The Politics of Carbon Footprints

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The Politics of Carbon Footprints

The general public is being duped into signing up to one of the biggest globalist scams in history.

It’s about time these global warmists started to eat crow.

But they won’t. There’s just too much at stake. Someone stands to make a lot of money out of this scam, and it’s all based on false science.

The number of qualified scientists that have now signed a petition decrying the faulty science that promotes the global warming theory grew to 31,000 in May and continues to grow by an average of 35 signatures daily.

What’s a carbon footprint? The total amount of greenhouse gases produced to directly and indirectly support human activities, usually expressed in equivalent tons of carbon dioxide (CO2).
The greatest concern of the more sensible commentators on the scam is the speed with which politicians—ignoring true science—are rushing to embed global warming in government policy. This is in process at both the national and supra-national level. The result could well be huge taxes on the public which will simply feed the coffers of big business, the legal profession and government. These burdensome costs will be passed off to the consumer and the taxpayer, all in the interests of reducing “human-induced climate change”—your “carbon footprint”!

Meanwhile, more balanced and responsible scientists, analysts and commentators are giving increasing vent to the exposure of the utter foolishness of this whole scenario. But far from the warmists backing down, they just tunnel their heads even more deeply into the sand of deceit. In the meantime, bankers, industrialists and politicians rub their grubby hands with glee, anticipating the windfall that carbon trade-offs will yield to them.

When considering this whole global warming hoax and its hugely successful sell to the public in the effort to convince us all that we must reduce our “carbon footprint” or be penalized, we ought to dig a little deeper to see who is going to win from this whole debacle. It certainly won’t be John or Jane Doe.

Take the example of a bill considered by the U.S. Senate last week.

Senator James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, commented last week in the Wall Street Journal, “The Senate is debating a global warming bill that will create the largest expansion of the federal government since FDR’s New Deal, complete with a brand new, unelected bureaucracy. The Lieberman-Warner bill (America’s Climate Security Act) represents the largest tax increase in U.S. history and the biggest pork bill ever contemplated with trillions of dollars in giveaways. Well-heeled lobbyists are already plotting how to divide up the federal largesse. The handouts offered by the sponsors of this bill come straight from the pockets of families and workers in the form of lost jobs, higher gas, power and heating bills, and more expensive consumer goods” (June 3).

What’s a carbon cap? A carbon cap is a limit on the total amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) that an entity will be allowed to release into the air each year. The purpose of such a cap is to reduce carbon dioxide pollution.
With the U.S. economy already in recession, consideration of such a move is ludicrous. It is even more so considering the impact it will have on the consumer at the lower end of the socio-economic scale. As the senator points out, “Carbon caps will have an especially harmful impact on low-income Americans and those with fixed incomes. A recent cbo report found: ‘Most of the cost of meeting a cap on CO2 emissions would be borne by consumers, who would face persistently higher prices for products such as electricity and gasoline. Those price increases would be regressive in that poorer households would bear a larger burden relative to their income than wealthier households.’”

What is also known as the “cap and trade bill” was defeated in the Senate last week. However, lobbyists believe they still have the numbers to pass a form of cap and trade bill in the future, probably under a different presidential administration. The Lieberman-Warner bill did not have the support of President Bush. This bill will now serve as a model for modified legislation that will await its time to be put to the Senate after November’s presidential election.

The facts are that implementation of a cap and trade bill will be a disaster for a U.S. economy already in deep trouble. As Inhofe observes, such legislation “will also hinder U.S. competitiveness, transferring American jobs overseas to places where environmental regulations are much more lenient. Instead of working to eliminate trade barriers on clean energy and lower emitting technologies, the bill imposes a ‘green,’ tariff-style tax on imported goods. This could provoke international retaliatory actions by our trade partners, threatening our own export markets and further driving up the costs of consumer goods” (ibid.).

EU—Leading the Way

Across the pond, the EU was last week caught up in a frenzy of global warmist fervor in the midst of its “Green Week,” billed as “the biggest annual conference event dedicated to EU environmental policy” (Parliament Magazine, May 26). Stavros Dimas, European commissioner for the environment, leads around 3,000 representatives of groups involved in policy-making, science, business and ngos from Europe and beyond in four days of conferencing focused on three environmental themes: “sustainable consumption and production, climate change, and nature biodiversity.”

Tipping their hat to the global warmists, the theme that the United Nations nominated for “World Environment Day” (June 5) was “Kick the Habit! Towards a low carbon economy.” The great global warming hoax is being politicized worldwide by the UN in association with the European Union, via publicly funded campaigns that seek to place the burden of responsibility on each and every one of us, “from individuals to companies, cities and governments” to do penance for producing CO2 in our daily living. Suddenly all the world’s overwhelming challenges seem concertinaed into one, billed as “the greatest challenge of our generation,” to “facilitate transition towards low carbon societies around the world” (ibid.). And the whole thing is based on false science!

This effort to impose restrictions and penalties on the citizens of the world for their personal production of carbon is based on faulty computer modeling generated by the UN-convened International Panel on Climate Change (ipcc). Last year this eminent international body published its (since much repudiated) assessment claiming that unequivocal evidence existed indicating that “human-induced climate change is happening, and that many of the impacts—from melting glaciers to water scarcity and social upheaval—are already apparent.” The report declared, “We have reached a widespread recognition of the need to address climate change.” Such sweeping statements fly in the face of more exact science, of proven facts to the contrary now endorsed by tens of thousands of scientists!

The aforementioned petition exposing this bad science states, “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouse gases is causing, or will cause in the future, catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.” The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine reports, “Signatories include such luminaries as theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson, MIT’s atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen and first National Academy of Sciences president Frederick Seitz. More than 40 signatories are members of the prestigious national Academy of Sciences.

“The purpose of the Petition Project is to demonstrate that the claim of ‘settled science’ and an overwhelming ‘consensus’ in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climatological damage is wrong. No such consensus or settled science exists.”

This is the exact opposite stance to that of the leader of the powerful European Union Parliament, German center-right mep Hans Gert Pöttering. His view is that “For quite some time we have been faced with the dire consequences of climate change. We are confronted with a challenge of the highest priority. Climate change is man-made and climate change is accelerating.”

Pöttering’s misguided view matches that of his fellow countryman, UN Under-Secretary-General and UN Environmental Plan (unep) Executive Director Achim Steiner, who, commenting on the international reach of the global warmists, recently stated, “Driving this transition is the sobering science on the impacts of climate change if we fail to act. … It is now up to governments everywhere to step up to the bar and ensure that a Green Economy becomes a global, long lasting phenomenon. That level of ambition will be put to the litmus test in just 18 months when nations must agree on a new and fully formed climate convention treaty in Copenhagen in late 2009” (UN Press release, June 5).

The grave danger in all of this is that, despite the disputing views of tens of thousands of scientists on the reliability of the global warming theory, the UN/EU horse has well and truly bolted. “unep is counting on the EU’s continuing leadership on the way to a post-Kyoto deal. … The EU, which has demonstrated global leadership on this issue [that’s a slap in the face for the U.S., which resisted the Kyoto foolishness], has placed itself at the forefront of the fight against climate change” (Parliament Magazine, op. cit.).

What is carbon trading? In today’s globalized world, anything can be bought and sold. If countries can be persuaded to agree to limits on pollution then the right to exceed that has a price. “Good” organizations can reap the benefits of cutting their emissions while “bad” ones pay a financial penalty. Carbon trading is a market-based mechanism supposedly designed to stem the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Carbon trading markets are developed that bring buyers and sellers of carbon credits together with standardized rules of trade.
EU global leadership in climate change stems from the EU being the first entity to create a mechanism for carbon trading. On Jan. 1, 2005, the EU launched the European Emissions Trading Scheme (ets). EU global leadership in this new market was further endorsed by a commitment embedded in the Berlin Declaration, signed on March 25, 2007, by Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel (president of the EU at the time), Pöttering (leader of the European Parliament), and EU Commission President Manuel Barroso.

The Berlin Declaration contains the phrase, “We intend jointly to lead the way in energy policy and climate protection and make our contribution to averting the global threat of climate change.” This commitment imposed on all 27 EU member nations was further strengthened by both Javier Solana (EU high representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy) and Benita Ferrero-Waldner (EU commissioner responsible for External Relations and European Neighborhood Policy) jointly declaring in March this year that “climate change is becoming the biggest security threat in today’s world” (ibid.).

Who is involved in this trade? Any entity, typically a business, that emits carbon dioxide into the atmosphere may have an interest or may be required by law to balance their emissions through the means of carbon sequestration. These businesses may include power generating facilities or many kinds of manufacturers which emit high levels of CO2.
The tendency for EU leaders to ignore the false science on which global warmists base their claims is typified by Lithuanian member of the European Parliament, Justas Vincas Paleckis, who calls any arguments countering those of global warmists “ridiculous.” Paleckis says “the EU is, and must remain, the leader in the fight against climate change,” and declares that the EU must “force industry” to become environmentally friendly. His stance appears to be indicative of the determination of the EU to aggressively push forward the carbon trading scam against all facts to the contrary on global warming.

It’s the Money, Stupid!

But there’s more to this than meets the eye. By positioning itself as global pacesetter for action against carbon emissions, the EU stands to gain much, financially and economically, and in terms of international political prestige. As Jorgo Chatzimarkakis, a member of the EU’s Research and Energy Committee, states, “Europe has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to become the global leader on climate change.” He maintains that by the EU leading the way on the emission trading system (carbon trading) “in a few years the EU could be leading the world market for ‘clean’ cars.” Chatzimarkakis declares that the EU “must push for international agreements. … What we must start with is a cultural revolution” (ibid.).

Who are potential sellers of carbon credits? Any entity which operates a business that accumulates, rather than emits, carbon dioxide. For example, a business that manages forestry or agricultural land might sell carbon credits based on the accumulation of carbon in their forest trees or agricultural soils. Alternatively, any business entity that is prone to emitting carbon dioxide, which then reduces its carbon emissions, may be able to sell those reductions to other emitters.
Miles Austin, head of European regulatory affairs at EcoSecurities, points out that the EU already sports one of the “flagship greenhouse gas emissions trading systems”—the European Emissions Trading Scheme (ets) and is at the forefront of providing the EU with “a significant new export market for EU emissions reduction technology” (ibid.).

With acknowledgement to “Eany, Time for Change,” Independent, Aug. 2, 2006.
We must recognize who is on the winning side in this great global warming scam! It is clearly the European Union, which has pipped all comers at the post and thus stands to garner the lion’s share of the windfall results of carbon trading.

Only one nation has stood in the way of the EU capturing the global market in carbon trade-offs: the United States. The U.S. has refused to sign up to the Kyoto agreement, out of which grew the carbon-trading scam.

Frustrated by the Bush administration’s intransigence in concluding an international agreement on climate, the EU is now counting on a change in America’s approach, post-Kyoto, following the November U.S. presidential election. The EU looks favorably upon the Lieberman-Warner bill. Avril Doyle, Irish mep and the EU Parliament’s rapporteur on the ets, has said of the bill, “If this got through we could work with it. … A global carbon market is the goal.” With an eye on netting other fish, Doyle added, “There is no reason why the Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders and Japanese cannot dock with the system too” (ibid.).

The hope is that a new U.S. administration would ram the bill through in time for a post-Kyoto treaty to be clinched at the UN conference on climate change in December 2009.

Few there be who see the import of this. In essence, it is leading toward the European Union, with full backing from the UN, dictating the extent of the carbon footprint of each and every business and individual across the globe!

It is but one more string being added to the bow of a growing imperial power that is prophesied to make rich “the merchants of the earth” (Revelation 18:3, 15), destined to soon have power “over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations” (Revelation 13:7). It is a global power that will soon place severe restrictions on common trade between peoples (Revelation 13:16-17).

Herbert Armstrong warned of the coming of this empire for over 50 years, from before World War ii right on up to the few years preceding the fall of the Berlin Wall. Gerald Flurry has continued to warn of the rapid progress of the rise of this European imperial power over the past two decades. It’s now right on our doorstep, dictating the conditions controlling the global carbon trading market!

It’s time to wake up to reality!

The final resurrection of the old Holy Roman Empire is in its advanced stages of decisive consolidation. The months ahead will reveal further rapid progress in that direction.

If you really want to follow the progress of this rising global power, destined to call the shots on the world scene for a brief moment in time before its prophesied sudden demise, read Germany and the Holy Roman Empire.

If you want to really understand where all this is ultimately leading, request a copy of The Wonderful World Tomorrow—What It Will Be Like. That book ought to enable you to see far beyond the developing global trauma, into the tremendous future destined for all mankind toward which current world events are rapidly leading!