Our Embarrassing Climate Diplomacy

I don't believe in global warming. I agree that there is climate change - it has changed over the millenia, for good and for bad - but I don't believe that humans have had an appreciable effect on climate change, and have little chance of manipulating the climate to our benefit. I suspect a lot more people share this view. Sadly, the poli-sci majors and law school graduates who make up the West's political elite are absolutely convinced that we are doomed doomed doomed based as much on scary graphics and movies with portentious music as on "science." Things have gotten so bad that our foreign policy has descended into the farce of nagging developing countries about their emissions. Unsurprisingly, we are being rebuffed out of hand India Rejects US Carbon Limits Plan

India dismissed suggestions that it accept binding limits on carbon emissions, with a top official Sunday delivering a strong rebuke to overtures from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the two countries to work together to combat climate change.

The rejection of the U.S. proposal was made in the middle of Mrs. Clinton's first visit to India as secretary of state and came just as the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama is gearing up to push for a new global pact on climate change.

"There is simply no case for the pressure that we, who have among the lowest emissions per capita, face to actually reduce emissions," Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh told Mrs. Clinton and her delegation."And as if this pressure was not enough, we also face the threat of carbon tariffs on our exports to countries such as yours," he said, according to a written account of Mr. Ramesh's remarks to Mrs. Clinton in their meeting. Mr. Ramesh handed out copies of the account to reporters at a news conference afterward with Mrs. Clinton standing nearby.

India is an ally, but don't worry, we are nagging our rivals, too: Energy Secretary Warns China On Emissions

In meetings with senior Chinese energy officials and in a speech at prestigious Tsinghua University, Mr Chu continued the Obama administration's efforts to push for greater action on climate change. China recently surpassed the US as the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases. While acknowledging that the world's developed Western nations have contributed most of the carbon dioxide already trapped in the atmosphere, Mr Chu warned that China could add more in the next few decades than everything the US emitted since the Industrial Revolution. Carbon dioxide is the most common greenhouse gas. Mr. Chu said in the speech to students of China's top science and engineering school that "The developed world did make the problem, I admit that. But the developing world can make it much worse." Painting a grim picture of a world faced with making a tough choice between something bad might happen or something very bad might happen even if global warming is addressed, Mr Chu urged China to invest more in energy efficient technologies in partnership with the US.

While the US government is filled with nervous nellies like Sec. Chu, who fears the Heavens & the Earth, and possibly his own shadow, China and India are filled with ambitious technocrats who would like to make as much wealth as we ahve over the decades, but which we have now declared to be politically incorrect. According to the Obama Administration, if other countries won't get on board, we will just have to pay for the emissions reductions ourselves. Has this been thought through? Commerce Secretary America Needs To Pay For China's Emissions

It’s bad enough that the Obama administration wants to penalize all Americans for their energy use through the cap-and-tax scheme that will hobble our economy and hike electricity and gas costs, but until now they only proposed to penalize us for our own energy use. With China refusing to join the West in economic suicide, who will pay for their emissions? Commerce Secretary says that the American consumer is to blame for China’s energy-production emissions — and we’ll pay for that instead of the Chinese:

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said something amazing—U.S. consumers should pay for part of Chinese greenhouse-gas emissions. From Reuters: “It’s important that those who consume the products being made all around the world to the benefit of America — and it’s our own consumption activity that’s causing the emission of greenhouse gases, then quite frankly Americans need to pay for that,” Commerce Secretary Gary Locke told the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai

So we'll either have a trade war or more massive increases in the cost of living - for Americans. Where's the diplomatic leverage? I would love hear what the developing world's diplomats have to say about our climate proposals behind closed doors. Whatever it is, the word "smart" probably doesn't come up.