U.S. Alternative Climate Plan Deserves Cold Global Response

By James Donahue

Aug. 2, 2005

While reeling in shock to news of potential global food shortages because of dying plankton in the world’s oceans, and receiving news of deadly rains, typhoons, hurricanes and droughts from a heating planet, no one should be surprised that the Bush “clean energy technology” plan is getting poor reviews by world leaders this week.

Actually it is a US-led plan with Australia, China, India, Japan, and South Korea participating, that proposes a cooperative effort to invent and sell technologies ranging from “clean coal” and wind power to nuclear fission to reduce pollution and address climate change.

But critics say it is a plan designed by the United States as a ploy to undo the Kyoto pact for binding accord on controlling greenhouse gas emissions from world fossil fuel burning facilities. The Bush Administration refuses to sign this pact because the president argues it will make it impossible for U.S. industry to compete in a world market.

(Of course that is a poor excuse since most major U.S. companies are already utilizing the world’s cheap labor market by closing their American plants and outsourcing jobs overseas.)

“The pact sounds more like a dirty coal deal,” the environmental group Greenpeace said in a statement. “Whatever this deal includes in its final form, it cannot and should not be used by the U.S. and Australia to escape domestic emissions reductions.”

The pact was announced during an Asia-Pacific security meeting Thursday in Laos by representatives of the participating nations, including U. S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick and Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.

In their statement they said the pact would not distract from the Kyoto Protocol but bolster it.

But the announcement gave few details and critics noted that the proposed partnership is nonbinding. That means it sets no targets and deadlines to be met for reducing pollution. It only talked about grandiose ideas for futuristic energy projects that would require what may be years of research and development.

In the meantime, the overpopulated world’s ecology is crumbling before our eyes, the weather has gone to extremes, the planet is clearly warming, and we are running out of vital natural resources like food, fresh water and clean air.

Growing shortages of other vital resources for industry and transportation also are on the critical list.

The U.S. “war on terror” in the Middle East is really a poorly camouflaged move by the U.S. and the UK to seize the world’s richest oil deposits.

China and the United States appear to be jockeying into a military clash over China’s move to take control of Taiwan. 

There is no time to follow George W. Bush in his quest for magical and technological solutions to the world’s massive energy problem. What is needed now is a dynamic overhaul of the way the United States has been doing business.