Al Gore’s Church of Climatology has been abandoned by world leaders in their quest to maintain power and political position.Lawrence Solomon recently reported that G20 leaders in Toronto tried to avoid the fate of colleagues felled by warming advocacy by turning their backs on global warming legislation. Will the “mainstream” media in the U.S. report these findings? Not likely!
Last week’s G8 and G20 meetings in Toronto and its environs confirmed that the world’s leaders accept the demise of global-warming alarmism.
One year ago, the G8 talked tough about cutting global temperatures by two degrees. In Toronto, they neutered that tough talk, replacing it with a nebulous commitment to do their best on climate change.
Not trying to outdo each other, the global-warming commitments of the G20, which now carries more clout than the G8, went from nebulous to non-existent: The G20’s draft promise going into the meetings of investing in green technologies faded into a mere commitment to “a green economy and to sustainable global growth.”
These leaders’ collective decisions in Toronto reflect their individual experiences at home, and a desire to avoid the fate that met their true-believing colleagues, all of whom have been hurt by the economic and political consequences of their global-warming advocacy.
Kevin Rudd, Australia’s gung-ho global-warming prime minister, lost his job the day before he was set to fly to the G20 meetings; just months earlier Australia’s conservative opposition leader, also a major proponent of global warming legislation, lost his job in an anti-global-warming backbencher revolt.
The Church of The Church of Climatology’s choir director, on global warming Gordon Brown, of the U.K. likewise lost his job.France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy, who had vowed to “save the human race” from climate change by introducing a carbon tax by the time of the G8 and G20, was a changed man by the time the meetings occurred. He cancelled his carbon tax in March, two days after a crushing defeat in regional elections that saw his Gaullist party lose just about every region of France. He got the message: Two-thirds of the French public opposed carbon taxes.
Spain? Days before the G20 meetings, Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, his popularity and that of global warming in tatters, decided to gut his country’s renewable industry by unilaterally rescinding the government guarantees enshrined in legislation, knowing the rescinding would put most of his country’s 600 photovoltaic manufacturers out of business.
Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi similarly scrapped government guarantees for its solar and wind companies prior to the G8 and G20, putting them into default, too.
The U.K may be making the biggest global-warming cuts of all, with an emergency budget that came down the week of the G20 meetings. The two government departments responsible for climate-change policies, previously immune to cuts, must now contract by an extraordinary 25%.
Other U.K. departments are also ditching climate-change programs, the casualties include manufacturers of electric cars, the Low Carbon Buildings Program, and, as the minister in charge put it, “every commitment made by the last government on renewable energy is under review.“
Some areas of U.K.’s economy not only survived but expanded, though: The government announced record offshore oil development in the North Sea, when it granted a record 356 exploration licenses in its most recent round.
Support for global-warming programs is also in tatters in the U.S., where polls show as in Europe, that the vast majority of Americans reject the global-warming agenda. Americans resent repeated attempts to pass cap and trade legislation over their objections, contributing to the fall in popularity of President Barack Obama and Congress.
Will progressive ideologues in the U.S. Congress change their tune quickly to save their jobs? Not likely, ignorance and stubbornness are frequently a fatal combination. In anticipation that cap and trade legislation would be stalled in the senate, the current administration tasked the Environmental Protection Agency with capping carbon emissions.
Public opinion surveys now predict that this November’s elections will see sweeping change in the United States, with legislators who have signed on to the global warming hypothesis being replaced by those who don’t buy it.
One country, Canada and one leader, Prime Minister Stephen Harper have stood out for avoiding the worst excesses associated with climate change. Called the Colossal Fossil three years running by some 500 environmental groups around the world, Canada and Stephen Harper are reviled among climate-change campaigners for failing to fall into line.
Not coincidentally, Canada has also stood out for having best withstood the financial crisis that beset the world. Fittingly, Canada and its leader played host to the meetings.
Random thoughts while observing the ongoing international charade, I’m J.C.
Jim Campbell runs Charging Elephants.
Al Gore’s Church of Climatology has been abandoned by world leaders in their quest to maintain power and political position.Lawrence Solomon recently reported that G20 leaders in Toronto tried to avoid the fate of colleagues felled by warming advocacy by turning their backs on global warming legislation. Will the “mainstream” media in the U.S. report these findings? Not likely!
Last week’s G8 and G20 meetings in Toronto and its environs confirmed that the world’s leaders accept the demise of global-warming alarmism.
