New Political Trickery By Our Toxic President

By James Donahue

July 28, 2005

Something called a “Beyond Kyoto Climate Pact” is expected to be announced today by the Bush Administration.

The pact, a five-nation agreement to combat global warming through new technology, appears to be an effort at appeasing environmental groups that have been critical of the U.S. for backing out of the Kyoto plan to force industry to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

China, India, Australia and South Korea are joining the United States in announcing an agreement to work together to develop new energy technology that will be earth friendly and reduce pollutants in the soil, air and water.

President Bush has opposed the Kyoto agreement, adopted by most other industrialized nations, which demands cuts in emissions by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels between 2008 and 20012. He argues that Kyoto is unfair to U.S. industry because it omits developing states that will gain unfair competitive advantages in world markets.

While the new pact sounds like a good idea, it is not a new idea. Engineers have been attempting to find new and less polluting energy sources for years without much success. While the research continues, however, something needs to be done now to stop the runaway emissions of not only the gasses from burning carbon fuels, but the soot that billows daily from industrial smoke stacks around the world.

It is clear by now that the Earth is warming up from the effects of these pollutants. Dynamic weather changes, melting ice caps, deadly heat waves and extreme winters are already ravaging out planet. Powerful hurricanes and typhoons are marching out from the middle of our oceans and giant tornados are ripping through the midsections of our landscape. Instead of monsoons, parts of the world now experience heavy flooding. Areas that once enjoyed moderate rainfall are now so drought stricken they are turning to desert.

It should be clear to world leaders that there is no time to wait for technology to solve this major dilemma. Immediate and drastic steps to stop the insanity must be taken now and even the Kyoto agreement was too little too late.

The alternative energy systems in place today are equally as flawed as the simple burning of carbon fuels.

Nuclear power plants, for example, produce tons of deadly radioactive waste that must be stored someplace uninhabitable for millions of years. No one can agree on just where such a place can be located, except for sending it into space or perhaps the moon. The generating plants themselves have proven to be unstable enough that they can overheat and go into nuclear meltdown, thus poisoning entire cities and private property located within miles of these sites.

The production of gasoline/electric combination vehicles has been a promising idea for future cars. That these cars are capable of utilizing their gasoline power and their own motion to keep their batteries charged is a clever way of utilizing energy to peak efficiency. But such cars still need gasoline, a carbon fuel, and electric generation from power plants operating on carbon fuels to stay charged.

The Bush concept of developing cars to operate on hydrogen sounds good at first glance. But wheat few realize is that hydrogen must be separated from other gasses before it becomes a power source. The process of separation uses more energy than the amount of energy that can be produced from the product. And that energy will probably come from the burning of fossil fuels.

Solar power works with the sun shines, but it requires large collectors that would clutter the landscape if we all shifted to it.

Wind power works when the wind blows. But this also has proven to be a somewhat unstable and unreliable energy source.

 Water power has already been utilized for generating power in areas where it is available. It is old technology.

The newest ideas involve cow power. Farmers raising large numbers of livestock are developing elaborate waste sites that collect and then burn methane gas to produce electricity for not only operating the farm, but selling the surplus to the local power companies.

And that is about it. Unless somebody invents a real perpetual motion machine, there are few other ideas out there for making energy.

Thus the new energy pact is a farce. It offers no hope by this administration that anything will be done to salvage our dying planet.