Kyoto decadence
Please, let it be true. Ronald Bailey reports in his TCS column that the Kyoto Protocol is no more:
The conventional wisdom that it’s the United States against the rest of the world in climate change diplomacy has been turned on its head. Instead it turns out that it is the Europeans who are isolated. China, India, and most of the rest of the developing countries have joined forces with the United States to completely reject the idea of future binding GHG emission limits. At the conference here in Buenos Aires, Italy shocked its fellow European Union members when it called for an end to the Kyoto Protocol in 2012. These countries recognize that stringent emission limits would be huge barriers to their economic growth and future development. [I didn’t carry over Bailey’s links–SRK]
For the last few years, I’ve cringed every time I’ve seen the word Kyoto leap out at me while scanning through a news story; dollars to doughnuts, it meant that someone was caviling that the US is pursuing profit over the cries of the sylphs and toadstool spirits.
Along those lines, people familiar with Japan will get a chuckle out of the name of the Japanese energy analyst quoted in the article: 杉山 (sugiyama: “cedar mountain”). If anything symbolizes Japan’s own unromantic, calculating approach to environmental management, it’s the replacing of old-growth forests with batallions of cedar and other industrial trees. I’m not sure whether there’s a more specific name for the varieties usually planted than sugi, but to non-biologist me, the coincidence is pretty funny.
(Via Instapundit, so you’ve probably seen it already)
Also, it pains me that they’ve decided to stuck the ancient capital Kyoto as the name of this piece of pseudo-science. I mean, Harry Truman actually remove Kyoto from the Atomic Bomb schedule (and the city, like the others on the list aren’t carpet bomb so the American can assess the effectiveness of the A-Bomb), and the environmentalists have to go out of their way to associated with it.
Well, it’s probably unrealistic to expect a world-class city’s name not to be used as a tag for treaties and summits and things; but, yes, one does get the distinct impression that the choice of Kyoto was meant to associate the protocols with its famed harmony with nature.
Uh, BigFire, many Japanese cities weren’t bombed during WWII because they were militarily unimportant. These unbombed cities were put on the list of potential A-bombs sites so that we could see just how powerful those bombs were. Kyoto was taken off the A-bomb list for its historical significance. How barbaric!
Incidentally, Kokura was the intended target for bomb 2, but due to cloudy weather on the 9th, a secondary target got moved up the list.
I’m pretty sure BigFire’s point was that the barbarism was in using the name Kyoto as if it were a brand that signified love of nature; the part about WWII was, it looked to me, just supposed to indicate that the West has treated the city with respect in more extreme situations in the past.