Yesterday, the United States and five asia-Pacific countries; australia, India, China, South Korea and Japan reached an agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions which are largely viewed as contributing to global warming.
Unlike the Kyoto Protocol this agreement to reduce emissions is purely voluntary. Reached after months of secret negotiations, the six countries agreed to develop technology to cut down on the amount of greenhouse gases that are currently being spewed into the atmosphere.
The major difference between the agreement that was reached on Wednesday and Kyoto is that China and India are part of the new agreement. Both these countries, which are major polluters, were exempted from requirement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol because they are developing nations. The theory was that since the United States and other countries were allowed to pollute as much as possible to achieve first world status, the same rights should be given to China and India.
It didn’t take long for the environmentalists to come out against the six nation agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Sky News in Britain quoted a spokeswoman from Greenpeace australia as saying, "No doubt the australian government has been cooking this scheme up for a while to cover up their failure to ratify Kyoto, and to try and prove that developing countries are abandoning Kyoto." Criticisms have also been levelled by environmental groups over the fact that the newly reached agreement is voluntary and that voluntary deals just don’t work.
The reaction of these leftist environmental groups is proof positive that their main objective is not the environment or "saving the planet" as they so lovingly like to claim. The point of the Kyoto Protocol is for developed countries such as Canada to be unable to meet their targets. Countries that cannot meet their Kyoto obligations will then be required to "buy" credits from countries that have met their targets; targets that are either low or non existent. The Kyoto agreement is nothing more than a scheme by the one worlders at the United Nations to redistribute wealth from the developed world to developing countries.
If reversing the global warming trend was really the goal of the environmental left, China and India would have to be included in any plan to reduce emissions. Both China and India are heavy polluters that are in a stage of relative rapid development. The notion that they should be able to pollute as much as is necessary because the United States and other first world nations were allowed to do so when they became heavily industrialized, makes no sense if the number one goal is to save the earth from the dangers of increasing temperatures.
The environmentalists are also in effect saying that China and India should not be reducing their carbon emissions even when both of these countries have now agreed to do so. By taking this position, the enviros are looking down on these backward nations and telling them that they should not be reducing carbon emissions. This elitist attitude is more proof that the main aim of the environmental left is not to reduce emissions; it is to cause economic damage to industrialized nations such as the United States; countries that the left detest for more than just the Iraq war.
There is nothing surprising in the fact that some radical environmentalists were so quick off the mark to condemn the climate pact. after all, to the left, hating countries such as the United States and australia is a greater priority than protecting the environment.