June 2, 2008
Elaine Meinel Supkis
In the past readers have asked me about 'carbon credits'. I keep meaning to explore this fascinating subject. Well, it is in the news this week! Hedge fund hell hounds are barking: carbon trading will grow to be several trillion! And it will grow EXPONENTIALLY. It was barely a billion dollars just 6 years ago. This thing is growing as fast or faster than the dread Derivatives Beast. It is equally insane and a creature of the Outer Darkness. For it is based on buying something that no one wants! It is buying TIME and NON PHYSICAL ENTITIES. It is MYTHOLOGICAL. It supposedly buys pollution systems only there is a huge portal within the concept that creates nothing but pure profits. Trading the opportunity to pollute! Its growth is a sign of being an ultimate balloon. For it doesn't really exist!
Carbon market could be worth 2 trillion euros in 2020: study
The global market in CO2 emission rights could be worth two trillion euros (3.14 trillion dollars) by 2020 if the United States joins the scheme, analysis group Point Carbon said on Thursday.The United States, which has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol that calls for the mechanism, could in 2020 account for 67 percent, or 1.25 trillion euros, of emissions rights if it decided to introduce a US emissions trading system, the Point Carbon study said.
*snip*
The total transaction volume forecast would be 38 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent for the United States and nine billion tonnes for the EU.
13 August 2006
The rise of the carbon traders
In Europe, where the Kyoto-created emissions markets have been up and running for 18 months, it's spawned all the financial and accounting systems, broking services and consultancies that accompany any new market.London has become the carbon trading capital of the world. The Asia Bank has moved in, so has the World Bank, the hedge funds, the carbon funds, and they're advertising their wares.
*snip*
The idea behind Kyoto is that each country that signs up agrees to a legally binding emissions cut. If they want to exceed their limits then the right to exceed has a price. Efficient businesses can reap the rewards of cutting emissions while others pay a financial penalty; the idea is to encourage greener technologies.
Already the carbon market is worth billions and there's a lot of money to be made. So on Background Briefing we're asking the question: What is carbon trading exactly, and can it save the world?
Dear readers, we now have to revisit the Cave of Death and Wealth. If we pretend we are rational and smart, we can find any scheme, any system we want and set it so it produces eternal Funny Money™. This form of wealth is paper. It can be anything but paper is good but even better than paper are computers. Computers are counting systems. I remember Univac because it was set up for one purpose: to figure out how to kill all humans and all living things. I used to play in the Univac building in Chicago. It was air conditioned at a time when few buildings were totally air conditioned. It was spotlessly clean, too. I wasn't allowed to play with the computer itself but I could access the KEYBOARD for setting the system into motion.
Temptation for a child of the Darkness! Well, I got to tumble around the scientists there because my science mom took us kids along when she worked there. For Univac also was being used, by the 1950's, for calculating astronomical numbers for astronomers. Even at 5 years of age, I was very aware of the fact that my parents were connected with the rocket program and nuclear bombs. Since I had a very high IQ and an adult's grasp on language, I overheard many conversations between scientists. These, I stored in the Memory Bank which, incidentally, is a wonderful banking system, and would try to put two and two together to figure out why I kept seeing visions of WWIII.
There are many creepy websites out here in the cyber alternative universe. The web was founded by the same people I grew up listening to at Univac's global headquarters in Chicago. Since I got free run of the campus there, I also got to poke around other departments which is why I spied upon and ran around the Chicago School of Economics, for example. The concept that wealth is connected to death was born at the University of Chicago. By a child. Articulating this truth has taken me much of my life. For it is a difficult concept. People associate wealth with life. Wealth=good life. Despite warnings from other humans who also figured out that wealth=death, people persist in this popular belief. Even when Jesus or Buddha warned their followers that wealth is a barrier to passage through the Gates of Death, people still imagine accumulating vast wealth=getting through the Gates of Death BETTER. Not worse.
Because my mother is dying, I have Death sitting fairly nearby and my thoughts are turned in this direction today. For madness lurks like a hunting dog, near Death. When we look at the world today, we have to see better, how we are going mad trying to undo the looming Death we humans have prepared for ourselves. The US is egging the world into a violent and totally unnecessary confrontation over nuclear weapons with Iran. The US is the builder and user of the world's biggest nuclear death machine. We can annihilate all life on earth. And we are willing to threaten to obliterate Iran using this death machine. All in the name of saving humanity from nuclear war. This is pure madness.
Alongside this, many humans are aware that our burning of half a billion year's worth of dead creatures and plants is altering the planet in interesting ways. By tapping into the chemical and biological forces of the far past and burning it in a huge funeral pyre of modern industry, we are releasing all the dense biological forces that turned our planet into a habitable Eden. For when the first single celled creatures were self-created at the Dawn of Life, the atmosphere and oceans of this young planet were hellish. Oxygen breathing life forms could not exist for even one minute! These wonderful new creatures created by Mother Nature and Lady Luck via evolution digested the chemicals and atoms around themselves and using internal processes, broke the bonds of non-living nature and created new forms such as O2 and carbon dioxides. This process has continued for much of the life of this planet.
There have been deadly disruptions in the past. Most life forms died. They crawled back into dominance after a while, each time. This is how we get fossil fuels: the deadly variations in the habitable conditions of the planet and many deaths leads to layers of dead things that are covered up or compressed by following alterations in the planet's surface due to tectonic plate movements. We saw this force at work recently in China and Indonesia.
Back to the news today: There are many scientists who fear we are meddling with the balance of Nature by burning fossil fuels. Back in 1955 in Chicago when I would hide under my father's desk and spy on the adults, I heard them discuss all this. I knew that city air was disgusting and nearly unbreathable and the adults around me worried about this. 'LA's air is probably more like the air on Venus,' said my father, for example. Venus is toxic in the extreme. It was recognized as a global warming planet and scientists wondered why that was so but Earth was going through Ice Ages.
We are in an Ice Age cycle that is being disrupted by the burning of many millions of years of living things eating carbon and hydrogen and sulfur atoms. We rightfully worry about this. The scientific community is of two minds in this matter: either this will save us from the horrors of another Ice Age or it will turn Earth into Venus. I say, a small amount saves us from an Ice Age, too much flips us to Venus mode. As always, Libra rules here. We can't burn ALL the accumulated life forms in just 200 years. This is greedy and dangerous. We can access it over time but have to pace ourselves.
We love the rich lifestyle this burning gives us! So we ignore the warnings. Many people want to imagine that there is no Hubbert Oil Peak and there is no danger to burning infinite oil/gas. This is plainly silly. As well as fatal. There are limits, the Cave of Wealth is not infinite. It is bounded by Death for that is what it is.
The desire to do stupid things forever is very, very powerful. The carbon trading scheme is a classic example of this. On every possible level, I am furious about this concept and the latest gloating by the hell hounds and pirates and their banker buddies, that this concept of 'trading carbon pollution' will open the Vaults to Eternal Wealth and create INFINITE MONEY and INFINITE PROFITS FOR THEM: this is pure insanity and associated with the Derivatives Beast.
Back to mythology we go: all ancient people warned us about the Wolf in Sheep's Clothing. The stories of the Wolf telling the other animals to protect themselves from Death by running into the Cave with the Wolf who then announces it is Fenrir and eats everyone: this is one of many examples. I'm certain we can come up with more. The evil witch will come with a poisoned apple and flatter us into taking a bite. The person who says, 'Don't worry, I'll take care of you, just sign your soul over to me and I will give you infinite money' is always the Devil that is Death.
Bush and Kerry, for example, belong to a satanic coven called 'The Skull and Bones'. When they bring in new dupes to this thing of theirs, launched by one of my ancestors 200 years ago, they chant to the Devil that is Death, Death that is Death. They then set out to rule us. They tell us they will save us. But they serve the Devil, not Mother Nature. This is why, over the years, as the Skull and Bone coven infiltrated the system all the way through to the top and especially the money sectors, this is why the US has been going steadily bankrupt. Then there are the End of Times people who are fatally driving us towards the Apocalypse. They are Muslim, Jewish and Christian: the Trinity of Death Gods.
All are focused on one spot: where the Angel of Death was stopped by King David on the Threarshing Floor in Jerusalem, the spot where right now, the Muslims have their temple. Tensions over this spot are growing. It is a very small spot on this big planet but the more the tensions rise concerning this spot, the more likely it will cause the annihilation of all humans thanks to the nuclear bombs and the missiles created by my father and his fellow scientists during WWII and afterwards.
Looping back again to the carbon trading concept: ARGHHH. It is utterly a creation of the Outer Darkness! First of all, it doesn't stop pollution at all! Originally, the people who came up with this concept of stopping the burning of excess biomass---I grew up around these people. They mean well. They are ernest and careful. When they first talked about taxing CARBON releases, I was OK with that. But humans hate paying taxes. This is why taxes always end up being paid by the poorest and weakest. The rich don't want to pay taxes. Their goal is always to avoid taxes and hoard wealth. Which they then desperately try to use to get past Libra at the Gates of Death! Or they try to bribe their human created gods to give them a free pass.
The concept of taxing carbons was treated with horror by the biggest carbon burners on earth: Americans. The US has no desire to pay a penny for the pollution we create. We want a free ride. We want Santa Claus, not Libra. We want infinite oil and infinite pollution as well as infinite wealth! We want it ALL. So there!
Then the organizers who wanted to save our planet came up with a new concept: to turn pollution into a market that makes money. So if a country plants some trees, they get carbon credits WHICH THEY CAN THEN SELL. This stupid idea was a great idea if it didn't open yet another window: the creation of infinite money and a new way to tax the poor while making the rich, richer! So poor people who desperately need to farm land so they can eat, will instead, plant trees and then be taxed by the rich. The 'wealth' from taking farmland and turning it into forests would then flow to the traders of the carbon credits, not the humans who gave up the farmlands, for example.
The scheme is for this carbon trading to give wealthy nations money so they can build alternative energy systems. They sold this stupid idea to third world nations who have no money to build systems. The trick was, the central bankers would give these poor people LOANS which they paid for via CARBON CREDITS. They would sell the right to burn fossil fuels to the fossil fuel burners who would then live like kings while the third world struggles to survive. Wonderful.
Last year the scheme saved 6-million tonnes of carbon from entering the atmosphere. It's a fraction of what's needed, but like the dozens of other carbon markets springing up around the world, they're the first steps in a bold plan to provide a market solution to climate change.But the Prime Minister has warned that signing up to Kyoto-style emissions trading schemes would hit the economy hard, cutting wages by 20%.In the US, seven States have agreed to set up their own emission trading schemes, while in Australia the States and Territories are thinking along the same lines.
HAHAHA. Right. We were 'saved'! Worker's wages which are being cut in the first world quite rapidly, will be cut more! But the numbers tell us that this is all for the best. After all, mythological potential carbons were not released! Indeed. How do we know this? Has pollution dropped in the real world?
NO! NOT EVEN SLIGHTLY!!!! If anyone is not burning fossil fuels right now, they are POOR PEOPLE. In America, in Asia, in Europe, in South America, in Africa, all over the planet, the poor are frantically trying to figure out how to pay for fossil fuels! All other things from food to even firewood are shooting up in price! This is due to inflation caused by bankers producing more red ink than all the oceans of the earth!
AND THE RULERS KNOW THIS. They know that if they cut out most humanity from burning fossil fuels, if they tax most humanity for burning fossil fuels which the rich and powerful burn by far, the most, then there will be less pollution and more oil for THEM! So they are the Wolves that are leading us sheep into the Cave of Death!
A carbon market works a little bit like a stock market. Instead and buying and selling shares, you can buy and sell the right to pollute. In a carbon market, businesses are allowed to pollute up to a limit, and if they go above that, they can buy carbon credits from other businesses, which have reduced their pollution. Or they can choose to invest in greener technologies.
And who will own 'the right to pollute'? The poor? Or the RICH? We know the answer! The powerful want the Chinese peasants to pay the carbon taxes. They want to use nuclear bombs to enforce this stupid carbon market upon the rest of humanity! Locking the door we went through, we hope to retrofit our own systems at the expense of the Chinese, the Africans who we enslaved and robbed for centuries, the poor masses in the industrial powers of the G7 nations, they will pay for this system.
We are seeing for example, the lack of government innovation in this area being replaced by private markets being established, and you can see that these carbon markets are beginning to have some impact. But they're very inefficient unless the government gets behind this. It's all about property rights and the government really is the creator and maintainer of property rights in a modern economy. And that's the role of government, is to define the cost of carbon.
Who owns the planet Earth? This is what is at stake. The new carbon trading system is PRIVATE. It is NOT PUBLIC. Like the central banks that are backing this evil, it is owned by the same people who own our entire monetary system. The Real Rulers. Who are focused on seizing and controlling the Threshing Floor in Jerusalem. And they are at war... WITH EACH OTHER. They hobnob with each other but with knives in their hands, ready to stab each other in the back. Note the naked talk about how the government must be moved to go along with the bankers! They always have this problem: they MUST have control of the governments! Note how the US, filled with fury at the Real Rulers, are being mercilessly walked backwards into supporting Hillary and McCain. Both of these people have openly gloatingly talked about starting WWWIII in the Middle East. Both vote for war, war, war. Both vote to spend infinite money on wars. Both lure us into supporting them by promising us health care and wealth but all they will bring is Death.
The role of government is to IMPOSE a 'cost of carbon' which is banker talk for TAXES. Is this being debated by our New World Order candidates? Of course not! They are hiding this business as much as possible. It will be imposed on us. So the private bankers will create a private market which is based on taxing the people and this will be set forth as a way to save our planet just as nuclear bombs were put forwards as a way of protecting us from annihilation.
Wendy Carlisle: Those who've watched the European market at close quarters say it has grown at a phenomenal rate. Andrew Grant has been involved since the early days of Kyoto in the late '90s, first as a consultant with Ernst and Young.Andrew Grant: Well we are witnessing a massive growth. I've been involved in carbon trading for eight years now, and when I used to go to the International Emissions Trading Association meetings you knew everyone, it was like a small family. They were big companies but a small number of people who were really hitting the pack, and now it's thousands and thousands and thousands of companies involved. And what we've seen is mainstream finance sector move in with might, so that big banks and insurance companies, the hedge funds, the legal firms, the accounting firms, have really come in with gusto. And with it, all of the financial engineering skills that they bring, and the knowledge and ability to get these things up to scale. So we're actually liberating the might of the market onto this area.
OH MY GOD. Note how they talk about 'liberating the might of the market' here. Liberal and liberate comes from the ancient word for 'freedom or GROWTH.' Libra is from the ancient word for 'balance'. The concept of being free to do as we please, things growing rapidly and balancing both are all bound up in this celestial word. For these concepts are all about how we can be tempted by infinity and how the only way to be really free and to really grow, we must be balanced! We have to keep things balanced! If we let things grow to infinity, we die. What these excited bankers and carbon traders see is not the salvation of this planet.
They see themselves getting FILTHY RICH at everyone's expense! And they inadvertently opened yet another window to the Outer Darkness. This is where the demons are and they can make money eternally. And this money isn't real. It always vanishes when Libra steps in and regulates things again! As we see over and over as bubbles pop.
AND THIS IS A HUGE BUBBLE. It can grow effortlessly since it is NOT REAL. The 'carbon savings' is IMAGINARY. But the carbons being burned despite this are very, very real. We can't fool ourselves into thinking we can do this forever. The plan is simple: the rich hope to jet set around the planet and live in palaces while we burn no carbon and live in extreme poverty or die totally and thus, the rich get their blessed Garden of Eden and the rest of humanity dies.
The pirates and hell hounds are all for carbon trading! They see a golden opportunity to circumvent Libra. Just as they tossed her aside to raid the Cave of Wealth and Death when they dropped the gold standard for currencies, now they tunnel into this cave and find the Derivatives Beast feasting on the bones of the gods and there lies eternal wealth! Why, this invisible gas produced by pollution WILL BE TURNED INTO GOLD!
We know many such stories but the very old crude ones about the Giants who build Valhalla and how they destroy the Gods in Götterdämmerung come to mind. The 'financial engineering' these guys are yapping about is them using ANY EXCUSE to create Funny Money™ out of thin air and then shower it upon themselves! They get rich. And we get GLOBAL INFLATION. And note what went up: CARBON PRODUCTS! Oil is shooting up in price as is all things connected with this stupid carbon trading. And so long as they follow this road, the worse it will be for all of humanity.
From 2007: Africa Aid, Carbon Trading, Top Bank’s G8 Wish List
On climate change, the Bank urges the G8 to seek an international greenhouse gas agreement that uses the booming carbon market to mitigate climate change and create incentives for the expanded use of clean energy.The Heligendamm discussions on the issue involve not only the G8 but leaders from other top CO2-emitting countries, such as China and India.
Leading energy CEOs strongly supported the idea of a global carbon market at a two-day forum this week organized by GLOBE International.
The carbon market allows companies in industrialized nations to reduce global CO2 emissions—and meet pollution targets set by their governments—by buying carbon credits from environmentally friendly projects that reduce greenhouse gases in developing countries.
Last year the carbon market tripled to over US$30 billion, of which about 20 percent went to climate friendly projects in the developing world.
Carbon markets could “expand exponentially” under a post 2012 agreement for curbing greenhouse gas emissions and “deliver financial flows to developing countries of anywhere between US$20 billion to US$120 billion a year,” says Katherine Sierra, vice president for sustainable development.
Note that the energy producers love this idea. In 2007, the energy markets were half as big as today. Now, the price of energy is going through the roof even as the stupid trillion dollar carbon pollution scheme gears up to grow faster than fast. At the top of this story is a drawing showing 'hockey stick' growth. This is their HOLY GRAIL. They love this sort of growth. It shoots to the heavens! It is....infinity. And here they are, just before crashing the world into a total economic crisis, gloating about how they will get trillions from this goofy scheme that produces nothing but taxes everyone. A global tax. A global system that makes THEM richer and US poorer.
Note this graph! The 'other' starts out as nothing at all. The wind and hydro parts are the only parts to this system. Then, in 2004, the idea of the 'other' comes in. This is when the bankers said, if you plant trees, etc, you are helping things so this counts as much as new energy systems that don't use fossil fuels! Note that as wind, hydro and solar do grow, 'other' GROWS MUCH FASTER. Indeed, it is the ancient system whereby the rulers kill peasants and forbid them to enter hunting preserves and other natural things the rulers want kept clear of all humans so they can run around in Nature and enjoy it without filthy peasants in the way!
I know of these plans. The scientists and economists at the University of Chicago talked about all this. The need to usurp the earth for themselves! To live FOREVER in EDEN: this is the dream! I heard it discussed and many of the present systems in Academia are set up to work towards this goal. Huge sums of money are being invested by rich people to seek the Holy Grail. To live forever and live in comfort with infinite money! This is their dream. Trust me on this. I am a member of the Ruling Elites.
Here is Richard Strauss' famous opera, 'Salome'. It shows us the final degradation of this sort of thinking.
And finally, carbon taxes are just another form of indulgences that the Catholic popes came up with in conjunction with Europe's first bankers in Italy in the Renaissance. The Renaissance was a time when paganism was rediscovered. And through this, the magic of money. Using these new tools, the Church decided to sell futures in heaven. One could fix one's earthly messes like burning too much carbon, by these indulgences.
The word indulgence (Latin indulgentia, from indulgeo, to be kind or tender) originally meant kindness or favor; in post-classic Latin it came to mean the remission of a tax or debt. In Roman law and in the Vulgate of the Old Testament (Isaiah 61:1) it was used to express release from captivity or punishment. In theological language also the word is sometimes employed in its primary sense to signify the kindness and mercy of God. But in the special sense in which it is here considered, an indulgence is a remission of the temporal punishment due to sin, the guilt of which has been forgiven. Among the equivalent terms used in antiquity were pax, remissio, donatio, condonatio.
*snip*
An indulgence is the extra-sacramental remission of the temporal punishment due, in God's justice, to sin that has been forgiven, which remission is granted by the Church in the exercise of the power of the keys, through the application of the superabundant merits of Christ and of the saints, and for some just and reasonable motive. Regarding this definition, the following points are to be noted:In the Sacrament of Baptism not only is the guilt of sin remitted, but also all the penalties attached to sin. In the Sacrament of Penance the guilt of sin is removed, and with it the eternal punishment due to mortal sin; but there still remains the temporal punishment required by Divine justice, and this requirement must be fulfilled either in the present life or in the world to come, i.e., in Purgatory. An indulgence offers the penitent sinner the means of discharging this debt during his life on earth.
It was wonderfully profitable for the popes! They used it again and again. This remission of sins was sold as a way of AVOIDING PAYING in the future. And it was supposed to be an ANTI TAX. But of course, if you didn't buy these imaginary things selling the equivalent of a cat's footfall at night [the chains of Fenrir] it rapidly became a TAX. If you didn't pay, the pope and his minions would torture you in the afterlife!
So it worked for a long time until a German priest got mad.
Indulgences, controversy and the start of the Reformation
On October 31, 1517, Luther wrote to Albrecht, Archbishop of Mainz and Magdeburg, protesting the sale of indulgences. He enclosed in his letter a copy of his "Disputation of Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences," which came to be known as The 95 Theses. Hans Hillerbrand writes that Luther had no intention of confronting the church, but saw his disputation as a scholarly objection to church practices, and the tone of the writing is accordingly "searching, rather than doctrinaire." Hillerbrand writes that there is nevertheless an undercurrent of challenge in several of the theses, particularly in Thesis 86, which asks: "Why does the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of St. Peter with the money of poor believers rather than with his own money?"Luther objected to a saying attributed to Johann Tetzel that "As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs," insisting that, since forgiveness was God's alone to grant, those who claimed that indulgences absolved buyers from all punishments and granted them salvation were in error. Christians, he said, must not slacken in following Christ on account of such false assurances.
OOPS. So much for the carbon tax/sins indulgence! Off the cliff it goes! Very rapidly, within DAYS of Luther challenging this new infinite market of goodies for the rulers, the entire Christian system in Europe was destroyed! The wars that raged from this blow up went on for years and years and years and even in my own lifetime.
Like in Ireland, just for example. I went to school in Germany in 1968 and the great religious wars launched by the Luther/Pope confrontation ended in the center of my village there. Tübingen was split in two and the Catholic and the Lutheran children didn't go to school together until I went to school there! Wow. Then there were the Jewish children: they were driven out or murdered by their neighbors when they turned into Nazis.
Nazis are all for cleansing the earth of other humans. The Jews turned towards this and are applying it to Palestine. For they think they will control the Gates of Death and the Cave of Wealth. And this will save them from annihilation.
Which is why no one listens to my warnings: this will blow up in everyone's faces! The only way we can avoid this is to avoid tapping into any system that promises eternal, infinite wealth! This is the true Key to the Kingdom of Life! TO OBEY LIBRA. To balance things! To not get rich forever! Isn't that tragic?
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Wow, Elaine, "dynamite" post-we must be on same wave length, as I read this right after sending my email to you. And the excerpt from Salome was wonderful...when I first heard about carbon credits, something set off my bull shit detector, but didnt know why. Thanks for the exigesis. And as for the more profound philosophical insights into the Cave of Death, etc, reminds me of this quote in "The Archdruid Report" last week from Theodore Roszak: (speaking of modern industrial culture) "We will all, every man, woman, and child of us, know fifty-seven clever ways to [copulate] before we know one humanly becoming way to die."
All I can say is, Advaita Vedanta makes more sense with every passing day.
Peter
Posted by: Peter | June 02, 2008 at 11:06 AM
Climate care, one of the earlier players in the carbon offset market, has been purchased by J. P. Morgan. I think that pretty much sums up what carbon trading is all about.
Story here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/mar/27/jpmorgan.greenbusiness
Posted by: Daliwood | June 02, 2008 at 11:40 AM
Oh wow. I missed that story about JP Morgan! Thanks for the link. Yes, Daliwood, as usual, you find a gem.
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | June 02, 2008 at 12:39 PM
Elaine, I wonder if in your youth you read and subconciously absorbed the concept of the Cave of Death from Gore Vidal's early novel "Messiah"? In it, an American Messiah (an undertaker orignally, no less) establishes a death cult in the U.S.A. then virtually world-wide. I recall it as a fascinating exercise in promoting mass thinking by way of the media. The Cavites eventually forced out established religions and took over government. The concepts of life versus death gets a thorough workout by Vidal and his thinking then was not encumbered by the bitterness evident in later works.
Thanks for your thoughts on carbon trading. Up until now, it didn't make much sense to me, but I had thought it a relatively benign effort.
Posted by: Jim Smith | June 02, 2008 at 06:55 PM
Does anyone believe me yet that McCain/Lieberman have been selected to lead us peasants down the Carbon Hell path?
Or at least until McCain gets 'Reagan-ed'?
Check out this Washington Post/CIA debrief:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/30/AR2008053002521_pf.html
An unprecedentedly radical government grab for control of the American economy will be debated this week when the Senate considers saving the planet by means of a cap-and-trade system to ration carbon emissions. The plan is co-authored (with John Warner) by Joe Lieberman, an ardent supporter of John McCain, who supports Lieberman's legislation and recently spoke about "the central facts of rising temperatures, rising waters and all the endless troubles that global warming will bring."
Posted by: GK | June 02, 2008 at 07:04 PM
I was hit by a very big, very nasty lightning bolt when only 5 years old. I died and came back. This was the school I learned about Death. What shocked me [wrong word, I know] was that there were these very small demonic creatures there in the Outer Darkness that controlled all the world's wealth. They told me this. I startled them, I guess.
I am writing a story about that sort of thing. No one taught me anything about this. Except for perhaps fairy tales and such. But in 1955, I didn't know very many fairy tales. I sought them out afterwards.
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | June 02, 2008 at 08:32 PM
Elaine a guru? Peter you futhermucker, why wreck a sort of good thing? And no one shows anyone how to die, your own will carries you to the door. Sit on that Mister Hyde Park.
Posted by: ccq | June 03, 2008 at 03:27 AM
CCQ, Peter said really nice things. I thank him for that. Better than a slap in the face with a dead fish, eh?
When I was young, I said, 'Death is when you can't take the pain anymore.'
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | June 03, 2008 at 07:16 AM
My, my... that article was certainly wide-ranging (which is a nice way of saying "all over the map.")
Kyoto (the beast that spawned carbon credits), is, you'll no doubt recall, coming to an end. Look for a number of players to say, "The hell with it."
"If anyone is not burning fossil fuels right now, they are POOR PEOPLE. "
That is so: fossil fuels are expensive. The world's poor burn wood, dung, things like that. Google "Asian brown cloud".
Posted by: JSmith | June 03, 2008 at 11:18 AM
JSmith, you are talking about how I used to live in the tent complex.
And the smug attitudes here: eventually people living in unsustainable houses in America will learn about how the other half of humanity lives. No airconditioning, for starters.
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | June 03, 2008 at 06:49 PM
"JSmith, you are talking about how I used to live in the tent complex."
No, I'm not. And you know I'm not.
There is just a bit of difference between not using airconditioning and cooking chapatties over a fire of dried cow dung which one has gathered from the streets of Kolkata. And burning wood in a stove of even moderate efficiency is different from burning it in an open fire.
Did you google "Asian brown cloud"? A great deal of pollution comes from burning biomass, and the people who do live by burning biomass have lots more to worry about than carbon offsets.
Pollution is a first-world concern, not a third-world concern. The problem is that pollution is much more a third-world problem.
Posted by: JSmith | June 04, 2008 at 09:21 AM
I did once read about the enormous about of smoke produced by all the clay ovens in India cooking chappatis and rice and whatever. Still, they are at least just trying to survive.
They are not dumping huge truckloads of toxic waste from making plastic toys into a nearby river where it will poison innocent children. That is first world type pollution, and it is produced by first world type people, not subsistence farmers.
A bit different.
Posted by: DeVaul | June 04, 2008 at 04:10 PM
"I did once read about the enormous about of smoke produced by all the clay ovens in India cooking chappatis and rice and whatever."
There's that, and also slash-and-burn agriculture as practiced in Indonesia, the Amazon basin, etc.
"Still, they are at least just trying to survive."
Which is why no one wants to say anything about it. It's not politically correct to criticise the third world; it is politically correct to criticise the first world.
>A bit different.
Yes, in that atmospheric pollution does not remain in its country of origin.
Posted by: JSmith | June 05, 2008 at 08:26 AM