Where the Wind Blows

Economic priorities obviously change in a recession, particularly in a prolonged economic struggle that vainly attempts a return to what was there before. Nature doesn’t care. She is not governed by economic pressures. She does not care if the earth’s climate changes, if insects and disease move to new geographic zones where incumbent species are unprepared, if farmland dries out, water evaporates or the seas rise and flood the land… or even if humans beings become extinct at any time in the distant future. She’s been there before. That the first Kyoto Protocol (to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) on global emissions is about to expire next year seems irrelevant to the United States; we never ratified it. So we’re probably not getting on board the potential of extending that agreement, as currently being discussed at an international conference in Durban, South Africa.

Aside from little platitudes that most certainly can be altered as the deadlines near – like the July announcement of required US car fleet averages of 54.5 miles-per-gallon (the Feds effectively allow a 20% discount in those numbers based on “real world” driving – more like 43 mpg) by 2025 – guess what the world’s powers have really accomplished in lowering fossil fuel emissions to reduce the greenhouse effect? If you guessed virtually nothing, you would be dead on.

Developing nations cry foul (hmmmm?) when richer nations that built their economic domination on uncontrolled industrialization (without air and water pollution standards) demand global compliance with emission requirements to stop global climate change. Many oppose environmental controls believing that God gave us the planet to do with what we want and will fix it when required. Some deny that global warming exists or if it does that it is manmade. Others claim that with jobs and growth scarce, regulations that could restrain business are simply a luxury that we can no longer afford. If we impose environmental restrictions while China does not, some American businesses contend, we will lose what remaining tiny marginal productivity advantage we have over that economic behemoth.

Try getting global environmental standards passed with pressures like these. It ain’t happenin’… even though a strong case could be made that building the infrastructure – private and public, converting to alternative energy power sources, upgrading factories and shifting automobiles away from fossil fuel consumption could create hundreds of millions of new jobs around the world.

“Yvo de Boer said he left his job as the U.N.’s top climate official in frustration 18 months ago, believing the process of negotiating a meaningful climate agreement was failing. His opinion hasn't changed… ‘I still have the same view of the process that led me to leave the process,’ he told The Associated Press [December 4^th]. ‘I’m still deeply concerned about where it's going, or rather where it's not going, about the lack of progress.’… Rather than act in their own national interests, many leaders look to see what others are willing – or unwilling – to concede.

“‘You've got a bunch of international leaders sitting 85 stories up on the edge of a building saying to each other, you jump first and I'll follow. And there is understandably a reluctance to be the first one to jump,’ he said…The 2009 Copenhagen summit was a breaking point. Expectations soared that the conference would produce an accord setting firm rules for bringing down global carbon emissions. When delegates fell short, hopes remained high that President Barack Obama, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, most of Europe’s heads of government and more than 100 other top leaders would save the day at the last minute… De Boer said he spent the last 24 hours of the summit in ‘a very small and very smelly room’ with about 20 prime ministers and presidents, but the time was not ripe for the hoped-for international treaty." Huffington Post, December 4^th.

The movement in the United States is not just to avoid working out or failing to sign environmental treaties but to roll back the environmental regulations we already have. A December 4^th editorial in the New York Times summarizes: “The House will soon consider a bill called the Regulations From the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act, Reins for short. Its proponents — more than 200 co-signers, mostly Republicans — may hope the stupefying title will lull voters into forgetting what the bill would do...

“In a nutshell, the bill would stop any major regulation issued by a federal agency and costing more than $100 million from taking effect unless it received approval from both houses of Congress and the president. Many such rules are issued every year involving everything from food safety to efficiency standards for cars. Disapproval from one house would be enough to kill a rule and force the agency to start all over again. A rule would also die if one house failed to act within 70 days.”

We know that nothing can get through the current Congress, since the House seems to block virtually all substantive legislation, so this would be an effective repeal of most environmental and safety regulations, almost all of which creates an arguable $100 million impact when implemented. $100 million seems like a huge number until you realize it is a tiny drop in the bucket in an economy that has a GDP of about $15 trillion and a population north of 310 million people. It just creates good sound bites.

Hey, I’ll be dead and gone by the time the earth’s climate shift truly impacts my country, so what do I care? Why should I restrict the current economy when the only people it’s going to hurt are the coming generations? Hell, we’re cutting their educations and telling them they will have to repay our national deficit someday… why not saddle them with a strangulating environment too?

I’m Peter Dekom, and unfortunately, I actually love my son and yearn for a better life for Dekoms yet unborn.