PART II
But, leaving your boring personality aside, what this issue is really about?
Has nothing to do with science and all to do with economics and politics. Is, again, a smoke screen to do what some politicians know they have to do, but can't if they do not find a good excuse for it. For those who are interested, I will explain.
Since about 25 or 30 years ago, we are leaving an era in which the orthodoxy is the global economy, global free markets with no exception for every good and services, and free flow of capitals. This is an idea designed to favour developed countries and which makes a lot of sense, with some tuning, when is applied among countries with similar level of development. But is also an idea that can caused, and has caused greater disasters in many parts of the world, including many deaths, than the disasters with which they try to scare us with with this scam of Global Warming. The number of deaths and misery caused by globalization, when applied to underdeveloped countries far eceeds all the deaths cause by terrorism. But is all very well when if favours the advocates of that policy. But that policy has some drawbacks even for the developed nations, mainly the USA, the UE, Japan, etc.
We have just seen it. The recent financial crisis is not other thing that a consequence of that. They tell us that the crisis was caused because a bunch of people borrowed too much money and a bunch of bankers lent too much money. But, what did they expect bankers to do with an excess of money if they can not lend it? The problem was, what they euphemistically call it , global imbalances, which is a word used to hide the fact that the crisis was caused by the way the global economy evolved: In the West we stopped manufacturing things, because it is cheaper to have then done in China, India, Vietnam, etc. So, we buy their products, send them money in exchange for their products, we spend less for the products we buy, there fore we have an excess of cash, and more importantly, because the flow of cash going into China, India, etc., can not possibly be invested in economies that have not yet developed an internal market, they end up as deposits in western banks that promise them an healthy return on their deposits. How do they get those returns? obviously they need to lend that many, of which there is a lot, and generate a bauble that in time has to burst.
So, now there is a talk about stronger regulation of the financial markets, to correct the global imbalances, etc. In a few words there is talk in backtracking on the premises of free flow of capitals and even goods and services around the world, with new taxes, new regulations, etc. Let's see how far this new measures go. But to do this u-turn in the attitude to the free market, foremost, when it comes to the financial services, politicians needed an excuse and it came in the form of a great crisis that was long expected although not with the severity that turn out.
What does this has to do with Global Warming? Well, it has to do with the fact that the energy markets are in a similar situation. Energy is something that no country, least of all an industrialized country can't do without, even more so than it can't do without financial services. It is very odd that it should be subject exclusively to market forces as every country needs to have energy and there is no possible decision of whether to buy or not to buy. Is something that, at least in this country and the other European countries, is well understood when it comes to the health service. We do not let the market do dictate who has access to the health services because we assume that if some one would take the decision not to seek medical help when is ill is because he or she is suffering form a mental illness. So, there is no decision, no freedom, in whether we go to the doctor or not when we are seriously ill.
Despite of that, since several decades now, countries like the UK and many other have been pressing from the opening of the energy markets of all the countries. There was even made a policy of the EU, that was resisted by countries like France, that the free market should control how energy is produced, distributed, and how the prices should be established. Yet, at the moment this policy was pushed through, it was known that it couldn't be. The market but it self, as it has not national loyalty, can not warranty energy security for any country in particular, not even for international organizations like the EU. It only takes the expansion of the economy in China, India and other countries on the region, that are far stronger, if it comes to fight for oil, than us to see the threat looming in the horizon. It was clear in the early nineties what the situation could become in a few decades. More so, if to the development of Asia we have to ad the impending development of Latin America, and Africa. The fact that the UK has depleted its natural gas reserves and that its oil reserves are now in their way to extinction, helps to put the UK on the same footing as France, for instance.
So, what do people like Gordon Brown do? Well, the same as with the financial crisis. They couldn't intervene in the economy if that was done only by one or two countries because the global financial and economic system could render that intervention harmful. Money pured into banks here could end up in banks every where in the World. So, they do two things, one is devalue the pound, which the UK can do because it kept its own currency, printing bank notes as crazy, and then Gordon Brown goes around the wold persuading every other government to intervene in the financial markets as well, so there wouldn't be a gradient of government cash from country to country. What do they do when it comes to backtrack in energy policy and want to the government intervene and dictate the energy policy in the country without saying that they are re-negating on the policy the imposed on other with a lot of arm twisting? They create a common threat, funding research groups to prove what they want them to, and then they call on the International Community to take measures to do so. And those measures amount to all the governments in the world to intervene in the energy market at once, of course, guided by the ones who know best who are the developed countries.
So, they gather in Copenhagen, but before that the UE decides in a meeting to create a big carrot for the developing countries in the form of financial aids to try to secure their cooperation. So, the idea is, unlike the Kyoto treaty, what ever comes from this conference, will not be binding, not only that, it will replace the Kyoto treaty, so no developed country will have their hands tied up. But the developed countries will, because the big carrot will be subject to them behaving well. They will agree to reduce CO2 emissions, which is ca code word for oil consumption, to a level that they trust they can do it because we have the technology. They try to persuade the developing countries that they are to gain, by using the carrot money to by to us, the technology needed to use clean energy sources (as if CO2 was a pollutant), and then they can sell their CO2 quota to the west for money and be rich and happy.
It is quite a racist strategy because is made under the assumption that because their are poor they are stupid, or the other way around: they are poor because they are stupid, may be they don't have he right genes.
The master plan is different, since this Carbon emission quota is designed to make other energy sources, that at the moment are not economically sensible, like nuclear which is more expensive than coal and gas, or wind which is in the fringe, more economically attractive. But what it will happen is that when the incentive is applied, along with a foreseeable long term increase in the oil price, the West will greatly reduce the dependence on oil, having avoided in the mean time competition from the developing countries thanks to the big carrot, hindering their development, and using them, by making them buy our green technology, help us indirectly not avoid buying from them the CO2 emission quotas, leaving them in the cold, again, with another broken promise. That is why the African countries walked out of the negotiations this week.
To gain support for this master plan of advocating a global free economy while, at the same time, they promote a massive, biased in favour of the West, intervention in the market, they agree to spend a little money, much less than the carrot money, to pay (and threaten to withdraw) assumed scientific institutions if they are good and say what they need to promote the cause. Propaganda is a very powerful tool, all religious leaders know it, Stalin and Hitler knew it, and todays politicians know it even better.
