Here's my essay on why we should reject the Kyoto Treaty.

me

[grundle]

At any given time, the temperature is either going up, or it's going down. It never stays the same.

30 years ago, all of the major environmentalists and environmental groups were 100% sure that global cooling was on the way. They were just so sure that it was coming. Their proposed "solution" was to have the government set limits on economic growth, limits on the use of natural resources and fossil fuels, and other government restrictions on economic activity.

We ignored their advice. Since then, the world GNP has more than doubled, and we burn a lot more fossil fuels today than we did 30 years ago. But the global cooling never came.

Now they are worried about global warming. But their proposed "solution" is the same. They want the same kinds of government controls now that they wanted 30 years ago.

Since the temperature is always either going up or going down, the radical doomsayer environmentalists will always either be scared about global warming, or scared about global cooling. They will always be scared about one of the two. And they will always use this as an excuse to try to have the government impose more and more restrictions and controls on people's lives.

In the real world, economic growth and capitalism have actually been very good for the environment. The richer a country is, the better its environment is. And in the real world, the countries in Eastern Europe, which adopted the massive government controls on the ecomomy that the radical left is so fond of, became the worst polluted area that the world has ever had.

Studies of tree rings in fossils of very old trees show a very strong correlation between increased sunspot activity, and global warming. Global warming is caused by the sun. The doomsayers have been pretty silent about this.

Right now, Mars is experiencing global warming. The doomsayers haven't really offered much comment on this, either.

For a lot of the radical environemntal doomsayers, the real goal has nothing to do with the environment. Instead, the real goal is to have as much government control of the economy and people's lives as possible. The doomsayers hate capitalism. They hate private property rights. They hate economic freedom. They hate economic growth.

The people who supported communism and socialism in the past, are the very same people who have embraced the ideas of the radical environemntal doomsayers today. In both caes, the real goal is to have the government do more and more to control people's lives.

A rich, prosperous society is always much better able to deal with environemtnal catastrophe than a poor, third world country. In the news, we often read about floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, hurriacanes, etc., in third world countries, and thousands of people get killed. That's because poor societies can't really deal well with these kinds of things. But when that kind of weather happens in the U.S., the death toll is always much smaller. That's because a rich society can better handle these things.

If sea levels are going to rise along U.S. coasts, it will happen very gradually over many decades, and there will be plenty of time for us to deal with it. And even then, it will be only by a few meters, at most. The scenarios in the movie "A.I." where skycrapers were covered in water is not going to happen.

According to computer models, the Kyoto Treaty won't stop global warming. Without the Kyoto Treaty, the temperature is predicted to rise 2.1 degrees Celcius over the next 100 years. But with the Kyoto Treraty, that same amount of warming will happen over 106 years instead of 100. So the Kyoto Treat gives no real benefit.

But the cost of the Kyoto Treaty would be enormous. And since a richer society is better able to deal with environmental problems, the Kyoto Treaty would ultimately make the environment worse off.

It's precisely because we IGNORED the adivce of the doomsayers 30 years ago that things got better. A rich, growing, prosperous capitalist economy made it easier and easier to protect the environment. The doomsayers predicted that before the year 2000, most people in the world would die of starvation, the pollution would be so bad that everyone would have to wear a gas mask, and there would be no oil, copper, gold, or aluminum left. Their "solution" was to have the government set limits on economic growth, and limits on the use of natrual resources. We ignored their advice. The world GNP got bigger, and we increased our use of natural resources. But it's precisely because of economic growth that we could afford to invent and use technology to make things better. Obesity rates keep going up. The air and water have gotten cleaner in all the rich countries. Known reserves of oil and other natural resources is bigger now than 30 years ago.

The doomsayers say that we need to "conserve" resources because they don't understand the function of prices. When prices are controlled by the free market, then if a resource starts to become scarce, its price will rise, and people will voluntarily conserve.

We could end water shortages simply by allowing the price of water to rise to the free market rate. People would respond to higher prices by using less water. Suppliers would respond to higher prices by increasing the supply of water, such as by using desalinization, which now costs about $3 for 1,000 gallons.

But the doomsayers don't like my idea of letting the price of water rise. Instead, they prefer a law that outlawed toilet tanks that hold 3.5 gallons, and set a limit at 1.6 gallons. The doomsayers also like laws that make it illegal for people to water their lawns and wash their cars and fill their swimming pools. This is because the doomsayers love having the government control people's lives.

Government mandated reclying of paper doesn't save trees. Paper comes from tree farms, where the trees are grown specifically for the purpose of making paper. So when people recycle paper, the tree farmers plant fewer trees. But the doomsayers like government mandated reclying of paper, because they like to have the governemnt tell people what to do.

In fact, governemnt mandated reclying wastes more resources than it saves. It's bad for the environment. But the doomsayers like the idea of having the government tell people what to do.

All the garbage that the U.S. will make over the next 100 years would all fit in one square landfill that's less than 20 miles on a side. But the doomsayers want to scare people into believing that we are running out of landfill space.

Capitalism and econoomic growth are good for the environment. In rich countries, environemntal conditions are getting better and better. Once a country's per capita GNP reaches about $4,000, people can afford to start protecting the enviornment. And the richer they are, the better off the environemnt becomes.

It's only in the communist areas that the environmental conditions got worse. In areas that had huge amounts of government control over the economy, things really did get worse.

Capitalism and private property rights and economic growth are good for the environment. Excessive government control of economic activity is bad for the environment. But the doomsayer environmentalists want more and more governemnt control of the economy. Thus, their real goal isn't to protect the environment. Their real goal is to make the government bigger.

Wealth is the single best way to protect the environment. Rich, first world countries have much better environments than poor, third world countries.

If environmentalists really did want to stop global warming, there are ways to do it that are much better and cheaper than the Kyoto Treaty. Planting billions of trees to absorb carbon dioxide is one way. Seeding the ocean with iron to absorb the carbon dioxide is another way. But neither of these ways involves massive increases in governemnt control over people's lives. And neither of these things would be a threat to capitalism. That's why the doomsayers prefer the Kyoto Treaty instead. They like the Kyoto Treaty because it gives them an excuse to increase government control of people's lives.

[Tai_Chung]

I believe in both global warming and global cooling. It all depends on the season.

[balrog666]

Nice essay. I liked that you touched the major points: the actual science the treaty ignores, the expected results of their non-solution (absolutely none), and their probable motives for pushing for such a pointless treaty (aha, the real agenda!).