Kyoto - a misqguided priority?

[mollox]

Interesting and provocative piece on Kyoto in today’s Irish Times by Tony Allwright.

He claims that official estimates put a cost on Kyoto of $100 billion annually in order to defer a two degree rise in global temperatures by a mere 6 years, from 2094 to 2100

“By comparison, the UN estimates just $200 billion would bring clean water and sanitation to everyone on the planet, saving two million lives a year.”

Hypocrisy emissions on climate go up - The Irish Times - Thu, Feb 19, 2009

Non-ratifiers of Kyoto, excluding USA, “have signally failed to control emissions. From 1997 to 2005 they have pushed CO2 emissions up by almost 5 per cent. People like these (nearly seven hundred million) deserve opprobrium and sanctions to force them to cut their carbon footprints and stop destroying the planet, causing sea levels to rise, glaciers to melt, polar bears to drown, forests to desertify, children to die.”

Kyoto ratifiers , on the other hand – “the EU – nearly half a billion well-meaning folk. All 27 countries have ratified Kyoto. And, as you’d expect, we have cut our emissions by . . . hang on a minute, there must be some mistake. Our emissions have actually climbed by over 6.5 per cent, even more than those wretched non-ratifiers. Ireland’s went up by an astounding 17 per cent. How can that be?
When you add up all 162 Kyoto ratifiers – 6.1 billion people, 90 per cent of the world’s population – you find their emissions have increased by almost 30 per cent!”

As for the USA – “It gets worse. Vilified, non-ratifying America was one of the few countries that actually reduced its emissions. Not by much, about 1 per cent, but no other major country came close.”

And Allwright’s conclusion poses an interesting challenge:
“Astonishingly, a handful managed to more or less halve their emissions: ratifiers Congo Democratic Republic and Eritrea plus non-ratifiers Afghanistan and Guam. Excluding minuscule Guam, a US military base in the Pacific, the common denominator appears to be war, economic destitution, strife and poverty.
And, with Kyoto’s price-tag of $100 billion a year, in exchange for very little benefit a century into the future, something like this could probably be the Kyoto future, if it has one.
Meeting its strictures, and those of its successors, would require drastic curtailment of economic activity leading to mass impoverishment. From this, the prospect of new wars does not seem improbable. War, in addition to the starvation of penury, would kill lots of people.”

[smitchy2]

Interesting points.
Of course the media has changed the world into fearing a global meltdown after scaring us into believing another ice age back in the 70’s.

It is obvious we would be better off by switching to renewable energies and causing less pollutions for our health but these targets seem farcical and ever changing or exchangeable.

It would be much more beneficial that we did concentrate on aiming to have all populations free access to water and food by a set date. That seems to have gone off peoples agendas this decade though.