dead as Jacob Marley, which is to say, as dead as a door-nail.
Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the freedom our ancestor’s fought for is done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Kyoto was as dead as a door-nail.
What the Dickens? With Japan formally jumping ship, it does indeed appear the Kyoto Protocol is well and truly dead.
Good riddance.
And yet, sadly, the global warming scare lives on and the danger of Cancun remains.
Perhaps that danger is the low expectations regarding its success. Unlike Copenhagen, this time the UN and the campaigners who make such a nice living off global warming were careful not to over hype possible “groundbreaking” outcomes before the conference. They played the expectations game. This keeps their options open to label just about anything that happens next as forward “progress” for the UN process. That perception could start a new snowball rolling which could escalate into an avalanche by the time it hits the 2011 climate conference in South Africa next year.
There is present danger as well. The buzz in the conference halls is that the Obama administration is doing some back room maneuvering to reach a global warming deal with China. China would drop objections to verification of its carbon emissions (can you trust such a verification scheme?). In exchange the U.S. would send billions to China to pay for clean energy technologies and agree to use the EPA and other regulatory agencies to force Americans into carbon restrictions – neatly bypassing the constitutional requirement to send a treaty to the Senate. It was reported that India appears ready to “toe the Chinese line” and sign onto this Faustian bargain.
Is there anyone of open mind who does not see that massive carbon restrictions will devastate economic recovery and kill jobs? That hamstringing our economy coupled with a massive redistribution of wealth to carbon profiteers and moribund autocracies will not alter the climate in any meaningful way?
CFACT students ventured outside the air conditioned comfort of the conference center yesterday and took to the Cancun streets spelling out, “stop energy poverty now!” and voicing their opposition to a climate treaty loud and clear. It is easy for us to envision the harm a global warming treaty would do to the United States and its allies, but do give thought to the devastating trap it will create for the those who have never had electricity.
One can only hope the world will wake up from this nightmare, repent and cast off the chains of the climate scare before it is too late.
“A robust recovery and a merry Christmas,” was heard throughout the Cancun conference hall with an earnestness that could not be mistaken, as the delegates clapped one another’s backs. “A merrier Christmas, energy deprived friends, than we have given you for many a year. We’ll prosper together, stand beside you, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop. Turn on the lights, pump clean water, refrigerate your food, build, thrive, log on and learn! Let nature’s beauty bloom again – before you cook another meal with another chopped tree!”
The delegates were better than their word. They did it all, and infinitely more; and to the energy poor, who did not suffer nor die, they were as second fathers and mothers. They became as good friends, as good leaders, and as good world citizens, as good old Cancun knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration, but they let them laugh, and little heeded them; for they were wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, they thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. Their own hearts laughed: and that was quite enough.
They had no further intercourse with carbon traders, con men, or radical greens, but lived upon the Principles of Freedom, Justice and Prosperity, ever afterwards; and it was always said of them, that they knew how to keep Christmas, indeed every land’s celebrations well, if anyone alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed on another Christmas long ago, “God bless Us, Every One!”