The Global Warming Shakedown, Part III

Should your tax dollars be used to destroy American jobs and subsidize them being relocated to other nations? Sounds crazy, but it’s already happening in England thanks to global warming policies, as this Wall Street Journal column explains. Only politicians and bureaucrats would think this is a good idea:

The Kyoto Protocol of 1997 required signatories to reduce their carbon emissions, and the European Union in 2005 launched its own cap-and-trade system. The program sets a limit on carbon emissions, and companies are issued free carbon allowances that they can buy or sell based on their emissions needs. Fast forward to this month’s news that Corus, Europe’s second-largest steel producer, is shuttering a giant U.K. steelmaking plant at Redcar, cutting 1,700 jobs. …By closing Redcar’s annual capacity of three million tons of steel, Corus will produce six million fewer tons of CO2. That means more carbon allowances, which could translate into about $300 million a year if credits hit $50. Corus is essentially being paid to lay off British workers. …Were Corus to move production to a “clean” Indian factory, it could receive hundreds of millions of dollars annually from the Clean Development Fund. The kicker is that none of this results in fewer carbon emissions. …The Corus story also shows that cap and trade isn’t really a free market. Markets develop to efficiently allocate resources and capital. Carbon cap and trade is a government-rigged market, in which carbon allowances are dispensed based on political influence. Such a system is ripe for manipulation, and Corus is merely the latest example.

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The Global Warming Shakedown, Part II

Let’s all be thankful this holiday season for our Founding Fathers, who wisely created a system based on separation of power. As such, when the Secretary of State blithely pontificates about fleecing American tapxayers to help finance $100 billion of added foreign aid, the good news is that this money can only be squandered if the House and Senate also agree. That’s a real possibility, of course, but at least there’s some hope that common sense will prevail since the fiscal burden of government already is far too large. Here’s a NY Daily News report on what’s happening in Copenhagen, including worrisome signs that politicians who don’t pay for their own travel are planning to make the rest of us pay more:

“The US is prepared to work with other countries toward a goal of jointly mobilizing $100 billion a year by 2020 to address the climate change needs of developing countries,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said. …While she would not disclose how much the U.S. would be contribution to the climate fund, Clinton said there would be a fair amount contributed to the pot that would be made available in 2020. The finances will reportedly be raised partially by taxing aviation and shipping, as proposed by the European Union.

Pat Buchanan, meanwhile, cuts to the heart of the issue, explaining for Townhall.com that global warming is a “racket” for the benefits of political elites:

“Zenawi said he would accept $30 billion in the short term, rising to $100 billion by 2020. … This was seen as a key concession by developing countries, which had previously spurned that figure … as too low.” There was a time when a U.S. diplomat would have burst out laughing after listening to a Third World con artist like this. But not the Obamaites. They are already ponying up. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack just pledged $1 billion at Copenhagen to developing countries who preserve their forests. Thus, America, $12 trillion in debt and facing a second straight $1.4 trillion deficit, will borrow another $1 billion from China to send to Brazil to bribe them to stop cutting down their trees. When you slice through the blather about marooned bears and melting ice caps, oceans rising and cities sinking, global warming is a racket and a crock. It is all about money and power. Copenhagen has always been about an endless transfer of wealth from America, Europe and Japan and creation of a global bureaucracy to control the pace of world economic and industrial development.

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The Global Warming Shakedown, Part I

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page lifts a rock and looks at the sordid redistribution of other people’s money that is happening in Copenhagen. The unavoidable conclusion is that developing countries are there to cash in on a new foreign-aid boondoggle and rich countries are there because politicians are seeking a new source of power over their national economies:

Monday’s walkout revealed the real reason that the developing world is in Copenhagen in the first place: They see climate change as a potential foreign-aid bonanza, and they are at the table to leverage the West’s environmental angst into massive transfers of wealth. …the developed world has been pouring trillions of dollars into development aid in various forms for decades, with little to show for it. The reasons are well-known: Corruption, political oppression, government control of the economy and the absence of rule of law combine to keep poor countries poor. And those factors also ensure that most aid is squandered or skimmed off the top.Recasting foreign aid as “climate mitigation” won’t change any of that. …The G-77 scoffed at a European offer of €7.2 billion ($10 billion) over three years. Instead, the Sudanese chairman of the group, Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, suggested in an interview with Mother Jones magazine that something on the order of a trillion dollars, or more, would be appropriate. “The world’s scientists and policy decision makers have publicly stated that this is the greatest risk humanity has ever faced,” says Mr. Di-Aping. “Now if that’s the case, it’s very strange that $10 billion is considered adequate financing.” Mr. Di-Aping deserves credit for taking the climate alarmists on their own terms and drawing consistent conclusions.

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