POLITICS AND NATURE

“Public stock and public lands, therefore, the two sources of revenue which may peculiarly belong to the sovereign or commonwealth, being both improper and insufficient funds for defraying the necessary expense of any great and civilized state; it remains that this expense must, the greater part of it, be defrayed by taxes of one kind or another; the people contributing a part of their own private revenue in order to make up a public revenue to the sovereign or commonwealth.”

Adam Smith; Wealth of Nations

The World Agrees to Nothing:

The 13^th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali, Indonesia meandered through the first week of discussions coming up with not much of anything. The Kyoto protocol is now 10 years old and disparate nations like Canada and Russia are failing to reach target reductions of CO2 while Europe is holding fast to its supposed superiority in Earth friendly social actions.

The United States, for its part, dismissed any concerns and disregarded the debate carried on by the rest of the world by assuring all involved it would come up with its own climate program by the middle of 2008. Apparently, The Bush administration has not had the opportunity to ponder the issue since W. crossed the threshold on Pennsylvania Ave in January, 2001. In their infinite wisdom, this administration has taken the stance that nobody else in the world has the expertise or drive to secure the future of the planet. So why waste their time?

No matter what the administration has in mind; likely the desire to put off any sort of action until George is happily clearing brush and Dick is doing whatever maniacal control freaks placing fear and degradation above all else do with spare time in Wyoming, its response to the calls of the world show it to be the ignorant step-child of past leadership which defeated Communism, Nazism, and Fascism, gave humanity the Nuremburg trials, the United Nations, and the Geneva Convention. Ah well. Down to about thirteen months and then we can move on.

The Administration:

“Energy security and climate change are two of the great challenges of our time. The United States takes these challenges seriously. The world’s response will help shape the future of the global economy and the condition of our environment for future generations.”

President of the United States, George W. Bush, September 28, 2007. White House Website: www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/environment/

The commitment is clear. 2008 may be the dawning of the age of green washing. Like Richard Nixon declaring the 1970s the environmental decade, George W. Bush is taking on the big issues, as long as they don’t affect his dated ideas relating to business. Dangerous propositions abound in Bali, creating panic and terror in the confined world that is this Republican administration. They seem to believe industry is conducted the way it has always been done without change. No moving forward. No using American know how and pragmatic sensibilities to face and fix any problem.

Just the ignorant, blind fool wandering through the forest like a man who has smacked into sharp tree limbs depriving him of sight so that there is blood dripping down his cheeks, inducing incomprehensible horror and unwarrantable insanity. This administration acts like a straight jacketed extra in the filming of the Night of the Living Dead, who missed the bus and wandered helplessly around Manhattan, taunted by winos while rabid dogs nipped at his heels. Even circus clowns avoid such demon like apparitions.

Unfortunately for the administration, the country, and the world, no matter how right the White House inhabitants are about anything, the way they conduct themselves is just creepy to the rest of the world and to at least ½ of the patriotic Americans in our own nation. It must be remembered that Kyoto would have gone down in flames in the United States Senate, and China is no fan of international agreements that make it think about its own massive build up of pollution during this phase of intensive industrialization. After all, according to the White House, U.S. emissions of greenhouse gasses went down last year. In the meantime, China and India are growing, polluting, and together contain about ½ of the world’s population.

But, when you are holding the job that represents all the people of the United States and you treat the entire world like they exist for the benefit of U.S. pleasure. All of a sudden, the administration looks, once again, like the idiot bully making fun of all the other kids on the playground. It doesn’t take forever before no one will play with the bully.

Back to Bali:

This is the backdrop for the nations at work in Bali. Enjoying humid weather in a tropical forest which, given current international industrial regimes, will not be there by the time your children (or grandchildren, or great grandchildren in some cases) are old enough to read this article.

They are discussing cap and trade regimes in the belief the market will provide the greatest regulatory fulfillment of need. There are those who are not thrilled with the possibilities of this due to the ever present realities of market failure. The market does not regulate itself very well in certain areas.

If it is going to be cheaper to dump effluent into the river, I hate to be a curmudgeon, but the waste is going into the river. Stockholders want profit and multi-nationals make a fair chunk of change for making sure the stockholders are happy, it’s just too bad if we lose Togo. Maybe the people can be transported to Nauru.

Yet still they try. It is difficult to imagine and then realize new, top heavy international regimes. People here in the states are not likely to look kindly on executive orders coming from any Korean, let alone one named Ban Ki Moon, who may very well remind many rural Americans of the Reverend Moon and his “Moonies”, who had something to do with a mass wedding, notwithstanding his founding of the Washington Times. That crazy fucker won’t stand a chance once he gets to Iowa. Neither one of them, no matter what their motivations, will revel in heartland voters’ sympathy anytime soon.

And that leaves us back with the Chinese. Those wily capitalist pigs, as they used to call us, clawing up the back of the American standard bearer because we have the industrial mentality to avoid production in our own nation due to environmental and human rights legislation protecting both workers and air while strapping the middle class with a growing dependency on the cheap trash manufactured overseas or south of the border.

But that’s OK. We can’t even clean our own hotel rooms or rake our yards due to the availability of hired hands working for $.50 on the dollar to do the tedious chores. It is akin to Chinese revenge for making the Mandarins build the railroads, exchanging labor for bowls of cold porridge and insecure tents.

Yep. As soon as the Chinese can figure out the payoff resulting out of a middle class (in their case this could number a billion people), they will be making yen hands over fists and won’t be so worried about the measly three hundred odd million Americans buying their wares. So what if they can’t see the sky and will never drink the water? They bottle it now and most people are content to stay inside playing Wii. Never underestimate the Chinese sense of purpose and the drive for wealth that has made America what it is. If Canada can’t meet its proposed targets and Russia doesn’t care, what will be made of poor Kyoto, the last piece of garbage for the trash heap of international relations history?

Here He Comes to Save the Day:

W will protect us though. Once he told the nation to buy. Buy stuff, lots of it now, because the turrists want to deny us our Constitutional right to get low-priced goods from the international market. I don’t believe, in his speech after this nation was attacked by a group of Neanderthal hit men looking to Allah for praise in heaven in the form of whiskey and wild women, he mentioned buy American. Just buy. Buy lots. It is true. It works, for a while.

However, when the debts are tallied and the votes are in, the American people are in a more precarious state than seven years ago which leaves a lot of us pondering what exactly this President has done to earn our trust and respect. Simply being voted into office does not give anyone the right, let alone their subordinates, lackeys, and spin doctors, the right to run as Pamplona bulls over the liberties of ordinary people. Be that as it may, the heroic last stand of the commander in chief could have been avoided and is completely unnecessary if he made different choices along the way.

If he can do the following, and in his bizarre world, he seems to think he can:

Craft a Middle East Peace plan,

End the war in Iraq,

Generate true interest in his global warming agenda (coming soon to a mall near you),

Put any money at all into alternative energy,

Restore the stature of the United States of America (which he personally squandered),

Work with a Democratic Congress (at worst representing ½ of the voting populace),

If he can do all of this during his last twelve months in office, facing an opposition he hates (and who hate him) controlling the legislative branch, and an approval rating outside of the South hovering around 30%, George W. Bush will go down in history as a great president and a prescient man. Of course, he likely won’t do any of it because his past actions illustrate that he just doesn’t care. He is uninterested in things like the Bali Conference. Leaving the oil patch may have been stupid. Leaving this nation with a mess of a foreign policy, ridiculed around the globe, and no efforts to take environmental concerns seriously, is fat headed and wrong, even for a compassionate conservative.

He shows a disdain for anyone disagreeing with him or his fanatically conservative cronies, whom he hired to conduct our nation’s business. The quote provided above came out of a conference of the extremely wealthy states or something of that nature, those Bush believes are the movers and the shakers, and he asserted his personal commitment to the future by taking global warming seriously. He then blew off the concerted efforts of dedicated individuals working to get something, anything done at Bali.

Participants at Bali are determined to simply wait him out. What a fine legacy you have created for yourself Mr. President. It will not be surprising if he goes down as the greatest fool of the twenty first century. Historians may say they believe he was blind, deaf, and dumb, without a care in the world for anyone but his own party faithful.

The shame of the Bali conference, as with so many aspects of international diplomacy, is the United States should have taken a leadership role. The President could have done so much more just by showing some small gestures of conciliation, compromise, and listening to those who disagree with him. Instead he took the cowboy stand. That worked great for John Wayne and Ronald Reagan in the movies I guess but W is no Ronald Reagan.