Post-Kyoto globalization

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxx>]

< http://www.lrb.co.uk/v23/n12/sayl2312.htm >

"Emission trading, indeed any concerted measures against global
warming, imply a world economic system, an extension of the same
globalisation that is being blamed for spreading hydrocarbon
civilisation. Such a system does not run itself, as we learned in the
1930s. Central banks are quietly asserting independence from their
governments and drawing nearer to each other, as the only way of
keeping the world economy more or less functioning. In a similar way,
a notional set of independent climatic authorities might meet, out of
the media spotlight, and try to decide what to do about global
warming. Such bodies could hardly include practising politicians and,
as the atomic bomb showed, scientists have no more ethical competence
than the rest of us. The unplumbed depths over which the advocates of
Kyoto so naively skated call for some radically new philosophy, but
philosopher-kings grate on democratic sensitivities. Setting interest
rates, which central banks can do, is relatively easy; the
climatologist-kings, on the other hand, have no legal basis for
imposing wordwide energy restrictions. Nevertheless, the much
misrepresented Adam Smith, far from defending a conscienceless
capitalism, thought that given enough time, our behaviour towards each
other could gradually improve, citing the decline, though not yet the
disappearance, of slavery and infanticide, both accepted without a
qualm by the ancient Greeks and Hebrews. If global warming has any
solution, it can only come from the sense of human solidarity and the
individual self-respect that Smith hoped might temper the
short-sighted greed of purely commercial society. Coupled, as of now,
with the name of George W. Bush." [snip]