Some very welcome common sense from Indian leaders: “The plan's authors, the Prime Minister's Council on Climate Change, said India would rather save its people from poverty than global warming."
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
"We appear to be overplaying this global warming issue as global warming is nothing new. It has happened in the past, not once but several times, giving rise to glacial-interglacial cycles. We appear to be now only in the middle of an interglacial cycle showing a trend toward warming as warming and cooling are global and have occurred on such a scale when humans had not appeared on the planet."
-B.P. Radhakrishna, President of the Geological Society of India
P.S. - Formatting will probably appear incorrectly for those of you reading this message on the LPSF list; sorry about that. My email software and Yahoogroups' formatting of emails to include advertising do not mesh well; I can avoid this by sending messages in plain text, but in this case that would have prevented many pre-existing links in the forwarded material from being operative.
Hi Starchild,
Thank you for the article. It is indeed time to admit that expecting
all nations to cut co2 in half (or whatever figure pops into
somebody's head) is disingenuous at best. But how about a commitment
to ameliorating what nature has dealt us by actions that will not
exacerbate the condition? I believe developing nations can do that as
well as developed ones. How about we libertarians emphasizing
voluntary personal responsibility, in what we eat, drive, use that
will accomplish such an amelioration?
Marcy
Some very welcome common sense from Indian leaders: "The plan's
authors, the Prime Minister's Council on Climate Change, said India
would rather save its people from poverty than global warming."
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
"We appear to be overplaying this global warming issue as global
warming is nothing new. It has happened in the past, not once but
several times, giving rise to glacial-interglacial cycles. We appear
to be now only in the middle of an interglacial cycle showing a trend
toward warming as warming and cooling are global and have occurred on
such a scale when humans had not appeared on the planet."
-B.P. Radhakrishna, President of the Geological Society of India
P.S. - Formatting will probably appear incorrectly for those of you
reading this message on the LPSF list; sorry about that. My email
software and Yahoogroups' formatting of emails to include advertising
do not mesh well; I can avoid this by sending messages in plain text,
but in this case that would have prevented many pre-existing links in
the forwarded material from being operative.
> Excerpt: India issued its National Action Plan on Climate Change in
> June 2008 disputing man-made global warming fears and declared the
> country of one billion people had no intention of stopping its
> energy growth or cutting back its CO2 emissions. [
]The report
> declared: "No firm link between the documented [climate] changes
> described below and warming due to anthropogenic climate change has
> yet been established." The report made clear that India has no
> plans to cut back energy usage. "It is obvious that India needs to
> substantially increase its per capita energy consumption to provide
> a minimally acceptable level of wellbeing to its people. [
] India
> is determined that its per capita greenhouse gas emissions will at
> no point exceed that of developed countries."
>
> http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?
>
FuseAction=Minority.Facts&ContentRecord_id=09df614e-802a-23ad-46c9-8a9
Marcy,
I'm not convinced that human release of chemicals into the environment is playing any substantial part in climate change, so I'm not convinced that ameliorative action would be a good thing, even if it cost very little. And the reality is of course is that it *wouldn't* cost very little -- it would cost billions and billions of dollars to have a major impact on human carbon dioxide emissions.
There are strong grounds in my view for governments of developing countries to take major actions to limit negative impacts on the environment, but global warming is not one of the things I think they ought to be particularly concerned about. Far more pressing are problems like the destruction of rainforest, coral reefs and other natural habitats, the pollution of water supplies, the extinction of various species due to over-hunting and loss of habitat, and the pollution of lakes and rivers.
Many of these problems could be significantly addressed by reducing population growth and reducing poverty. The former can be achieved by achieving the latter, as wealthier people worldwide tend to have fewer children. So I think the stance of India's Council on Climate Change is exactly correct, and is a model for what governments in other developing countries should do -- ignore the global warming hype and focus on increasing prosperity. Reduce controls on economic activity, while relying on stronger property rights laws to protect the environment. It may mean a bit more pollution in the short term than would be the case if Western prescriptions about reducing co2 are followed, but in the long run it will lead to a stronger environmental movement and less pollution, as more people start to look beyond immediate economic survival and care more about quality of life issues.
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))