09 July 2008

G8-zilla

It's nice when someone in power agrees with you. You feel like your suspicions and beliefs have been validated, that you aren't crazy, and perhaps even that your hopes might be realized.

Silly rhetorical-device-doofus. Hope is for kids.

Check this story about G8 leaders and their proposed carbon-emission reductions.

Now, I don't have a dog in the climate-change fight, per se, but I guess my sympathies are with those who would very quietly doubt the existence of anthropogenic climate change. That being said, if people really feel strongly about the topic, I'm always up for forward-thinking suggestions. None of this bike-riding neo-primitivism crap: I want zero-emission hover scooters, dammit.

With that out of the way, let me summarize what the basic rules of political grandstanding are:

1. Vaguely optimistic comments about "steps", "forward", and "change", &c.

Check.

"The G8 leaders, representing most of the world’s biggest economies, insist that the proposal is a success. Speaking in Japan, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown said it was the “first summit where a target for carbon reduction has been agreed by every member”, and called it a “major step forward”"

2. Hope no one notices the real proposal: a toothless collection of malleable suggestions.

Awww, dammit:

"But in a statement issued yesterday, Mexico, Brazil, China, India and South Africa insisted that G8 nations, jointly responsible for 62% of global emissions, should cut their own emissions by more than 80% by 2050. Clearer, near-term goals are also a must if developing nations are to sign up to a global deal, they added."

C'mon, Not-Europe, I know y'all are new to the international community, but surely you know to not piss in our bowl of freshly-squozen sancitmony until all the reporters have left and before the public arrives. No manners, at all, I tell ya.

3. Make sure all your most rabid supporters are placated on the q.t. They know where all there funding comes from, so they'll toe the party line, right?

WRONG!

"Politicians can play all of the numbers games they want but the atmosphere doesn’t care about percentage reductions. It cares about absolute emissions,” says Alden Meyer, environmental expert with the Union of Concerned Scientists, a non-profit group based in Washington DC."

4. Ensure that all blame for future-failures is pre-emptively placed on opponents.

“We’re hoping that the landscape will shift dramatically next year when there is another US president. I think we can get it done with enough political will and trust among major countries,” adds Meyer."


Aaand, that's a wrap everybody! See you at the after-party?

A little more cynicism on the part of all voters would behoove our republic. I'm especially thinking of you, nutty Obama nuts. Obama might make a great president, but he's not going to enact everything you dream about. Hell, he won't even promise to have all the troops out of Iraq by 2013 (Good on him, I say, but I know the average child-o-privilege in college thinks differently).

Where has the scorn for politics gone? How can one guy, on his own, purify the industry that employed Jesse Helms, Ted Kennedy, Strom Thurmond, Robert Byrd, James Traficant, Kwame Kilpatrick, William Jefferson, and Larry Tapdancin' Craig? Especially since he himself (Obama) has Rezko's in the closet? As it must be reiterated, it seems, daily: Obama is a politician from Chicago. CHICAGO!!!

Politicians will promise things that will never happen and they know it. Carbon emissions is a great example. Ditto universal health care, ditto border security (I didn't forget ya, stuffy McCain stuff), ditto Iraq, ditto education reform.

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