WHEN ALL YOU DO IS WASTE, ALL YOU GET IS HATE.
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Abstract: Not content with pulling the strings of many disasters in the past, the American plutocracy seems determined to stay on a collision course with civilization. This time it wants to gas us all. I explain why, and how.
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PLUTOCRATS CLAP AND TREAD:
Short version of the essay below: We are facing a CO2 induced holocaust. Methane has started to bubble up in the Arctic. Methane has 100 times the greenhouse power of CO2 over 20 years. More than 1000 billion frozen tons of it are in shallow waters in the Arctic alone, ready to thaw.
The CO2 induced holocaust around the corner has been greatly orchestrated by those who were behind many of the disasters of the twentieth century, the USA based plutocrats. Those malevolent, profit obsessed creatures, brought us many evils from their early support for Hitler to the Great Depression, and exuberant support for Stalin or Muslim fundamentalism all the way to derivatives and the financial crisis of 2008. (Yes, you will not read this in conventional history books, they control that too!)
The USA is still the number one CO2 causing problem (when counting the USA production based in China). Its malevolent oligarchy has been dismissive of world opinion, foreigners, scientists, and the mother of all holocausts to come.
American financial traders propose to remedy all that hot air by, surprise, surprise, "Cap and Trade", a scheme concocted by Goldman Sachs and friends, nowadays at the very core of a worldwide exploitation scheme which predated upon the world throughout the twentieth century. We will show that it is definitively a -bad- joke, a determined effort towards the Nobel Prize in Impudence.
Indeed, "Cap and Trade" depends upon "Cap". Europe, remembering that the world war of 1939-1945 was in part caused by Hitler’s gyrations to get at Polish, Romanian and Caucasian oil, has long self flagellated with high taxes on energy which "capped" energy waste. Even then, the "Cap" in European "Cap and Trade" did not make much of a dent when "Cap and Trade" was finally introduced in Europe. Arguably it worked the other way, all too long (how is explained below).
If the "Cap" is too low, the carbon price will be too low too (as it is presently the case in Europe, hence worldwide). There is every reason to believe that Americans, who are unwilling to submit to the slightest self restraint so far about capping their CO2 extravagance, will not allow a significant "Cap" on CO2, since they are trained to get their flagellation from their financiers, only. However, it will cost them, because their financiers will make sure of that. So "Cap and Trade’ will be another tax from the poor to the hyper rich.
Americans ought to have a good look in the mirror. It is time to get serious. Goldman Sachs and its associates lead them to a "DOOM LOOP" (as the Bank Of England just said).
The USA was the nation of carbon burning, and got to the pinnacle that way (even helping the so called "Holocaust" along, see below). Time to let go, because the next holocaust is on the way, and it will not be a matter of just 100 million dead. This time the USA may be on the receiving end, too.
Time to let go, and it’s not just about CO2. All over, old, obsolete, unsustainable technologies, have to be scuttled ASAP to switch to renewable and sustainable technologies. Fortunately for the USA, this creation and deployment of appropriate, much more advanced technologies, could turn out to be HIGHLY PROFITABLE for the most advanced countries (including the USA).
Advanced technology is exactly what the doctor ordered economically. And it will introduce an element of dynamic stability… Because the root of the crisis is that obsolete technologies (including in finance) are all the way down to hell on the bell curve of their utility.
The oligarchy of the USA thinks the CO2 catastrophe is American business as usual: 1) cause a big disaster, 2) reap the juicy fruits of enormous evil unchained (I know Obama went to Oslo to say it ain’t so; we will partly address this below with facts which are usually carefully silenced). That catastrophic method has always worked in the past, it is hard to let go. But this time is not business as usual. What is being prepared is not your garden variety, habitual holocaust. We are not talking about exterminating a few tribes. Business as usual is terminated. Billions of us may get terminated.
It would be better if the USA did absolutely nothing about "Cap and Trade", rather than to try to institute another huge subsidy to Wall Street, while talking as if it fought CO2 production. It is time for the USA to face squarely the responsibility of its own plutocracy in the collapse of the entire biosphere its ineptitude is leading to.
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AMERICAN SELF DELUSIONS:
The truth is that the government of the USA has endangered the biosphere, ever since the senate of the USA voted 95 to 0 AGAINST the Kyoto Treaty (under Clinton). US Senators have to look at themselves in the mirror: they have been destroying the biosphere. We are a fraction from a holocaust, because of their hubristic ignorance.
(From The Economist, December 2009)
So the average American citizen produces 24 tons of CO2 per year. By comparison, France pollutes with only six tons of CO2 per person, per year. And France does only that, with a welfare state, and a lower unemployment than the USA. So Americans cannot say they pollute more because they are richer. All evidence is that Americans pollute more, so they are poorer. We will explain why below… Yes, the Australians, and the Canadians, have no excuses either (but at least Australia has recently operated a U turn, since G. W. Bush’s Australian shepherd was voted out of office)…
As "The Economist" puts it, speaking about saving the planet: "It is all about politics. Climate change is the hardest political problem the world has ever had to deal with. It is a prisoner’s dilemma, a free-rider problem and the tragedy of the commons all rolled into one. At issue is the difficulty of allocating the cost of collective action and trusting other parties to bear their share of the burden…
The closest parallel is the world trading system. This has many achievements to its name, but it is not an encouraging model. Not only is the latest round of negotiations mired in difficulty, but the World Trade Organisation’s task is child’s play compared with climate change. The benefits of concluding trade deals are certain and accrue in the short term. The benefits of mitigating climate change are uncertain, since scientists are unsure of the scale and consequences of global warming, and will mostly accrue many years hence. The need for action, by contrast, is urgent."
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AMERICA WILL ALWAYS FIND A MARKET TO SELL YOU TO:
Since the US Senate voted for climate heating, and ocean acidification, under Clinton, a colossal part of the industry of the USA has been sent to China, allowing the American oligarchs to claim that they are not the world number one polluters. But they are just hiding behind smoke screens.
After long denying that there was something as a CO2 problem, the American oligarchs have now invented a new red herring that they hope to turn into a new "market" device to enrich themselves further. "Cap and Trade". Ever since America traded slaves, markets have been a sure way for American oligarchs to enrich themselves. They used to trade human flesh, now they trade hot air. They do what they can, as their freedom is always encroached upon.
James Hansen, the famous NASA scientist, has fired a well thought out broadside against "Cap and Trade". In an unfortunate, school yard spirited reply, Paul Krugman, an ex adviser of Ronald Reagan, took him on personally, arguing that Hansen "really hasn’t made any effort to understand the economics of emissions control."
Well, that’s arrogant and beyond silly: Krugman means Hansen is dismissive of the politics of emissions control, not its economics. Hansen actually proposed a detailed method to curb carbon burning. Krugman does not explain why future American style "Cap and Trade", led by the competent pirates at Goldman Sachs, will succumb less to the corruption that affected European "Cap and Trade".
Moreover, "Cap and Trade" is viewed in Europe, as a third order mechanism. First order are regulations (such as mandatory efficiency requirements, or the worldwide interdiction of some chlorofluorocarbons). Then in Europe come, in second order, behavior modifying taxes (such as high energy taxes, or carbon taxes). Last, and least, come in the carbon market. Based in Paris.
"Cap and Trade" should be viewed skeptically, especially in light of the fact that European "Cap and Trade" was, and is, managed by the carbon hating French, from Paris, whereas Goldman Sachs is supposed to dominate the American "Cap and Trade", from Chicago, the city of Al Capone, Jamie Dimon, and the notorious center of "Academics" Nobel Prize economics understood as man eat man, for profits, and for the best (the University of Chicago). That from the same Kafkaesque country where Nobel "Peace" Prizes bestow eternal peace with flying robots which kill all extremists, without any semblance of due process (also based at the University of Chicago law department).
Krugman wrote "An Affordable Truth" an editorial in the New York Times, purporting to claim that "History shows that cap and trade, a system specifically designed to bring the power of market incentives to bear on environmental problems, does work."
Here, too, we get no proof, no example. (Although Krugman shows that green building may come out of it; but, in all of Europe, there maybe two green buildings, one in London, one in Grenoble, in spite of all this Euro "Cap and Trade"). The power of some American economists’ naivety seems to know no bounds.
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"CAP AND TRADE": AN AMUSEMENT FOR FINANCIERS.
Krugman curiously, does not provide the one and only example of CO2 "Cap and Trade". Why is that? I will tell you. "Cap and Trade" finally works, supposedly, in Europe, after many years trying. It works a teeny tiny bit. It’s an amusement. But for several years it worked mightily, the other way, augmenting pollution: the polluters had claimed they polluted more than they actually did, when the "Cap" was fixed, so, when "Cap and Trade" started, they could pollute even more, while claiming they polluted less. Thus, joining insult to injury, they earned massive subsidies (for example a French giant chemical company such as Rhodia was able to do this, getting subsidies, by setting up a factory in… (North) Vietnam).
So "Cap and Trade" works: elementary, my dear Watson. But not the way Krugman claims it does.
One can say much more. Most of the European carbon burning reductions are due to massive taxes, and increasingly stiffer regulations. The pet politicians of the American oligarchs want "Cap and Trade" because, as NASA’s James Hansen put it in his own essay, "Cap And Fade", "Wall Street is poised to make billions of dollars in the “trade” part of cap-and-trade. The market for trading permits to emit carbon appears likely to be loosely regulated, to be open to speculators and to include derivatives." Yes, it’s the usual dog and pony show of the American snake oil vendors, so thrilling to American corruptocrats. There is no God but money, and Wall Street is its prophet.
This is so incredibly obvious that even "The Economist" recognizes it, insolently calling America’s approach "Cap and Tirade". Says "The Economist": "Much depends on the president. If he puts his back behind Waxman-Markey ["Cap and Trade"], America may get a weakened version of a second-best policy. If he doesn’t, America may get something worse—or nothing at all."
Well I say: let’s put Americans in front of their responsibilities. As the top polluters who ever were, it is high time for them to understand this. Maybe, then, they will do something about it.
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HIGHEST TEMPERATURES IN MILLENNIA, HIGHEST GREENHOUSE IN MILLIONS OF YEARS:
For motivation, here are global temperatures, and this is less than 50% of the CO2 problem (part of the rest being acidification):
In case you want to know how the cooling that oiligarchs have claimed is happening, please learn that the 2000-2009 decade is the warmest ever. The CO2 EQUIVALENT GASES are at 430 ppm (of CO2 equivalence), although they never durably exceeded 300 ppm in the last 15 million years.
(By the way, I am fully aware that a recent article in Science claimed that some of Antarctica’s ice survived a transient excursion at 750 ppm or so. I am also aware that some geophysicists and climate scientists, even some of the world’s best, are financed by the carbon burning industry, hence their sometimes curiously convoluted utterances about climate change; Allegre and Courtillot in Paris being the worst examples that way.)
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Thank you USA! Big effort for you!
As the Economist Magazine puts it: "Forty years is a long time. Governments can agree to meet distant targets in the comfortable knowledge that they will not be held responsible for failing to do so. Shorter-term targets are therefore more important. The IPCC’s figures suggest the developed world should aim to cut by 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020…
The European Union is committed to a 20% cut, rising to 30% if the rest of the world promises significant cuts. It has a detailed plan for getting there, including lower country caps in its Emissions-Trading Scheme and regulations on car emissions. Japan’s new government has promised a reduction of 25% on 1990, but has revealed little about how it might manage that. Australia’s government struggled trying to get its legislation Canada’s emissions continue to grow.
Two weeks before the Copenhagen conference, Mr. Obama announced that America would offer a 17% cut on 2005 emissions by 2020—the figure in the Waxman-Markey bill. That’s around 4% below 1990 levels—well below the figure of 25-40% that is expected of developed countries…"
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AMERICAN CONTRADICTIONS. PRISONER OF THE PAST, AND OLIGARCHS:
It is mystifying, at first sight, that the USA has resisted so much to do anything about carbon burning. From its technological edge, to its abundance of sun over more than half of its territory, it would seem that the USA ought to lead in non carbon technologies. But that would be to forget how the present oligarchy of the USA got in its commanding position.
The USA was the original, proverbial "Saudi Arabia" of oil. Massive oil production started in the USA during the nineteenth century, not far from the East Coast, and in the Middle West. That is one of the main s why the USA gained comparative economic advantage on Europe (except for a few fields in Poland and Romania, grabbed by Hitler, and the Caucasus, European oil and gas has been deep under water in the North Sea). American strategists often loudly gloat about the USA being the Saudi Arabia of coal.
However, a point deliberately ignored by most US strategists, is that the USA is also the Saudi Arabia of sun and, also, of wind. So the USA would gain comparative advantage by developing renewables. So Krugman’s editorial, if it had addressed larger issues, should have been called "A PROFITABLE TRUTH". Verily, Gore did a disservice by calling the Carbon Burning Catastrophe an "Inconvenient Truth". If the USA reacted correctly to the Carbon Burning Catastrophe, it would turn into a "PROFITABLE TRUTH".
So why, then, if it is so profitable, is the USA so opposed to taking measures against carbon burning?
First, of course, carbon burning was the greatest advantage the USA had on Europe, it’s hard to let it go. The USA had oil, Europe had only depleted, obsolete coal. As the two largest navies in the world, the British and the French, switched to oil, they became dependent on overseas oil (when the USA was the number one producer of oil, by far, followed by the Caucasus, in the Russian empire).
Meanwhile, American plutocrats were free to arm Hitler with Texas oil, thus extending their wealth and influence. Hitler became their instrument. Using Texaco oil, Hitler conquered Spain. The same unashamed American plutocrats made a gala dinner in New York to celebrate France’s defeat in June 1940. (The American plutocracy’s hatred for France is long running.) Ah, such fond memories of the days of glory, it’s so hard to let go…
Secondly, if the USA is forced to let go of oil and coal, those who have dominated American politics for more than a century, will see they influenced capped and fading. Of course, it is hard for them to tolerate. So they finance the status quo as much as they can.
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THE USA WILL SUBMIT:
American politicians, and the error of their ways, are not all powerful. They only look so from inside the USA. Thanks to Obama, the Taliban will dispel that notion in the next few years, as the USA and NATO know an ominous defeat there that they were so anxious to demonstrate they could never suffer.
American politicians and their entangled oligarchs look all powerful to the likes of Krugman who laments that:"when economists deal with physical scientists, the hard-science guys tend to assume that we’re witch doctors with nothing to tell them, so they can’t be bothered to listen at all to what the economists have to say, and the result is that they end up reinventing old errors in the belief that they’re deep insights. Most of the time not much harm is done. But this time is different.
For here’s the way it is: we have a real chance of getting a serious cap and trade program in place within a year or two. We have no chance of getting a carbon tax for the foreseeable future. It’s just destructive to denounce the program we can actually get…"
OK, Krugman, Goldman Sachs has given you the program, it’s all you can get, let’s not be destructive… Well, sorry, the political system as presently found in the USA is destroying the planet, so we have to choose what we want to destroy: the planet, or corrupt American politics, as presently enacted.
The bottom line about "Cap and Trade" is that it puts a cap on pollution, maybe way higher than what the present pollution is. But in no way inferior. That is what happened in Europe. Otherwise there would be screaming, "Cap and Trade" would be a tax. (To tell the whole truth, "Cap and Trade" works a bit in Europe, precisely because there are all sorts of taxes and regulations there; but it is not the case in the USA; only Goldman Sachs there, and they are experts at paying no taxes, and getting money for nothing, including from the US government.)
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THE CATASTROPHE, OR WHY WE CAN’T SUBMIT TO AMERICAN PLUTOCRATS ANYMORE:
There is evidence, in the last two years, that the augmentation of sea level caused by the melting of continental icecaps went from .40 millimeter to .75 millimeter, a year (this is only part of sea level rise, which is now accelerating to 3.5 millimeters, per year).
It may not sound like much, but: 1) those icecaps in Greenland and Antarctica were not supposed to melt appreciably for decades, if not millennia. 2) it’s a quasi instantaneous doubling of the rate of melting of said supposedly forever frozen icecaps. it seems we are dealing with an exponential.
As I have argued before in "2 C IS TOO MUCH! (To Claim 2 degree Celsius Global Rise Is Safe Is Bad Science!)", the refrigeration system of the planet is the poles, or more exactly, the ice, congregating at the poles.
The rate of melting is at least (4 Celsius/.75 Celsius) higher there, so 5 or 6 times higher. One and a half degree up overall in global earth temperature would then mean (1.5 Celsius) (4/.75) ~ eight degrees Celsius of warming at the poles.
Nothing like a pretty picture:
This the average temperature in Antarctica over the entire summer presently. The melt depends upon the summer temperature (how cold it gets in winter is irrelevant, this is the heart of the modern glaciation orbital theory of Milankowitch, which has been found correct through computer simulations).
From this picture, it is clear that a rise of eight degrees Celsius over the whole summer, from a global rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius, globally, would lead to the melting of the entire West Antarctica Ice Shield (WAIS) and the Antarctica peninsula. Sea level would go up at least six meters (at least 3 meters from the WAIS, 2 meters from Greenland, etc…)
Figure 2: Time series of ice mass changes for the Antarctic ice sheet estimated from GRACE satellite data monthly mass solutions for the period from April 2002 to February 2009. Unfiltered data are blue crosses. Data filtered for the seasonal dependence using a 13-month moving average are shown as red crosses. The best-fitting quadratic trend is shown (green line). Let me spell it: it’s accelerating down to hell.
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IS AMERICA A WASTING PETRO REGIME?
Bottom line: the USA seems to be a lazy place, in the sense that Iraq or Saudi Arabia and various petro economies are lazy places. The USA, long the world’s top oil producer, and still the world’s top carbon producer (with its Chinese factories), has the oil country syndrome of having it all, and people there don’t try too hard: they let their sheiks do the heavy lift. By sheiks, read the Gold Man who Sacks, and the like. Those over lording exploiters get rich from the situation, rather than through the power of the People. At least so they hope. That’s why they send all the jobs to China.
The same class of exploiters who had a gala in New York when the Nazis invaded France, knew full well their reign was insured for decades to come. And it has been. Well, now, their time is up, because they have been sawing the branch on which they are sitting, namely the USA itself. Sawing the branch, and selling it to China.
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ONLY MORE ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY BECOMES US:
Heidegger, what used to pass for a philosopher among Nazis, bemoaned the role of technology. According to this blighted one, technology had hidden "being". The Nazis hated technology, and especially the Jews, who brought to them the science and the tech. They wanted to return to the trees, and various primitive superstitions Charlemagne had crushed (by cutting the sacred giant trees, precisely, just as Caesar had done in Gaul). When the Nazis understood that technology was the only thing that could save them, they reverted course, but it was too late (we were lucky they were so stupid: if they had mass produced the Me 263 earlier, only the atom bombs could have tempered their fascist enthusiasm…)
In truth, Heidegger had understood strictly nothing about the relationship of man and technology. In truth, it’s a symbiosis. The savage in the Amazon forest that Heidegger, as a Nazi, despised so much, should have planted his neurotoxin arrow into Heidegger, using forest high technology to subdue the dysfunctional tribal Nazi eradicator.
There is now plenty of evidence that man is intrinsically technological. Man evolved as a user, and creator of technology. MAN IS NOT HOMO SAPIENS, IT’S HOMO TECHNOLOGICUS. Indeed man is not always wise, but, when man is trying to be anti-technological (as the Nazis tried to), he is forced to run back to technology to save him.
It is a mathematical theorem. Many animals use tools, but man makes special discourses (techno-logy) about them. Man thinks, speaks, dreams and obsesses about technology. Man made technology, and technology made man. The great break in evolution, is not about sentience, it’s about becoming the creator of special discourses ("technologies"), whatever the special environments are. Even the hobbits found on Flores island, separated from the main Homo line for at least three million years, were highly technological.
And our present technology is running out of runway, it will never get enough speed to take off. And it will not change enough, and thus get enough speed to take off, except if helped by the governments. And it cannot brake either, and stop before the runway runs out. It’s too late. Einstein used to say that the Fourth World war would be fought with sticks and stones, but that was way too optimistic. It may just be fought with reverse transcriptase.
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WHAT TO DO? FULL TECH AHEAD, AND LET’S CAP AND TRADE BANKSTERS!
Most importantly, eco-nomy is house-management. The economy is depressed, because it has been mismanaged. The house has been mismanaged. To move towards efficiency is the exact prescription needed. Why? Because the present technology we have is unsustainable.
The planet cannot support us, at this rate, in this way. We need a lighter footprint. Even agriculture, per se, as we have it, is unsustainable. (Agriculture uses too much phosphate, polluting the oceans, and will soon run out of phosphate, anyway.)
Our usage of the oceans is completely unsustainable. For example, fisheries are collapsing worldwide, because of overfishing and pollution, and in many countries, it is already a catastrophe.
Another example: groundwater, which is simultaneously depleted and poisoned. In a country such as France, where agriculture has been intensely practiced for more than 3,000 years, for the first time, the industrial agricultural methods, have caused ground and stream pollution, to such an extent that lethal algae are growing in the sea. The solution here, and mostly everywhere, is to deploy much more advanced technology, which often does not even exist on the drawing boards. Such invention and deployment will insure great economic activity.
For example, Hawai’i could not doubt produce electricity without burning carbon (as it does presently, all Hawaiian electricity comes from burning fuel.) The deep sea and surface waters temperature differences are so high in Hawai’i that it ought to be simple to build a natural Carnot engine exploiting that (a problem is barnacles, but new materials can solve this, in ships, and in pumps and tubes). Deploying such technology would insure great economic activity.
Still another example: the average jet right now uses 4 liters (a "gallon") per 100 kilometers, per passenger, Airbus superjumbo uses only 3 liters, and for the soon to be assembled Airbus 350 XWB, Airbus is targeting 2 liters per 100 kms per passenger. This depends upon new carbon composite materials, lighter and stronger, than the existing ones, which are already much lighter and stronger than steel. The first such large pieces were produced. Aerospace directly employs half a million people in France alone, constantly developing new technology that will change the entire economy. (Be it only because ever stronger and lighter materials can be used absolutely everywhere, from school buses to bridges.)
Ultimately, jet fuel will have to be made from algae, instead of fossil fuel. Fossil fuel creates CO2, algae absorbs CO2. The former is evil, the later is the excellent remedy the doctor ordered.
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GOLD MAN SAYS: CLAP AND TREAD. OFF WITH ITS HEAD!
Obama’s USA, right now, intends to reduce emissions only with a "Cap and Trade" system. "Cap and Trade" was used, supposedly successfully, in the USA, to reduce acid rain. However, Europe controlled its acid problem without "Cap and Trade". Regulations can work better. After all, there are just regulations for toys, cars, house appliances and medical drugs. One does not do "Cap and Trade" with carcinogens. Why to do it with something even more dangerous?
Oh, we shall cap the number of slaves to one million, and then trade them? No, we shall not. Why? Because trading slaves is bad, that’s why. This is what happened in Europe: too many free pollution permits were given, well, for free. That was embarrassing. Europe was saved by its enormous pre-existing energy taxes and regulations.
The great advantage of "Cap and Trade", in the USA, is that it is a subsidy to the usual suspects, led, of course, by Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs, revealingly known as "Government Sachs", is the true government of the USA, motivated not by what the American people wants, but by the profit motive. "Cap and Trade" will make Gold Man richer, so Gold Man is all for it, so it will happen. What should progressives do? Well, denounce loudly but support meekly, because a bit of progress is better than none. At least, that is what Krugman advocates.
SELLING OUT:
Among many raging American "conservatives" Krugman has an extreme leftist reputation, but many of the policies he has advocated recently, or opinions he has presented, the elected leaders of the European right would reject with horror as intolerably right wing. An example is the zero interest rate policy, a lamentable give away to banks. Krugman supports it, in spite of its disastrous effects on the saving rate, American seniors, the dollar, stable currency rates, and the unfair cheapening of the USA.
So now Krugman, however unwittingly, has turned into a herald for Goldman Sachs (See the annex below on Gold Man Sacks and Cap & Trade). In "Unhelpful Hansen", a regrettable essay, Krugman opines that:
"James Hansen is a great climate scientist. He was the first to warn about the climate crisis; I take what he says about coal, in particular, very seriously.
Unfortunately, while I defer to him on all matters climate, today’s op-ed article suggests that he really hasn’t made any effort to understand the economics of emissions control. And that’s not a small matter, because he’s now engaged in a misguided crusade against cap and trade, which is — let’s face it — the only form of action against greenhouse gas emissions we have any chance of taking before catastrophe becomes inevitable."
Krugman insists that: "We have no chance of getting a carbon tax for the foreseeable future". Who is "we"? The USA or its delirious Senate? Or is it, as it should be, the planet itself? WE, all of us, have just one planet, one biosphere, and the USA, or more exactly the American oligarchs and plutocrats and their factories in China, are polluting it to death. The USA needs a carbon tax, and to delay the debate on such a tax is to delay the inevitable, and morally correct.
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THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ROOT OF AMERICAN EVIL:
In September 1939, Britain and France had enough with Hitler, so they declared war to him. The USA never did. The USA never declared war to Hitler. On December 11, 1941, Hitler declared war TO the USA. Why was America so supine? Because American plutocrats were collaborating with Hitler. Roosevelt was talking the other way, true: one calls that a cover-up. The reality this was covering up was massive collaboration of American plutocracy with Hitler. (An astute GM, owner of Opel, and a Jew hating Ford worked for Hitler, producing most of some of the types of vehicles Hitler’s armed forces used, while financially naïve American GIs battled them on the ground…)
When the French republic asked Roosevelt for help, the American president did not even send one bullet, but rushed in his recognition of the illegal Vichy regime.
What is happening now is something similar. A united Europe has declared war to the destruction of the biosphere by CO2 emissions. The USA did not. Instead, American plutocrats are collaborators in the destruction of the biosphere by CO2 emissions. Just as their plutocratic grand parents had interest, and found profit in collaborating with Hitler, they have interest, and find profit, in collaborating with the destruction of the biosphere. As usual in the American unconscious, they assume that destruction will bring profusion. This time, they are wrong.
Europe has found the hard way that destruction is not a friend. Europe has found that destruction of civilization has only negative outcomes. (Germany and Russia found this most recently, two generations ago.) Unfortunately, that destruction of civilization has only negative outcomes is not yet felt in the USA as the central and fundamental truth it is (that is why the USA supported Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and Pakistani thermonuclear weapons).
Destruction has been the friend of the American English speaking colony, for 400 years, and even well before it was born. Indeed it is the French protestants who founded the first European colonies in the present day USA territory. Fort Caroline (the "Carolinas") were founded, and named, by the French (~ 1580). But then the Catholic fascist Philippe II sent an armada, with the order of killing the French down to the last baby. A hurricane prevented the arrival of a French relief fleet, and the American French colonies were destroyed, down to the last French baby.
Ever since, destruction has been the friend of English speaking America. Call that a lucky streak. But luck does not last forever.
The average American produces 24 tons of CO2 per person, the average French produces 6 tons. The French don’t live four times better, but close. It’s directly related. When all you do is waste, all you get is hate.
The rest of the world has implemented plenty of various taxes, for example on gasoline, etc. Even China has augmented enormously its gasoline tax in the last 18 months. Moreover, China has increasingly made its own stringent European laws on carbon emissions (although an electric car in China will emit 231 grams of CO2 per kilometer, whereas it would emit only 21 grams in France; American cars emit, in the average 333 grams, and the latest European regulations that have been decided will implement120 grams…)
France, not content with its formidable taxes on energy, is introducing a carbon tax, on top of them, January 1, 2010, in 2 weeks. If the USA will not listen to reason, it goes without saying that carbon taxation on imports could be used as a way to demolish the industry of the USA, or whatever is left of it. In any case, it will self demolish, because the longer it takes to adapt to a carbon free future, the more of a dinosaur it will be.
Praying at the feet of Goldman Sachs does not help. The rest of the world is increasingly fed up with the American attitude of doing as plutocrats tell them to do. And more importantly, so is the planet.
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Patrice Ayme
https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
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Annex: Gold Man Sacks wants to Cap and Trade You:
After his money rising campaign to the naïve sheep known as the people, Obama’s greatest private contributor was Goldman Sachs, as a so called "moral person" (greater still was the collective gift of University of California employees, a public institution having social utility).
Via Green Hell (but using well known public facts):
Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Olympia Snow (R-ME) have introduced a bill to make the Commodity Futures Trading Commission the sole regulator of the carbon market created by cap-and-trade legislation.
So does this mean that freebooting Goldman Sachs could be the de facto regulator of the carbon market?
Consider that:
- The current chairman of the CFTC is Gary Gensler, formerly of Goldman Sachs.
- Goldman Sachs is a part owner of the exchanges where carbon allowances would be traded.
- Goldman Sachs has spent millions of dollars lobbying for cap-and-trade legislation in anticipation of making billions of dollars at the expense taxpayers and consumers.
- Goldman has a special exemption from the CFTC to exceed the trading limits normally placed on commodity speculators. Not only was this exemption secret for 17 years, the CFTC recently had to ask Goldman for permission to release the letter to Congress!
- Goldman Sachs employees are heavy contributors to the Democratic Party giving it over $4.4. million in the last election. Barack Obama received more than $997,000, Feinstein received $24,250, and Snowe received $17,000 from Goldman. All-in-all, this could result in a pretty decent return-on-investment for Goldman.
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