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The
anti-globalist
Agenda behind the Climate Conference
Why a Climate Treaty is both Unfeasable and
Undesirable
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The
environmental lobby gradually succeeds in promoting "the environment"
to the "Golden Calf" of the 21st century. Rationality and sense of
proportion have vanished from the environmental debate. Whoever questions Al
Gore's climate alarmism gets
labeled as "negationist" worse even than Holocaust deniers. Even human rights,
democracy and prosperity give way to the new
idolatry.
Recent
research however learns how much the climate alarmists exaggerate
“global warming” an its effects. Anti-globalist motives seem to
dominate the Copenhagen Climate Conference rather than environmental
concerns. This hidden agenda is likely to distort global trade and
inflict development and the environment far more bad than good.
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Misleading Climate
Alarmism
 There
is growing controversy about the causes and the
Kyoto approach to "Global Warming". Growing numbers of scientists
affirm that human activity has but a limited impact on the climate.
Climatologists increasingly link global warming to natural
processes and particularly to increased
solar radiation, which passed
its peak since 1998.
Human activity accounts for barely 4% of the total CO2 emissions,
natural processes and volcanoes for all the rest. The greenhouse effect
of water vapor is even 900 times larger. As reduction of human activity
proves extremely difficult and the proportion of human CO2 in the
greenhouse effect so low, climate realists argue that the climate plan
can produce minimal effects only and at a very high cost.
Leading scientists of the
Copenhagen Consensus Centre including five Nobel prize laureates
agree that Al Gore’s scenario’s featuring drowning polar bears and 6
meter rising sea levels are wild exaggerations. Even the UN’s own
Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change estimates the potential rise of sea levels
at one
foot only. Al’ Gore’s arguments and calculations are one sided and
misleading. The alarming death toll from killer heatwaves disregards
lives saved due to the reduction of far deadlier cold waves. The fact
is that during the Middle Ages man and nature survived higher
temperatures than today’s worst case scenario remarkably well. The warm
climate allowed even for increased food production and prosperity. Sea
levels did not rise notably then nor did polar bears extinct, so we
need not fear such imaginary catastrophes now.
Wastage
Bjorn Lomborg
and
the Copenhagen Consensus Group argue that the UN Kyoto-style reduction
sheme as it is conceived today is the most costly and most ineffective
way to reduce emissions while it will have minute effect. Other
research and development programs provide a much larger contribution to
the environment and human development at a fraction of the cost. They
fear that the UN climate plan will crowd out most other programs from
the agenda and from development budgets. Even health care
programs which are 200 times more efficient in saving human life.
Inefficient use of development budgets is therefore not only wasteful
but even immoral. One single water pump at the cost of a couple of
solar panels can spare hundreds of Sahel women the daily journey to the
source and prevent infections and lives. A mini-investment in mosquito
nets can save thousands of malaria lives. Lomborg worries that Al
Gore's populist propaganda conceals the overall development picture. He
calls for a global consensus on a list of priorities on basis of
rationality founded on risk and cost / benefit analysis which are
totally lacking in the climate debate at present.
Prof.
Bjorn Lomborg before the
US Congress
Committee on Energy and Commerce:
"Very
costly
with very
little effect"
Protectionism and Distortion of World Trade
The UN climate plan as it is conceived now
would have
devastating effects on World Trade. The aim of the climate round is to
reduce CO2 emissions through a "Cap-and-Trade"
scheme whereby government sets a total limit on greenhouse gas
emissions and arbitrarily distribute allowances through exemptions and
auctions. Developing countries, including countries like China, India,
Brazil and even the oil states of the Middle East, would largely be
exempted from the obligations. As an excuse for their exemption The UN
plan introduced the deceptive concept of “climate debt” thereby
improperly incriminating industrial nations for their very existence
and disregarding the benefits of their environmental expertise for the
world at large.
As a consequence the cost the UN plan reduction will weigh on
manufacturing
costs of industrial nations only. As these nations use the least
polluting production processes, the UN climate plan creates the contra
productive incentive to misuse budgets on sophisticating technologies
with the least marginal CO2 reduction potential. The plan also gives
businesses new incentives to outsource production to countries with low
environmental standards, with contra productive ecological effects.
The decoupling of production costs from the market reality leads to distortions
of world trade, particularly so in Europe where also Eastern
European transition economies acquired vast exemptions. The distorting
protectionism related to the climate agenda is likely to paralyze world
trade just as it did during the thirties. Rather than protectionism it
is free trade that can provide the answer to the global challenge. It
is free trade that allows countries to benefit reciprocally of the
comparative
advantages of other countries, particularly so in the field
of
environment and ecological expertise. The biggest victims of a
shrinking world trade would therefore be the climate itself and
developing countries with the most vulnerable economies. But even
industrial countries cannot afford a contraction of the world trade at
a moment when growth is indispensable for economic recovery, for the
sustainable funding of their welfare states and development of new
technology.
The fallacy of the environmentalists is to assume a linear relationship
between growth and emission levels. This belief is erroneous as per
capita emissions prove to decline as income grows. It is growth that
allows for the technological advancement, and such progress contributes
to the cutback of emissions much more efficiently than reduction of
human activity. Only sustained growth is capable of assuring the
growing world population a dignified existence such as guaranteed in human rights
treaties. A protectionist return to a pastoral past provide no
prospects
whatsoever in that direction.
Market Oriented
Alternative
State monopoly on the supply of the virtual
but obligatory
raw material of emissions allowances has a triple risk; scarcity,
distortional allocation and high price volatility. Because the UN
scheme collects CO2 taxes (which are eventually passed on to consumers)
untransparently through business, politicians are likely to regard this
unseen taxation as an inexhaustible source of income and make CO2
allowances as scarce and expensive as they wish. Just as artificial
scarcity of building permits already inflated prices of residential
building land to an unsustainable bubble.
Under the UN Cap-and-trade sheme, the price of CO2 allowances would
become the plaything of political caprice and unpredictable
compromises. Prior knowledge of the political decisions and favoritism
for privileged sectors or constituencies is likely to degenerate the
emissions trade into a swindle. Under the European emissions scheme CO2
carousels already turned European Emissions trading into a pricey
debacle.
National governments can just as well raise existing national taxes on
fossil fuels and achieve the same emission deterring effect without the
expensive and fraud-sensitive UN bureaucracy. The administrative
cost of such tax increase is zero, while a shift of
the tax burden from income to consumption restores the incentives to
productive behavior and stimulates the economy, in the meantime
avoiding distortions of the world trade.
The advantage of a national eco-tax is that all the income thereof
remains national. Unlike the UN Cap-and-Trade allocations scheme under
which governments arbitrarily attribute emission allowances, such pigovian tax is
directly proportional to the emissions. It therefore gives incentives
to direct efforts and research to projects with the best CO2 reduction
potential. Under free
market conditions competition continually obliges entrepreneurs to
weigh costs against potential gains. When governments engage in the
central planning of emissions reduction, political motives come into
play. Demands from special interest groups, from the environmental
industry or green lobbyists, all invariably distorting the economical
allocation of resources and leading to wastage. The examples are
common: although solar panels in northern countries have by far the
lowest energy yield per invested Dollar, the eco-industrial complex
engrossed the lion's share of Europe’s eco-budgets. Demands from the
agricultural lobby originated subsidized the bio-fuel project with
catastrophic consequences for the global food production.
Lost Sovereignty
Behind the Copenhagen Climate Conference hides
an agenda
of global dirigisme aimed at withdrawing policy maneuver from national
sovereignty. Self feeding supranational organizations escaping
democratic control such as the UN World Climate Organization, OECD, G20
with increasing arrogance push their dirigist agendas aimed at global
control over national policy. The incriminating OECD list of “tax
shelters” was the most recent and most brutal example. The question
should be answered
where the
present generation of politicians and the incestuous circle
of supranational organizations got the democratic legitimacy to
decide fiscal policy of future generations and imposing them new taxes
for decades in advance. The Copenhagen Climate Round is a dangerous
step towards a fascistoid "New World Order". The arbitrary
Cap-and-Trade Scheme brings into the specter a dangerous World
Government under UN dictate.
Paul Vreymans
http://workforall.net
.
Audio (mp3):
How
Copenhagen should handle Global Warming and other World Problems
(Lomborg)
CZ
president Vaclav Klaus warns for the hidden agenda's behind climate
alarmism
Alan
Jones interviews Lord Monckton about Climate Change
P.S
: Since this article was published a major scandal has erupted
around the scientific evidence underlying the UPCC conclusions, commonly
known as "Climategate". The incident has been widely reported in
Anglosaxon media, but remained silenced in European mainstream media so
far.
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| The Road to Serfdom. This masterpiece of
Nobel Prize laureate Friedrich Hayek
is an eye-opener,
strongly advocating the free market principles. In this all-time
classic Hayek persuasively warns against the authoritarian utopias of
central planning and the welfare state. Fascism, communism and
socialism share these utopias. For the implementation of their plans
these authoritarian ideologies require government power over the
individual, inevitably leading to a totalitarian state. Every step away
from the free market toward planning reduces people's freedom and is a
step toward tyranny. Planning also cannot assess consumer preferences
with sufficient accuracy to efficiently co-ordinate production.
However in a free market, "Price" is the all-inclusive source of
information, guiding entrepreneurs to produce whatever is wanted and
directing workers wherever they are most needed. Free markets also
provide the entrepreneurial climate for a thriving economy and for
releasing the creative energy of its citizens. Free individuals in
their native strive to develop their talents and to improve their fate
produce spontaneous progress.
All public interference in the economic process disturbs the market
equilibrium, distorts the optimal allocation of resources and
consequently reduces the level of wealth. Where planning replaces free
markets people do not only loose their freedom and individuality.
Resulting slow
growth also increases welfare demands causing dependence similar to
slavery. In the end people's self-reliance and self-respect is ruined,
and citizens are degraded to a means to serve the ends of the
collective mass. |
Free condensed pdf Comments
Dutch
Abstract
Overview
Paperback
Version
Readers'
Digest
More Books of Friedrich
Hayek here |
 The
Tragedy of the commons by Garrett
Hardin Free
access
and unrestricted demand for a finite resource ultimately
dooms the resource through over-exploitation. This occurs
because the benefits of exploitation accrue to individuals,
each of which is motivated to maximise his or her own use of
the resource, while the costs of exploitation are
distributed between all those to whom the resource is
available (which may be a wider class of individuals than
those who are exploiting it). The theory itself is as old as
Aristotle who said: "That which is common to the greatest
number has the least care bestowed upon
it. more
here
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