Folks, the world's major countries are meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark on Dec. 7 to argue about pollution. My milkshake bet is that very little will come from this get-together. Seems like everyone knows there is a problem, but no one wants to be the first to commit.
We have a bill in the Senate slowly working its way through the maze. This bill will not be completed before the meeting, so we will have nothing new to offer. Communist China, the biggest polluter in the world, doesn't want to commit to anything until we commit. The first problem comes from the fact that some countries want to reduce pollution on a per capita basis, per person, and some countries want the pollution reduced based on the total amount of pollution. It shouldn't make much difference to us, because we rank second in both types of measurement.
The second problem is the amounts of pollution per country are different, depending on how the pollution is measured - or, more accurately, how it is estimated. Because no two estimates are alike, the argument shifts from whether or not to reduce pollution to whether or not the numbers are correct.
Most of the numbers in this column are from the United States Agency of Energy Information. But to show why there is such a disagreement over whether to have countries reduce pollution based on total pollution or annual pollution per person, all we need to do is look at China and India.
China is the worst polluter in the world when we look at total pollution. However, from about 130 countries where pollution is measured China ranks 72nd in pollution per person. India is the fourth worst polluter, but ranks 120th in pollution per person. The Kyoto Treaty, the first pollution treaty, was put into effect in 1997. It was based on pollution per person. This let communist China off the hook. It allowed two of the world's worst polluters not to do anything. Because of this format our country refused to sign and become a party to this treaty. For years, the discussion on pollution, global warming, and the environment has been two-sided, industry versus environmentalist. But, now that a bill may actually make its way through Congress and the Senate it seems that everyone wants a piece of the action.
The nickname of the bill is "Cap and Trade." In short, what this means is each company will be given a targeted amount that they can pollute. If a company beats its target, it can sell its extra pollution reduction, called credits, to a company that did not meet its target. (For an excellent explanation of Cap and Trade, read Jim Surber's column of a few weeks ago at www.highlandcountypress.com.)
Anyway, now that it looks like a law will be passed everyone that thinks that a buck is to be made is getting involved. The group that is most worrisome is Wall Street; and guess what? They don't want any regulations. They want to be able to buy and sell pollution credits just like they did
with the sub-prime mortgages.
The same commercial banks and investment banks that gave us the mortgage scam and the collapse of our economy are now investing in energy. They can't wait to begin bundling carbon credits into large packages called derivatives. They don't seem to care if we have global warming or not, or whether we are poisoning ourselves with mercury, lead and arsenic, or that our autism rate is doubling every few years. Somewhere, somehow, we need to begin a people-first philosophy rather than the power brokers just making money. Instead of discussing global warming or not or climate change or not we need to look at what we the people need that work hard and play by the rules.
We have 435 members of Congress and 100 senators. Ten years ago, there were hardly any lobbyists concerned with pollution and climate change. Today, there are close to 3,000 lobbyists or in other words more than five lobbyists for each of our elected representatives.
There are a handful of elected representatives, I'm sure, that have a concern for the average citizen although I could not find them. All the rest of them represent big business and banks. The bill that is currently in the House, started out as a very basic and straight forward document, is now approaching 1,500 pages of gobbledy-gook.
"We the People" is how our Constitution begins. Nowhere in that opening paragraph, or anywhere else for that matter, does it say anything about a small handful of monied interests controlling our government by filling campaign war chests.
The opening paragraph of our Constitution does say, however, "Promote the General Welfare."
Bill Horne is a professor at Southern State Community College and a columnist for The Highland County Press.
