UN climate talks: National interests clash

09 Dec 2011 10:02a.m.

Mike wrote:

The Kyoto Protocol was hijacked by the EU to protect their own interests and to protect their right to 1st world status at the expense of the rest of the world.

No doubt any new consensus will once again be based on no science but the political manouvering of the EU for economic gain.

What does global warming do for the EU economically? It allows them to tax imports into the EU and restrain trade to huge levels worth several trillion a year, but dont worry its at the expense of the non-EU. What if the EU pays subsidies of a few billion vs the gain they receive from the restraint in trade, they can afford it! If look at air quality for man made carbon emmissions and you will find the EU is the worst in the world, but under Kyoto they were protected and allowed to continue polluting at much higher levels of carbon than anywhere else in the world - ie protect their own economic interests! The last figures I looked at Germany topped at 460 tonnes/sq km with UK around 430, NZ about 200 and the USA down around 150 - ie the worst carbon problems in the world are the EU as they are more industrialized.

Even then the figures are misleading as NZ has a huge forrestry industry and the carbon soak of the forrestry is ignored as it was planted pre-1990, as is the vast USA forrestry. NZ grows forrests faster so its trees soak carbon almost 4x faster than the EU measure used by Kyoto so if we counted the faster growth and the pre-1990 forrestry then NZ's net carbon emissions is a carbon soak which matches NZ's clean/green image - but the EU cant have that so we dont use net carbon emissions!