G8 Summit Roundup

"Yeah, Baby!"

Today's story is all about the 2009 G8 summit which focused on cap and trade, along with that hot lady's ass in the photo above. (Read Stephen Lendman's excellent analysis Obama's Cap and Trade Carbon Emissions Bill - A Stealth Scheme to License Pollution and Fraud.)

The G8 summit in Italy this week concluded with a “flurry of developments” according to this Environmental Leader report which highlighted a “pledge to cut global emissions by 50 percent by 2050, a goal that before the meeting seemed unattainable.” However, all is not well in the global castle.

The report has disclosed that the summit also resulted in BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China) wanting rich, industrialized nations to provide “incentives” to prop up carbon cutting initiatives elsewhere, according to a senior adviser for the energy and national security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, D.C., think tank. What kind of “incentives” could those be?

“Indeed, the G8 took wording out of its declaration that had promised $400 million in funding to help poor countries convert to a low-carbon economy, reports Bloomberg. The G8 also removed language contained in prior draft documents that called for emissions to peak by 2020.

Additionally, the rest of the world is waiting for rich nations to commit to mid-term carbon cuts by 2020 or 2025, a consensus that has not yet been reached.”

This, naturally, really pissed off China and India:

“Angered by the lack of progress on this front, some nations such as China and India have decided against committing to numerical targets July 9, as they had previously indicated, WSJonline reports.”

So, now, everybody is changing their minds! Not unlike G.W. Bush's infamous declaration that “the Constitution is only a fu*^ing piece of paper”, some BRIC nations, too, are reneging on their compact to stop the planet earth from becoming the celestial dumpster of this solar system. In fact, China got so pissed off that President Hu Jintao walked out on July 8, totally blowing off “meaningful dialogue with President Barack Obama” and the rest of the gang, using the convenient excuse of having to return to China to deal with rioting Muslims in western provinces, reports WSJonline.

Not to mention Russia...”You are part of the G8, right?” Get a load of this commitment to clean up this place:

“Despite signing the commitment to reduce greenhouse gases 80 percent by 2050, Russia will not be able to meet the target, Reuters reports.”

Hahaha! Oh, these silly agreements...Russia to G8: “Why, certainly, we will sign this document but we can do no such thing!” Might explain why Russia enjoys both BRIC status and G8...

There are fair and equitable ways to head off global climate change disasters, such as a global climate tax, as Ralph Nader has suggested in this Newser report to Obama:

“The cap-and-trade system Barack Obama favors to deal with climate change won’t work, Ralph Nader and Toby Heaps write in the Wall Street Journal, and it’ll lead to “trade anarchy.” Any unilateral action we take must be global; otherwise, companies will simply relocate, taking jobs and emissions with them. China and other developing nations will never accept a cap-and-trade system, but they might be OK with a global carbon tax.

The tax would be more appealing to developing nations, because they could pay as they go, without fear of growing too fast and hitting a hard cap. “Key people in China read our newspapers,” and know that if they do nothing, we’ll implement protectionist measures against their imports. Yes, the tax would initially hurt consumers, but it “would pave the way for cheaper, cleaner energy.”

But that would make sense.

Party on, plebs!

-2Truthy