Kyoto Calamity: UN Demands Totalitarian Emissions Control

"Whether you burn coal in Delhi or burn coal in Denver, we all get warm together", said Timothy Wirth on Thursday's PBS broadcast of "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer". Wirth, the UN Foundation President, was arguing the necessity of uniform global emissions control. The current controversy surrounds the United States' continued refusal to sign the Kyoto protocol, which demands a decrease in greenhouse gas emmissions of 5.2 percent since 1990 for the top 35 industrialized nations by 2012. Admirably, the U.S., seemingly on principal and practicality, has decided not to participate. Speaking idealistically, the current conservative government is trying to preserve economic liberties; a world of self-reliance and individualized decision-making without the complications of third-party totalitarian intervention. Speaking skeptically, the U.S. just wants to make more money in order to further its gluttonous capitalist agenda at the expense of environmental sustainability. Either way, however, we seem to be holding our ground in a just cause, despite the accusations of the UN. Dr. Harlan Watson, the Senior Climate Negotiator for the U.S. State Department, pointed out that the United States spends more than $5 billion a year on efforts to slow the deterioration of the earth's atmosphere by supporting climate change research and technology, and that Bush had committed to cutting greenhouses gases some 18 percent by 2012 (see link at bottom of page). This is effective, individualized control. Watson also said that the goals of the Kyoto Protocol are unobtainable. "I think that making up goals without the basis to achieve them is pointless, and in my opinion, rather cynical politics," he said.
No basis to achieve them and no basis to measure their success, so it seems. How do we measure emissions depletion when the first year of comparison was seven years before the protocol was even drafted? How does each nation accurately measure their domestic greenhouse output and compare it to readings taken twenty-two years prior, even if their were such readings taken? How do we "put a price on carbon" as Timothy Wirth so obstinately insists is necessary? Do we punish those who transgress the Kyoto strictures? Do we punish the nation as a whole, the company that refused compliance, or the factory worker who unknowingly destroyed the world while just doing his job? Is there any way to determine fault? Do we "cap" production by levying fines or do we shut the factory down entirely? Perhaps we can automate worldwide production and manufacturing with a centralized "emissions monitoring system" that pumps out the same thin stream of carbon from every factory everywhere at the same time so that everyone everywhere can enjoy the communal (and automated) notion of a healthier planet. Do we want the imagined greater good or do we want freedom?
It seems we have let these absurdities escalate to the point that we may only allude to global warming's uncertainty. Watson defends his country’s stance on global warming because he says, “the science is still just getting solid.” Massive beurocratic layers, political partisanship, and widespread anxiety have all been constructed on top of a twisted illusion, flawed reasoning and some bizarre sense of futile responsibility. Now, to the mainstream population, it seems foolishly naive to just carve through the lunacy and say "look, you're wrong, but why have such a heffer even if you're right?" The world has impetuously moved past the point of controversy with reckless acceptance. The question now isn't "why are we doing this?" but "how should we do this?”. Fifty years from now, in hindsight of the global warming scare and all other post 9/11 insanities, we will ask another question: "What have we done?"